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Public Address Blog Anyway, the Sunday Star
Times has a sympathetic story about Queenstown bus driver Garry Adams, who
loses his passenger transport licence today, because many years ago, when he
was 16, he had a consensual fumble with a girl who was 15. Her parents went
to the police and he eventually pleaded guilty to an indecent act. From
today, the Passenger Transport Amendment Act sees the withdrawal of his
licence. He has no right of review or reply, unlike drivers who have
committed quite serious acts of violence, because his sexual offence was
potentially subject to a jail term of up to seven years. But hang on. Is this
the same newspaper that ran a hysterical and inaccurate front-page story,
claiming that the age of consent was being reduced to 12 - thereby sparking a
moral panic that eventually forced Phil Goff to withdraw a proposal for a
so-called age-gap defence that wouldn't have made convicted sex criminals of
under 16 year-olds who consensually experimented? It is? Well. One might
think there was a deal of hypocrisy going on here … This law is
well-intended but it sorely needs attention - the easiest course seems to be to
simply allow for review of cases like Adams'. Inevitably, its impact has
triggered the usual bitching about "the left", but actually, the
Greens opposed it - predicting exactly the sort of unfairness that has become
apparent - and it was Deborah Coddington who sounded off about it not being
sufficiently draconian.
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