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Nobody wants to see sexual
predators or violent criminals driving buses and taxis. The potential for
them to use these jobs to come into contact with vulnerable people is too
great, which is partly why Parliament last year passed the Land Transport
Amendment Act requiring the suspension of passenger endorsement licences from
drivers who have been convicted of offences punishable by a maximum prison
term of seven years or more. The act came into effect on Monday
and its unforeseen consequence has been to net a number of men with old
convictions for having sex with underage girls when they themselves were
still in their teens. One case involved a 16-year-old who had sex with his
girlfriend two days before her 16th birthday; another was 18 when he slept
with a 15-year-old working in the same shearing gang, assuming she was his
age. The first crime was 34 years ago and the second 40 years ago. Both men
have had their bus licences suspended. They belong to a group of a dozen men
identified so far with similar stories and, the way the law is framed, none
of them are likely to get their licences back unless something is done. This is a clear-cut example of
over-zealous lawmaking that, unless corrected, will harm a small number of
citizens for no good reason. If these men have no other serious convictions
on their records, they are being victimised, losing their livelihoods because
of offences that happened when they were very young and for which they were
lightly punished at the time. There is no sense in it, especially when the
same Parliament passed the Criminal Records (Clean Slate) Act, allowing minor
offences to be concealed if the offender has had a clean record for seven
years. That act disqualifies anyone who
has been sentenced to prison and also excludes certain types of sexual
offending. If similar attention had been paid to the drafting of the Land
Transport Amendment Act, the individuals who have taken their cases to
Transport Safety Minister Harry Duynhoven would have been spared unnecessary
stress and loss of earnings and the Government would have avoided the
embarrassment it now faces. Mr Duynhoven has conceded that
this part of the legislation is an ass - "I don't believe this law was
intended to catch these people," he says - and is looking for a way to
restore the right of appeal. If the Government's officials can't figure out
how to do that, he might have to go back to Parliament with an amendment to
put things right. How much better it would have been for the Government and,
more importantly, the affected drivers, if more thought had been given to the
detail.
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