Licence Farce continues

The farce over the licence law continues. Now it appears if you were once convicted of sodomy (when it was illegal) you might also lose your passenger transport licence. Let this be a lesson to all MPs about why you should not make laws retrospective unless the nation’s vital interests are at stake. You don’t do it just to scratch an itch.

Even though Harry Duynhoven is trying to fix the law, I am getting sick of him bleating don’t blame me, blame the select committee. First of all the select committee was not unanimous – the Greens dissented on this very point, and it was ignored. I blogged on it back in April also.

Secondly select committees sometimes do a good job improving laws, but sometimes they stuff them up also. Parliament has the option of not amending the select committee changes, and Duynhoven as Minister could have proposed amendments in the House. Instead he did nothing.

The law allows an appeal on losing your licence if you are convicted of manslaughter but not for any sex crimes. Very inconsistent. If they had allowed an appeal to be considered on its merits for all crimes, then the issue wouldn’t have arisen. I suspect that is what the amendment will do. Even if someone is a convicted murderer, if it happened 35 years ago and they have been blameless since, I’d have no problems with them as a passenger driver.