ABC Australia
An electrician who illegally diverted electricity from the grid to grow cannabis at his southern Adelaide home will keep his operating licence, after a tribunal overturned a decision to cancel it.
Key points:
- Ryan Curran spent two years on home detention for growing cannabis and illegally diverting electricity
- His electrician’s registration was cancelled after he applied to be a building contractor
- A tribunal said his crime of diverting electricity was not one only limited to electricians
Ryan Curran, 35, of Seaford, pleaded guilty in 2017 to cultivating a commercial quantity of cannabis and diversion of electricity without authority.
He was fined and served a sentence of two years and one month on home detention.
In May 2020, he applied for a building contractor’s licence, which required a police check.
After seeing Curran’s criminal history, the commissioner for consumer affairs cancelled his electrician’s registration and contractor’s licence in August 2021.
The commissioner found Curran was not a fit and proper person to hold one, in part because he had failed to flag his offending when he renewed his registration.
Curran sought to overturn the commissioner’s decision in the South Australian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (SACAT), arguing the failure was not deliberate.
SACAT member Alex Reilly agreed in a decision published on Wednesday, accepting Curran’s evidence that his partner was responsible for his online registration renewal, and she had ticked the box confirming he had not been charged with criminal offences.
“In considering whether the offence of diverting electricity carries any particular significance in the assessment of fitness and propriety, it is important to recognise that the whole cultivation operation was illegal, and completely out of the context of the applicant’s business as an electrician,” he said.
Read more at https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-06-23/cannabis-grower-electrician-registration-cancellation-overturned/101178148
