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If you have been charged with drink driving or drug driving on the Gold Coast, a work licence application may be the only way to keep working while your suspension period is ongoing. The time frame to apply for a work licence is limited, and the requirements for eligibility are very strict. The magistrate has the complete discretion to refuse your application if anything is missing. It is essential to get it right the first time, as there is no right of appeal if the application fails.
We deal with work licence applications at the Southport Magistrates Court weekly. If you need to know where you stand, we can provide a free consultation before your court date.
Who qualifies for a work licence on the Gold Coast?
Queensland law specifies who can apply for a work licence, and you must satisfy every eligibility requirement, not just most of them. The magistrate can reject your application on the spot if any of the criteria is missing.
Offences that allow a work licence application
You may apply for a work licence if you have been charged with a low range or mid range drink driving offence and your blood alcohol concentration was below 0.15%. Drug driving charges are included as long as you have not been charged with dangerous driving or a drink driving charge.
Also, the offence must have been your first or second drink or drug driving offence. You must have had a provisional or open licence at the time you were pulled over, and not a learner licence. You must have pleaded guilty or been found guilty of the offence before the magistrate can consider your work licence application.
When you are not eligible to apply
There are a number of circumstances that will automatically bar you from applying. These include: if your breath alcohol concentration or blood alcohol content was 0.15% or higher; if you were on a probationary licence or learner permit when you committed the offence; and if you were convicted of a similar offence within the past five years.
Drivers charged with dangerous driving or a combined drink and drug driving offence are also excluded. Also, if your licence was suspended or cancelled for some other reason at the time of being charged, you don’t qualify. There is no way to get around any of these exclusions. They are clearly stated in the Transport Operations (Road Use Management) Act. The magistrate cannot make any other decisions.
What the magistrate actually looks for in your application
Passing the eligibility requirements just gets your application in front of the magistrate. Then you have to prove two things to them: that you are a fit and proper person to be granted a restricted work licence, and that you would experience extreme hardship if you were to lose your licence. The magistrate makes his decision based on evidence you present, not on what you say from the bar table.
Proving you are a fit and proper person
The fit and proper person test goes beyond your driving history, although that does play a role. The magistrate wants to see that you take the offence seriously, as well as understand the danger your actions posed to other drivers. They also want to see evidence of actions you have taken since you were charged. Taking a drink driver education course prior to your hearing date can carry great weight. So can evidence of your rehabilitation, such as counselling or a letter from your GP.
A clean driving record is beneficial, but a few infringements in the past will not automatically count against you. What the magistrate is really interested in knowing is whether you are someone who can be trusted to drive with very strict conditions and not commit any further offences. Your character references and work history will all play into this, as will how you have conducted yourself since being charged.
Proving extreme hardship without your licence
This is where most applications are won or lost. You must show severe and unusual hardship, rather than just hardship. The magistrate hears from people daily who complain that losing their licence makes their lives difficult. This is not enough. You must prove that you would lose your job or income, or would be unable to meet financial responsibilities that involve your family.
Financial documents are important in this context. Pay slips, contracts, bank statements, and a letter from your employer stating that driving is essential to your employment and that no alternative duties are available to you should be included. If you are self-employed, you will have to demonstrate that your business cannot function without you driving to different sites or clients in a motor vehicle.
The magistrate will also want to know whether you have a viable alternative in the form of public transport. If you are living in an area of the Gold Coast that doesn’t have a lot of bus routes, and you have no way of getting to work without driving, then this is a strong argument in your favour. However, you need to be able to prove this. A map showing the distances and time taken in a car versus a bus, and a written explanation of why this is not possible, is far more effective than just telling the magistrate this on the day.
How the court process works at Southport Magistrates Court
The majority of Gold Coast traffic cases are handled by the Southport Magistrates Court, and the process for work licence applications follows a particular pattern. Understanding the process of a particular courthouse makes all the difference when preparing.
Timing your application correctly
A work licence application must be lodged prior to your being sentenced or at the same time as your sentencing. You cannot come back and ask for a work licence after the fact. In other words, you must have all your applications prepared and lodged prior to your first mention date, or you must ask for an adjournment to allow yourself time to gather evidence.
At Southport, adjournments for work licence preparation are usually granted if you apply early and have a reasonable basis. However, it is important that you don’t count on having many adjournments. The magistrate will expect you to be productive with the time given. If you come back for a hearing after a four-week adjournment without anything prepared, you will be sentenced on the day without a work licence. The normal time frame that most work licence applicants work on is two to four weeks between the mention and the hearing, depending on how quickly you can gather your documents.
Documents you need to file before your hearing
Your application is based on paperwork, not promises. The key documents required for filing your application are a completed application form, a statutory declaration or affidavit outlining your hardship, your employment contract or a letter from your employer, your recent pay slips and financial documents, your traffic history from Queensland Transport, and your certificates for rehabilitation courses undertaken.
For Southport, you lodge these with the court registry prior to your court date. Failure to lodge in time and instead giving them to the magistrate on the day is a big no-no. This tells the court you are not taking this seriously and gives the police prosecutor less time to peruse your evidence, which could result in objections that you could have avoided.
The affidavit you provide will be the most important document. It will need to outline, in your own words, the extreme hardship you face if you do not have a licence and the steps you have taken since being charged. It will also need to outline why you are a fit and proper person to hold a restricted licence. A poorly prepared affidavit is one of the most common reasons for failing.
What happens on the day of your hearing
On the day, your case will be called as a general list case at the Southport Magistrates Court. If you have legal representation, your traffic lawyer will stand up and announce your presence, then present your documents, prior to making your submissions to the magistrate. The police prosecutor may raise objections or ask you questions about the lack of evidence.
The magistrate will then consider your material and any objections made before making their decision. If your application is successful, the magistrate makes an order for you to receive a restricted work licence, which is subject to certain conditions. The whole process takes between ten and twenty minutes once your matter is called. However, you could end up waiting for several hours in court before your matter is called.
Conditions the magistrate can place on your work licence
A work licence is not a full licence. The magistrate will impose strict conditions that will dictate when and where you can drive, as well as for what purpose. The common conditions imposed will be no alcohol limits (zero blood alcohol content while driving), driving during set hours, driving for work purposes and to and from work, and keeping a log book to record all trips driven.
Some magistrates may even limit the kind of motor vehicle you are allowed to drive or the area you are allowed to move around in. You cannot use your work licence for errands, socialising, or anything outside the scope of the court order. Breaking any of the rules will mean you are charged, your licence is revoked immediately, and you cannot apply again.
These conditions are tailored towards your specific situation. For instance, if you start work at 6am and finish at 3pm, this is taken into account. Similarly, if your work involves travelling to different places within the Gold Coast region, your lawyer can help you build a case to allow this. The more specific your application is, the easier it is to make the conditions.
Common mistakes that get work licence applications refused
In almost all cases, it comes down to the preparation of the application. The applicant may have qualified, but they didn’t complete or submit the application correctly.
The most common mistake is a poor affidavit. Applicants write something too vague (“I need my licence for work”) or too long and unfocused, with relevant facts buried under pages of narrative writing that no magistrate will bother reading. Your affidavit must be specific, organised, and relevant to the test for extreme hardship and the fit and proper person test.
The lack of financial documents is another problem. Just saying you will lose your job is not proof. The magistrate wants you to show your employment contract, a letter from your employer stating you need the licence, your latest pay slips, and evidence of financial commitments like a mortgage or rent, car payments, dependents, and other regular expenses.
Filing late, or not filing any documents before the hearing, is the third major issue. Some people walk into court with a bundle of papers and expect to just hand them up on the day, which can cause problems with the police prosecutor, be time-consuming, and demonstrate to the magistrate that you have not taken the application seriously. Filing early and serving copies to the prosecution is standard procedure for a well-prepared application.
Other errors include failing to complete a drink driver education program prior to the hearing and having outstanding fines and warrants that negate the fit and proper person argument. Failure to obtain a traffic history printout from Queensland Transport is another common error. Any one of these gaps could be the reason why the magistrate says no.
Why self-represented applicants face higher refusal rates
Technically, it is possible for a self-represented applicant to make a work licence application. However, the success rate for self-represented applicants is measurably lower. The reason for this is structural, rather than intellectual, and the self-represented applicant does not know what the magistrate is looking for and therefore does not provide it.
The biggest problem is the affidavit. A good specialist traffic lawyer will know exactly how the magistrates at Southport approach the question of hardship and fitness. They know precisely what facts the magistrate wants to know, and they set these out in the affidavit, as the magistrate expects to see them. The self-represented applicant, on the other hand, writes a personal letter telling the magistrate all about themselves, which sounds more like an apology than a legal argument. It does not contain the specific facts required.
The second problem is incomplete evidence. Self-represented applicants often forget to bring essential documents to court because they did not know that the documents were necessary. A traffic lawyer will provide you with a checklist well before the court date and will remind you to make sure everything is ready. Otherwise, things tend to slip from the mind because of the impending court date.
There is also the courtroom itself. The police prosecutor may raise an objection to your application based on your history of traffic offences or the circumstances of your offence. If you do not know what to say in response to such an objection on the spot, your application may be refused by the magistrate. A lawyer who appears regularly in Southport is familiar with such objections and will know what to say in response.
The last disadvantage is the absence of a second chance. The decision of the magistrate on the work licence application will not be appealed. If you do not succeed, you will face the entire period. You will not have the chance to come back the following week with a better affidavit. This is the reason you need professional help, and it is worth the expense.
Work licence vs special hardship order on the Gold Coast
These two options are frequently confused with each other and are in no way interchangeable. A work licence allows you to carry on driving for work purposes during a licence disqualification for a drink driving or drug driving offence. A special hardship order is another application, and this is for people who have accumulated too many demerit points and are facing licence suspension under the points system.
The eligibility requirements and legal tests are different. The court proceedings operate on a different timeline. The application for a work licence is determined by the magistrate at the same time as (or before) sentencing for the drink or drug driving offence. A special hardship order is an application to the Magistrates Court to avoid suspension of your licence under the Queensland Transport demerit points scheme. You apply for a special hardship order after receiving a suspension notice. You must demonstrate severe and unusual hardship, similar to the work licence, but under another section of the Transport Operations legislation.
If you have been charged with a drink driving offence, you may also have a demerit points suspension. In such cases, you may have to face both, and your traffic lawyer can help you determine which one applies best to your case.
Get a free case review from a Gold Coast work licence lawyer
If you have been charged with drink driving or drug driving on the Gold Coast, and you need to keep your licence for work, we recommend you contact us prior to your court date. We have experience handling work licence applications at the Southport Magistrates Court every week, and we can quickly assess your eligibility and the prospects of your work licence application.
Call us today for a free consultation. We’ll look at your charge, your traffic history, and your employment status, and we’ll give you a straight answer about your options. We have payment plans available, and we can have your application prepared well before your hearing date. The sooner you call us, the more time we have to build the best case possible.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I drive home from court after getting a work licence?
No. A work licence will only allow you to drive for work purposes, as set out in the licence granted by the magistrate. Driving home from court is not driving for work purposes. You will have to arrange for alternative transport to and from the courthouse on the day of your court hearing.
What happens if my work licence application is refused?
The magistrate’s decision is final, and there is no right to appeal if the application for a work licence is refused. The period for which your licence will be disqualified will be for the full term set during sentencing, and you will be unable to apply for a licence during this time. This is why it is so important to get it right the first time with correctly prepared documentation and expert legal assistance.
Can I apply for a work licence if I am self-employed?
Yes. Self-employed applicants are eligible for a work licence if they meet the same eligibility criteria as employed applicants. The difference lies in the requirement for evidence, as you will be required to provide business registration documents, client contracts, invoices, and financial records showing your business requires the driving of a motor vehicle. The magistrate must be satisfied that your business cannot operate without you driving.
Does a work licence cover driving to and from work only?
It all depends on the conditions set by the court. In most cases, a work licence will allow you to go to and from work, and possibly allow you to drive during work hours for work-related reasons. If you need to visit different places during work, you can present evidence to support this. However, you will not be allowed to go anywhere else outside the conditions set by the magistrate.
Will my disqualification period be longer if I get a work licence?
No, the length of your disqualification is based on the offence and the magistrate’s decision in court and is not based on whether you have a work licence or not. The work licence only permits you to drive within certain restrictions, and the disqualification period stays the same.