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.
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.
"As counsel for the applicant submitted, diversion of electricity is an essential part of the crime of cultivating cannabis, and it is very common for the offences of cultivation and diversion of electricity to be prosecuted together, and not just when the accused person is an electrician."
Breaking rules only at home a mitigating factor
Professor Reilly said Curran had a good record as an electrician up until the cancellation of his licence, and two complaints registered against him had been resolved without further action.
He disagreed with the commissioner for consumer affairs' submission that it was "highly concerning" that Curran was willing to permit unsafe electrical work in his own home.
"In my view, the fact that the breach of the Wiring Rules was only in the applicant's own home is a mitigating factor on the seriousness of this offending in relation to its impact on his licencing," he wrote.
"It would seem far worse for Mr Curran to place others at risk outside his home."
The tribunal set aside the commissioner's decision to cancel Curran's electrical contractor's licence and his electrical worker's registration.
It ruled there should be no conditions placed on the registration or licence, in recognition of the fact there had been no official complaints about Curran's work, and he had been without his licence for five and a half months.
