A parole officer's advice couldn't save this port worker from the sack
Employment Relations Authority member Claire English ruled on 27 July 2026 that failing to declare an overseas conviction justified a port worker's dismissal.
Port of Napier Limited dismissed the worker, a reefer technician who had kept its refrigerated cargo running since January 2022, on 12 April 2024, after managers discovered a criminal record he had not declared on his job application.
The process began in April 2024, when Robert van Rooyen, the port's head of landside operations, came across media reports describing an Australian conviction and a six-year prison sentence handed to the worker in 2015. When he had applied for the role in 2021, the pre-employment form asked if he had "any court convictions in the last 10 years." He answered no.
Confronted with the reports, the worker accepted they were accurate, telling van Rooyen he had actually served four years in custody followed by a parole period that ended in 2021. At a disciplinary meeting, backed by his father and a union representative, he said a parole officer had told him his New Zealand police record was clean and that he had nothing to declare.
His position shifted by the time the case reached the Authority. He ultimately argued the form only asked about New Zealand convictions, rather than relying on the Criminal Records (Clean Slate) Act 2004. Claire English rejected that reading, finding the form set no such geographic limit. She accepted he had genuinely sought advice from a parole officer and had not set out to deceive the port. But she found the information he gave was false regardless, and serious enough that dismissal remained an option open to Port of Napier.
The worker also pointed to his dismissal letter, wrongly dated 5 March 2024, arguing it showed the outcome had already been decided before he was properly heard. Van Rooyen told the Authority under oath that the date was his own typing error, made while preparing the letter, and that he reached his decision only after weighing what the worker had said. English accepted his account, finding the surrounding correspondence supported it.
A separate claim, that being marked "absent" on the work roster before his dismissal had tipped off colleagues that he was already gone, also failed. The co-worker who allegedly relayed that impression never gave evidence, and the port said the roster status was routinely used for unrelated rostering gaps. The worker further argued that a decision reached over a single weekend could not have been genuine, since HR work is not usually done on Saturdays and Sundays. Van Rooyen, giving evidence in person, said he was the decision-maker rather than an HR adviser, and that port work never followed the rhythms of a traditional five-day week.
English found Port of Napier had sufficiently investigated the allegation, raised its concerns directly, given the worker a genuine opportunity to respond, and properly weighed his explanation before deciding. Dismissal, she found, was "reasonably open to PNL in all the circumstances at the time." The worker had also alleged Port of Napier breached its duty of good faith; the same findings applied to that claim, and the Authority made no orders on either.
Costs were reserved. The Authority noted the hearing had run to less than a full day and invited the parties to settle the costs question between themselves, before falling back on its usual daily tariff if a dispute remains.
