If you've been charged with drink driving and you drive to earn a living, a work licence in QLD is probably the first thing you searched for. It's also a thing people commonly get wrong, and the one with the least forgiving timing.

A work licence, sometimes called a restricted licence, is an order from a magistrate letting you keep driving for work during a period when you'd otherwise be off the road completely.

Two things before anything else, because both of them cost people their chance.

This is not the workplace safety licence

If you've been searching and getting results about scaffolding, forklifts and dogging tickets, you've found the high risk work licence. That's a workplace safety thing and it has nothing to do with drink driving. Same two words, completely different animal.

The licence this article is about is a traffic matter, given by a magistrate, in the courtroom, at the moment you're convicted.

The timing is unforgiving

You apply at the time you're convicted, and before the magistrate makes the disqualification order.

That window is narrow. Once you're disqualified, that ends that part of it, and you can't come back next month with better paperwork.

This is one common way people lose a work licence they might otherwise have got, and it's avoidable. It means the preparation happens before your court date, not on it.

Who is eligible for a work licence in QLD

The rules are strict and there's a long list of them. Based on Legal Aid Queensland and Queensland Government guidance, you need to be able to say yes to all of these.

You've been charged with drink driving, failing to provide a specimen, or driving with a relevant drug in your blood or saliva.

You're pleading guilty, you're about to lose your licence, and you need it for work.

You held a current Queensland licence for that class of vehicle when the offence happened. The type of licence you held matters here, so it's worth checking exactly where you stand before assuming you're eligible.

Your reading was under 0.15. The Queensland Government says that at 0.15 or above you aren't eligible.

You were not driving for work at the time of the offence. This one reads backwards to nearly everyone. Driving for work when it happened rules you out. It doesn't help you.

You weren't on a licence that requires a zero reading at the time, which covers learner, provisional, probationary and restricted licences.

You currently hold a Queensland licence.

And you've had no drink or drug driving conviction in the past five years, no dangerous driving conviction in the past five years, and no licence suspension, cancellation or disqualification in the past five years, with limited exceptions.

Read that list twice. One suspension four years ago for something unrelated can finish the application before it starts.

What you have to convince the magistrate of

Getting past the eligibility rules only earns you the right to ask. It doesn't get you the order.

Legal Aid Queensland describes the test as having two limbs, and you have to satisfy the magistrate of both.

First, that you're a fit and proper person to hold one, thinking about the safety of other road users and the public generally.

Second, that refusing it would cause extreme hardship to you or your family by taking away how you earn a living.

That second one is about your livelihood, not your convenience. Not being able to get to the shops, or facing a longer commute, isn't what this is aimed at. The question is whether refusing you takes away how you make money.

Notice the word extreme. It's doing real work in that sentence.

The affidavits, which is where most applications are won or lost

This is the part people underestimate.

Legal Aid Queensland's guidance is that you file the application form, your own affidavit, your employer's affidavit unless you're self employed, your traffic history, and your criminal history if you have one.

An affidavit is sworn evidence, not a letter. It gets witnessed properly, and what's in it has to be true, because the prosecutor can cross-examine you on it. You will give evidence and you can be questioned.

Your employer's affidavit deals with your job, its terms, and what losing your licence would actually do. Character references and letters of support are only allowed in if the prosecution agrees, so treat them as a bonus rather than the foundation.

Here's the practical difference. An employer's affidavit saying "he's a good worker and we need him" leaves the court with very little to work with. One that sets out what the job actually is, what driving it genuinely requires, why the work can't be reorganised, and what happens to the role without a licence, at least puts the relevant material in front of the magistrate.

The conditions if you get one

A work licence is not your normal licence with a note attached. It's tight.

The conditions the Queensland Government sets out include these. You can only drive for things directly connected with earning your living. The order can spell out what class of vehicle, for what purpose, and at what times. Your alcohol limit becomes zero. You can't supervise a learner. And you have to carry both the licence and the court order and produce them to police when asked.

Zero means zero. Legal Aid Queensland puts it plainly: drive on a work licence with any alcohol in your system and you're breaking the law. There's no morning after allowance built in. Breaching the conditions has consequences of its own, and they're not minor.

If your reading was 0.10 or above, expect an interlock too

A work licence for a mid range offence comes with the requirement to have an alcohol ignition interlock fitted to any car you drive.

People plan carefully around the work licence and then get caught out by the interlock cost and the interlock period sitting on top of it. Build it into your thinking from the start. Our page on work licence and hardship applications covers how the two fit together.

Drug driving charges: sometimes, but not always

You can apply if the charge is driving with a relevant drug in your saliva or blood. Legal Aid Queensland identifies those drugs as cannabis, ecstasy and ice.

You cannot apply if the charge is the more serious one of driving under the influence of a drug.

That distinction is the whole ballgame if you've been charged with something drug related. Check which charge you're actually facing instead of assuming. Our page on drug driving sets out how those charges differ.

A work licence is not a special hardship order

These get mixed up constantly, including by people who've had one.

According to the Queensland Government, a special hardship order is for someone whose Queensland provisional or open licence has been suspended for doing 40km/h or more over the limit, or for picking up demerit points during a good driving behaviour period.

Its test is also wider. As well as extreme hardship by losing your means of earning a living, it can be granted for severe and unusual hardship for other reasons, like getting a family member to medical appointments.

Different trigger, different test, different order. So if a mate tells you he got one after a speeding suspension, that's a special hardship order and it tells you nothing about your drink driving matter.

What to do between now and your court date

Find out your exact charge and your exact reading. The 0.15 line and the charge type decide your eligibility before anything else does.

Get your traffic history. Five years of it matters and people genuinely misremember.

Talk to your employer early. An affidavit takes longer to organise than you'd think, especially if the person who has to swear it works away or is on leave.

And be realistic about how much driving your job actually needs. Overstating it in sworn evidence is a far worse problem than the disqualification you're trying to avoid.

If your court date is coming up in Cairns

The window for a work licence closes the moment you're sentenced, and everything that makes an application work has to be ready before you walk in the door.

If you've been charged with drink driving or drug driving in Cairns and your livelihood depends on your licence, we can work out whether an application is open to you and what yours would need to look like.

If you have been charged with drink driving in Cairns and you drive for a living, speak with us well before your court date.