Court injunction won't stop boobs on bikes parade

The media coverage of the Boobs on Bikes parade due to occur on Wednesday in Queen Street will ensure that this parade is the biggest yet.

Family First's Bob McCoskrie is complaining that topless women parading down Queen Street is offensive and indecent.

He may think so, but the law doesn't consider topless women indecent, and Steve Crow is well aware of this.

Crow also knows that a bylaw passed by the Council intending to stop indecent behaviour won't stop him either. The new bylaw declares the council can turn down a permit for an event if it "there is any other objectively justifiable and reasonable grounds for declining consent for example that the event will be or is likely to be offensive". It's a daft bylaw as it is based on morals, and both the police and the council are powerless to enforce such a bylaw on Boobs on Bikes as legally it is not offensive behaviour.

In fact the 40,000 people who saw the parade last year didn't find it offensive, especially the school boys who took time off school to attend.

So when the Council realised that its own bylaw had no teeth, it decided to seek a court injunction to stop the parade.

But Crow has announced that he will merely make the parade a protest. So Auckland City Councillor Cathy Casey has threatened to lie across Queen St with friends to stop the parade.

But that action would be illegal, whereas the parade, as a protest, will be lawful, provided it is conducted in an orderly fashion.