KEY POINTS:
Only a month ago, Mayor John Banks and his council couldn't get enough of big hooters in Queen St. The mayor was outside the Town Hall welcoming protesting truckers and their big rigs into the CBD to do their worst. They did, irritating the rest of us for
hours, fiddling with their air horns.
But propose to display a pair of breasts on the back of a motorbike in the CBD and the mayor is full of outrage. Even though, on past experience, not a horse will bolt nor a virginal young maid be turned by the sight into a lusty creature of the night.
Mr Banks, born again as a feminist, is denouncing the annual Erotica exhibition promotional parade as exploiting women. In this he is as one with the left's leader Richard Northey, who is quoted as saying the "majority of our citizens don't want this tacky, greedy parade".
Supporting them are the moral right Citrats, who just think a parade of bare-breasted women on motorbikes is plain "offensive".
What a shame the mayor didn't show some leadership and stick to the sensible, live-and-let-live stand he took before last August's parade. Then, he thought there were "much greater and more significant social issues facing Auckland than a parade down Queen St". At the time, his mayoral campaign rival, incumbent Dick Hubbard, was denouncing the event as "morally repugnant".
Candidate Banks' response was that he wanted to live in a family-oriented city "which celebrates diversity and success and everything good about New Zealand. If people want to have a parade like this, we live in modern times. I'm neither for or against it. I don't give it mind time".
It was a reassuringly sensible 21st century statement from someone with a reputation for lurking in the farther reaches of the moral right. It might have even gained him some votes. But less than a year on, it seems the modern times are no more. We're back in the Ma and Pa Grundy era.
What the moralists keep forgetting is that each time they try to ban this parade, the more publicity it gets. Last year it attracted "tens of thousands" after it became an election issue.
The year before, when councillors tried, unsuccessfully, to rescind the parade permit issued by the bureaucrats, the Herald estimated a crowd of 100,000 lined Queen St to check what the fuss was about.
This time round, councillors of the left and right have together hatched a new gobbledygookish bylaw giving them the ability to refuse an event permit if the council "reasonably believes 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".
Because, in the past, the bureaucrats have proved unreliable, the politicians have taken over the decision making where controversial permits are concerned. To make it even easier for the Grundys, the term "offensive" has not been defined.
As the vote-seeking Mr Banks argued, surely there are more important issues for councillors to fret about than a parade of a few bare-breasted woman. As Judge Caroline Henwood observed two years ago when dismissing a charge of offensive behaviour against a woman who bared her breast in protest at a Destiny Church rally in Queen St, "a bare-breasted woman can hardly be said to be an alarming sight ... "
The judge said there had to be a balance between freedom of expression and the freedom of others to enjoy public spaces, but escaped the need to have to rule on the issue by letting the woman off on a technicality - the police had erroneously stated the scene of the alleged crime was Hobson St.
We only have to watch state TV to appreciate Mr Banks' claim that we live in modern times. Last Sunday's prime-time viewing was a soft-porn dramatisation of Fanny Hill. In the weeks before that, it was bare-bummed King Henry VIII pounding his way through six wives. Week-night fare includes half-naked crinklies trying to regain their shape, and sad married couples trying to have sex - with themselves.
For better or worse, this is one tide that neither Mr Banks nor his council is going to stop. They should put their "mind time" to where they can make a difference.