NZ court gives green light to topless parade
AUCKLAND – A judge has rejected a New Zealand city council’s bid to halt a controversial ‘Boobs on Bikes’ parade.
The parade, featuring topless females on motorbikes, will legally go ahead this week after judge Nicola Mathers rejected Auckland council’s bid for an injunction to prevent the parade.
Stuff.co. nz reported that parade organiser and porn baron Steve Crow earlier said he would flout the law if necessary to stage the parade.
Auckland City Council argued at the local district court that the parade of topless women riding in cars and on motorbikes breached its newly amended by-law banning offensive public events.
But judge Nicola Mathers said she wasn’t satisfied that the city centre parade breached the legal threshold of offensiveness.
The judge said opponents may find the parade offensive or tasteless but the fact that 80,000 people attended the previous event meant a significant number of people did not agree with the critics’ views.
The council’s lawyer argued the parade had little to do with freedom of expression and was simply an advertisement for the upcoming Erotica Expo.
But Crow said the parade was established primarily as an affirmation of a woman’s right to go topless in public as per the Bill of Rights and only had a low association with the Erotica Expo.
Ian Jarrett
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