Former Auckland mayor John Banks has suggested that three men arrested in a Timaru public toilet for having sex last year, whom he described as "filthy" and "perverts", should have been put to death. In an extended rant on his Radio Pacific programme that went on for nearly an hour, Banks attacked the AIDS Foundation for statements they made which described the men's arrests as a victimless crime. "It's a filthy little country we're developing here, it's quite disgusting. I mean the Koran, for instance, wouldn't tell it like that, would it? The Koran wouldn't tolerate that. In the Koran it says that those sorts of acts should be met by the death penalty, by stoning," he said. "But in New Zealand, the AIDS Foundation says, why are the police harassing three people in a public toilet in Timaru from having consensual sex. All I can say is, how filthy." Banks also criticised the appointment of police diversity liaison officers around the country, and suggested men and women were leaving the police force in droves because of anti-homophobia inclusiveness training.