Former Auckland mayor John Banks desperately tried to put his homo-hating past behind him during last year's local body election campaign, in which he failed to retain the Auckland mayoralty. Attending a mayoral debate hosted by the Gay Auckland Business Association, Banks cheerfully made claims of being the largest employer of gay men ever, and told gay media that many gay men were supporting his campaign. He refused to discuss his long history of anti-gay statements both as an MP and a talk radio host, saying they were made twenty years ago and no longer relevant. Of course, as with so many other Bankstatements, the facts are a little loose. It was less than even ten years ago that a caller to his Radio Pacific programme said "sodomites" should have barbed wire shoved up their rectums, and Banks finished the call saying it would be a waste of barbed wire. That one went to the Broadcasting Standards Authority. As recently as last week, Banks engaged in an extended rant about "filthy" and "pervert" homosexuals on his Radio Pacific programme that went on for nearly an hour. Banks also invoked the Koran to suggest that sexual acts between men should be punishable by death. With Banks not ruling out contesting the Auckland mayoralty again in two years' time, GayNZ.com is proud to present some of the highlights of these latest Bankstatements, for you to file and keep and read aloud should Banks have the cheek to ever show his face at a GABA forum or any gay event again... July 25, 2005 7:12am "Now, while the police's morale has never been lower, with numerous police officers up and down the country facing serious criminal charges, many of them with name suppression, others without name suppression, from aggravated robbery to rape and everything in between, numerous murders left unsolved and the police in a state of absolute shambles with no leadership, we learnt over the weekend that police bosses in Wellington are investigating bullying claims after a gay police officer has quit his job at an Auckland station. "Inspector Peter Cowan from Police National Headquarters' equal employment opportunities division says he is aware of the case and it is being investigated. Inspector Cowan says there's concern about some of the issues that were identified confidentially by the person concerned. He doesn't catch thieves, he doesn't catch rapists, he's not in the homicide team, he doesn't even give out tickets, this Inspector Peter Cowan, he is the boss of the Equal Employment Opportunities commission. His big issue is the bullying claims. They've come as the police try to increase the number of gays and lesbians in the force. "Diversity liaison officers are being set up right across the country in every police district to support gay staff and liaise with gay communities. Why don't they just get on with catching the thieves? Why aren't the police putting their resources in catching the rapists and why is it that we've got gay and lesbian police liaison officers when there are so many unsolved murders in this country? Is that a reasonable question to ask the police? "Police are now having substantial amounts of inclusiveness training. No wonder more people are leaving the police today than ever before in the history of the job. Men and women, good men and women are fleeing the police force by the day, by the hour as a result of all this humbug being said from police national, national headquarters. They've now got inclusiveness training in response to criticism from may in the gay community of homophobic attitudes. "Last year Timaru police raided, this is a criticism, listen to this for a criticism, this is a serious criticism, last year Timaru police raided a public toilet block and arrested three men for what the AIDS Foundation describe as a victimless crime amongst men engaging in consensual sex, sex in a public toilet. You like that? The AIDS Foundation has described this as a victimless crime amongst men engaged in consensual sex in a public toilet. "Why are they, they're asking, that's the AIDS Foundation, why are the police bothering with such petty crime when there's more important thins to be done than locking up three homosexuals engaging in consensual sex in a timaru public toilet, and so we've got a boss in the police now, Inspector Peter Cowan, who's in charge of these matters, and he's in charge of diversiveness (sic), and he's in charge of recruiting more gays and lesbians into the force, and he's responsible for diversity education, and he's the man that's driving the inclusiveness training. Well my advice is, either get a real job or go out and start catching some thieves." 7:16am CALLER: “Hey listen, mate, while we've got good men and women in the police force, you imagine, you're in a patrol car, you're a policeman, your mate, he's gay, you, say you hop out of the car, you've got an offender there, you're writing down information and you drop your pen, who the hell's going to bend down and pick that up?” BANKS: "Well I don't know." CALLER: “Look how much money it's going to cost the taxpayers with more pens being delivered to them every day?” BANKS: “Well the problem is, the problem is that we live in this politically correct world and, and I blame this government, this Labour government for forcing all this political correctness on us. In fact, I never thought I'd see the day when the New Zealand police has a senior ranked officer at national headquarters called the Equal Employment Opportunities officer. “Mind you I never thought I would witness the AIDS Foundation describing sex amongst men in a Timaru public toilet as a victimless crime amongst men engaging in consensual sex. My advice to the AIDS Foundation is that, these people want to get up to this filthy business amongst each other, will they get out of public toilets because some nice little boy might want to go there and use the public toilet and he doesn't want to be inflicted with these perverts. “But that's my old-fashioned view which, of course, now is illegal, it's illegal to have these kinds of views because morals and standards and values and everything else has gone out the back door. While the British police are in a desperate war against street terrorism, the New Zealand police's biggest problem is a British policeman is going home because he's a gay that's been bullied, that's their biggest problem, that's the New Zealand police's biggest problem this week, a British bobbie has fled the country because he's sick of being bullied by other bobbies, and back home from, where he comes from, their biggest problem is staying alive in the war against terrorism on the streets, and they carry submachine guns and see the need to shoot people, and it's desperate, bombs are going off, the security of tens of thousands of citizens is at risk, and here in New Zealand the best thing we can do is deliver up to the courts every single week police officers charged with serious criminal offences. “Let me just say this, battlers, you're going to be very interested to know, when the court decides to lift the anonymity, the ban on, name suppression, up and down the country right now you're going to be very interested to know who the people are when the name suppression is lifted and what they do and what they get up to, it's going to be very interesting. But what it does prove is banksie is right. Always right.” [NB: The gay police officer referred to by Banks has not fled the country, and says he did not quit the force because of homophobic bullying] 8:10am "Now the AIDS Foundation are very upset, and the AIDS Foundation are very upset because last year the police in Timaru locked up three homosexuals that were having sex in a public toilet, and the AIDS Foundation says they shouldn't have been locked up because they were just three normal people having consensual sex and they're upset about it. "What do you reckon about that, battlers? 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. 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." Chris Banks - 28th July 2005