[imc-auckland-video] Book out about Banks

[Kim Mazur]

Bigotry and barbed wire: John Banks revisited
 
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17SEPT04 - Noel Harrison; GayNZ.com
  	
		


Banks, Behind the Mask.
Author: Noel Harrison
Publisher: The estate of Lyndsay Rae Gammon: 1946-2004

Excerpts selected and edited by GayNZ.com with the permission of the
author. We have chosen to present some of the book's contents which have
a direct bearing on the lives of glbt New Zealanders, based
predonimantly on one chapter, titled "Homophobia." Many other aspects of
John Banks' life, aspirations and relationships are covered in the book,
including his relationships with politicians, Christian political
parties, women and with the Police when he was Minister of Police.


Harrison writes:
This is the untold story of a politician who has for for more than 20
years attracted national attention as a purveyor of extreme views - an
angry morals campaigner who became a media favourite, an entertainer.

I have tried to explain his motivation, and his disturbing behaviour. He
has described himself as an obsessive-compulsive personality...
Interviewers and political opponents have noted his sudden mood swings,
his anger, frustration, impatience and intolerance. He has admitted to
feeling paranoid, to feeling that he has to protect himself from hidden
dangers.

His career illustrates again how easy it is to fool lots of people all
the time, to create myths and legends... ...to turn the House of
Representatives into a laughing stock. And to astonish 82% of Auckland
City voters who woke up one morning in 2001 to find he was their new
mayor.

Banks built his public persona on how he rose above what he claimed was
his early bleak life to become a shining example of good triumphing over
evil. But much of his past is opaque...

The story I uncovered of his early years simply did not fit with the
myth of a deprived childhood. On the contrary, it was very ordinary,
very similar to that of many other young New Zealanders, certainly till
he was 14. He was raised by a loving aunt and uncle for almost all that
time, believing he was their son and bearing their name. He was not a
foster child moving from pillar to post and going to numerous schools.

Why did he apparently change his attitude toward the Homosexual Law
Reform Bill in 1986? [Based on research and personal knowledge] the
Bill's promoters thought he would be supportive, yet he became fiercely
antagonistic. What did Winston Peters, the leader of New Zealand First,
mean when he threatened in 1997 to reveal what Banks had done in
Queensland? Why does he offer so much support to Auckland's gay
community members after he reviled them for almost 20 years?

In 1986, when the Bill reached its final stage, he described it as evil.
(NZPD 9 July 1986) He said that this "day will be remembered as a sad
and sickening day for New Zealand. A very black cloud tonight, and those
members who wheel themselves through the doors of the Ayes lobby to vote
for legalised sodomy at the age of 16 should be thoroughly ashamed of
themselves. particularly as the family unit in New Zealand is under
siege. (ibid)

The following year, after the bill had passed and he was 40, he married.
When he announced his engagement he was asked why parliament's most
eligible bachelor, who had said he was earning around $250,000 a year
before becoming an MP, had not married sooner. He replied: "Because I
wasn't old enough, I never had the time, and i simply didn't have enough
money." (NZ Herald, 3 December, 1986) Asked after his marriage if he had
mellowed, he said yes.

And he still carried on his campaign, not just against homosexuality as
a social evil, but against individuals. In 1988 he asked a formal
question in parliament about a senior public servant charged with
performing an "offensive act in a public place." (NZPD 14 June 1988) He
continued to ask questions in such a way as to identify the man even
though his name had been suppressed. When the armed forces ended a ban
on homosexuals Banks, as Minister of Police, said he would "rigorously
oppose and move in parliament that opens the door to the police for
trans-sexuals, bisexuals and transvestites." NZ Herald, 8 December 1992)

His stance drew the attention of property magnate and sometime newspaper
columnist Bob Jones, who commented: "Banks has some odd foibles such as
his apparent fear of fairies." (Northern Advocate 26 December 1992) He
said that whereas some parliamentarians could convey their views in a
moderate manner and avoid causing offence, "Banksy turns it into a
circus. He should be careful, for they might turn on him." Jones
described some famous champion boxers who were homosexuals and said: "I
mention all of this out of concern for Banksy's welfare for underneath
his homophobio [sic] hysteria, I know trying to come out of the closet
is actually a pleasant chap." (ibid)

...Banks' extreme views on many issues, but particularly homosexuality,
made him one of the most despised politicians in New Zealand. Some
homosexuals feared he could use his political power as Minister of
Police to gain information and persecute them. They believed the
combination of Banks and John Jamieson, then Commissioner of Police...
and seen as a narrow fundamentalist Christian... was particularly
ominous.

He condemned homosexuals as unnatural sexual deviants and condemned
their "filthy and loathsome" practices." he said "The problem with this
homosexual business we've now made legal in his country is that so many
of these creeps have now boldly crept out of the wardrobe and parliament
is soon going to legislate... to allow sexual deviants or people with
sexual alternatives to work... with immunity." (Dominion, 10 June, 1993

This attitude caused confusion a year later when Paul Sheriff, a former
National Party election candidate and a member of the party's research
unit, was crowned Mr Gay Wellington. According to the Sunday News
Sherriff worked closely with Banks and helped write his speeches and
develop policies.

After the passage of the anti-discrimination bill two homosexual law
reform campaigners... decided to give posies of pink camellias to MPs
who voted for it. And, they thought, John Banks might appreciate a much
redder posy, including big, blousy "drama Girls, of his own." When it
was handed over in his parliamentary office, as police officials were
waiting to meet him, this is what happened according to a report in the
Dominion: "Banks seized the flowers, ushered the coppers to one of the
Beehive's few openable windows, and instructed them to bear witness as
he hurled them into the chill Wellington afternoon."

Earlier in 1994 Banks claimed that he had never been opposed to
homosexuals as human beings. "I'm only critical of their unhygienic and
un-Christianlike sexual behaviour." (Dominion, 21 February, 1994) But
his relationship with new MP, Chris Carter, who spoke of his
homosexuality in his first speech in 1994, suggested deeper feelings.
Carter told me in 1994 that on one occasion he met banks in a corridor
in parliament. "Banks looked startled when he saw me, stopped, and
turned to face the wall till I'd passed. I said hello but he didn't
reply."

This physical and emotional revulsion was in sharp contrast to the
response of Graeme Lee, another MP who voted against giving homosexuals
full citizenship rights. Lee, a committed Christian, was at no time
personally antagonistic to Carter or anyone else.

[In 1996] Banks, as Minister of Tourism... strongly opposed his own
Tourism Board's policies of encouraging Sydney gays to visit New
Zealand, saying they brought health and social risks to the community.

By 1997 Banks had mostly but not completely given up. He conceded as
much during a television interview. (60 Minutes, 6 April, 1997) When
Janet Wilson asked him if he would try to repeal laws on homosexuality
if he had the power, he said he would not: "You can't go back." He said
he did not want to see one sector of the community discriminated against
- a complete reversal of his earlier moral stance.

Journalist Steve Braunias reported one of Banks' comments in a 2000
article on the Broadcasting Standards Authority. To a [Radio Pacific]
"caller who said that a six-inch piece of barbed wire should be put up
the rectums of sodomites, he [Banks] responded that it was a waste of
perfectly good barbed wire." (Listener 6 May 2000)

[But later in the year] Banks told express readers "I respect you for
who you are as a human being and a brother of mine. I don't hate
anyone... If I had strong views about anything or anyone in the past, I
would never want it interpreted that John Banks hates someone."
(express, October 2002) When express mentioned his initial adverse
reaction to Chris Carter in Parliament... he said: "I want to be judged
on what I do and not necessarily on what I say..."

[As a long-professed Christian] Banks had difficulties with such basic
concepts as turning the other cheek, loving his neighbour, respecting
his mother and father, not taking the Lord's name in vain, showing
compassion toward the poor and the frail, not envying his neighbour's
property... not amassing treasure on earth - that sort of thing. For a
few years his mantra was God, Queen and Country. He demanded that people
turn away from wimpish ideas of consensus, contrasting this with the
conviction politics of the new right. He said he was nailing his colours
to the mast and called on people to follow him like the prophets of old.

Banks said that his greatest fear on leaving [national] politics was
that he "may be replaced by some weak, wet, pink liberal" and all his
efforts, his fights, might be for nothing. When asked how those pink
liberals would fare on Judgement Day, he said: "Oh, they'll be judged as
good people. I mean, in God's house, there's room for everybody. I'm a
very forgiving person. I hate no one in this world." (Metro April 1998)

Which Banks was the real one? Who can say who he'll be tomorrow? 
 
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