Last night was the inaugural ceremony of the NZLGBTI awards. The ceremony, organised by a subsidiary of an Australian magazine company, has been controversial in New Zealand’s gay community, with 9 leading queer and trans community organisations refusing nominations and boycotting the event as a cash-grab. The New Zealand Police, and their queer and trans Diversity Liaison Officer Tracy Phillips, were given awards at the $200-per-head prize gala.
The prizegiving comes in the wake of the Police withdrawing their application to march in Auckland’s Pride Parade, following a request from the Auckland Pride organisers that the Police not march in uniform. Auckland Pride made the request after a series of community consultation hui, in which takatāpui and transgender members of the community made it clear that Police violence was a pressing issue in their lives. However, people watching the prizegiving ceremony last night will note that the Police dignitaries present walked on stage not in their uniforms, but in civilian formalwear.
We find ourselves in an odd double-bind here. On the one hand, the Police has made it clear they MUST be allowed to wear their uniforms at Pride, or else they are under attack. On the other hand, none of the recipients of prizes last night seemed on the brink of tears because they were up on stage in a nice dress.
When the Police are asked to leave the uniform at home in acknowledgement of the racist violence it represents to many marginalised members of the rainbow community, they argue that the uniform is absolutely mandatory and lead a corporate boycott of the Pride Parade. When the Police are invited to a swanky gala where hollow praise is heaped on them for symbolically “inclusive” gestures, they are more than happy to turn up in ball gowns and tuxedos.
Why the contradiction? Because the uniform was never what made the Police so angry – it was the request made by Auckland Pride that the Police recognise the racist, transphobic violence that the most marginalised people in the queer and trans community face at their hands. Last night the Police demonstrated very clearly that they are more than happy to come to LGBTI+ events in whatever clothing is appropriate. What they are not willing to do is listen to criticism – even when that criticism is as mild as “please wear a different shirt”. It seems the cops aren’t insistent on having their uniforms at all: just a pair of rainbow coattails to ride.
– Emilie Rākete is a graduate student at the University of Auckland studying the political economy of New Zealand’s criminal justice system. She is the press spokesperson for the People Against Prisons Aotearoa.
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