Germaine Greer back at scene of dubious crime

By THERESA GARNER

Despite a vow to never return, feminist author Germaine Greer is back on New Zealand soil and will tonight return to the scene of her smallest crime and greatest triumph in New Zealand.

In 1972, her lunchtime speech at the Auckland Town Hall blazed a trail for the women's liberation movement in New Zealand and sparked a bizarre court case.

Tonight the 64-year-old author will deliver a public lecture in the same place.

Three decades ago, the hall was packed to the doors. Greer, billed as the high priestess of feminism, wrote the 1970 book The Female Eunuch, which argued that sexual liberation was the path to fulfilment.

In her Auckland speech, Greer hit out at anti-abortion lobbyists and unions that obstructed women, and said she favoured daycare centres because they would free women to join a revolutionary movement.

She also used the word "bullshit", for which she was later arrested.

Hundreds of protesters gathered outside the courthouse and chanted the word as inside she was fined. The prosecution attracted international derision.

Greer left New Zealand without paying her $40 in appeal costs, which prompted speculation that she could face arrest on her return.

There seemed little prospect of Greer returning to a country she described then as "full of humbug" with an "insipid" way of life.

But she is back to take part in a day-long forum at Auckland University to explore the health of intellectual debate in New Zealand, and then deliver her public lecture at 8pm.

Associate Professor Laurence Simmons of the University of Auckland said the university's lawyers had checked the status of the court costs with police.

"They have been told there is no outstanding debt."

Police also confirmed there were no active warrants for the matter.

Greer, a professor of English and comparative studies at the University of Warwick in England, leaves tomorrow.