KEY POINTS:
So what's all the fuss about? A few boobs in a bar. A few drooling punters getting their fill on the way home from work, or while their wives and the kids shop in the next door supermarket. What's the worry?
Why are a few middle-aged city councillors getting their noses in a knot about a bar owner's little enterprise in a shopping centre?
It needs to be stated that the community I live in, Manurewa, is fairly conservative. It is a solid mix of working people, who never liked the demise of their shopping centre and its resultant slide into two-dollar shops, or the infiltration of seedy bars and liquor outlets.
And make no mistake; residents are vocal in their opinions. As a councillor you are tasked with taking those concerns into account in your public role.
For me, initially, it was a matter of following up a resident's complaint about the proximity of topless 'hostesses' to a number of family-oriented retail outlets. I consider myself a fairly broad-minded, worldly person, but a topless bar at 6pm in a family mall during a late shopping night smacked of being out of kilter with the rest of the mall's activities.
And yes on my first visit, there were topless 'hostesses' in the bar; high-heeled shoes, minis and nothing else.
There was also a locked door opening into the mall and only one fire egress from the bar on to Great South Rd guarded by a blackout curtain to block the eyes of minors who might be going past with their parents to the local fish and chip shop.
I referred the egress issues to the regulatory officers in council. Their inspections have resulted in the numbers of patrons able to enter the premises being sliced in half until the bar complies with the fire regulations.
The bar manager has pushed the starting time back from 6pm to 7pm. So is this the end? Is this a victory for maintaining community standards in retail settings? Have the residents been heard? The answer is unequivocally 'no'.
The debate has broadened since my first foray into the issue. What I've heard back very clearly from my community is that they want business owners to be responsible in their community to listen to them and respect their concerns.
In this case I have been informed that the owners of these premises live in Fiji. What do they know about our community?
What the absentee landlords need to know is that they have outraged people throughout our diverse community.
Is this their idea of an 'investment' in our community?
Like many other communities we are struggling. We struggle to get quality early childcare centres established. We struggle to get all our young people enough NCEA qualifications to enter tertiary education.
We struggle to create positive programmes in sport and culture to engage our youth. We struggle to give our children a positive image of themselves in their own community.
For us there is a connection between young women being paid to be topless hostesses in a bar and the parade of prostitutes virtually 24/7 a few hundred metres down the road amidst a cluster of bars and liquor outlets.
Enough is enough.
For our community - this bar owner's actions are not acceptable because it devalues our community and the aspirations we have for it.
For our community - the absentee landlords have added to that debasement by not being here to listen to our views and play a crucial role in building the community we want.
My community is saying to me - we are better than this. Fight on. Get the message out to business owners that they have a responsibility to us.
Businesses need to work with us, not against us. I have been contacted by residents of other communities exposed to the same 'entrepreneurial' experiments. Unless we defend our right to have a say in our community we will all only get more of the same.
Today, topless hostesses in Manurewa, and Drury and Patamahoe. Tomorrow - topless in your town?
* Colleen Brown is a Manukau City Councillor for the Manurewa ward.
