The Banksy retrospective which has been drawing modest crowds to the basement of Sydney Town Hall in recent weeks is not officially part of this year’s Mardi Gras program. But some of the artworks on display might make visitors think the exhibition’s timing is serendipitous. Like anti-capitalism, environmentalism and every other Big Left bandwagon, LGB rights have been a Banksy staple for so long now that images like ‘Kissing Coppers’, a stencil sprayed on the wall of a Brighton pub twenty years ago, now seems quaint rather than confronting. All the more so in a city which has been so committed for so long to supporting the LGB community, and especially in the week when the rest of us join them to celebrate – or at least acknowledge – that commitment. But if there is anything to be learnt from the appropriation of public spaces which Banksy pioneered it is that context can be content. And while the political message of ‘Kissing Coppers’ might have passed its use-by date in any other Western metropolis, its appearance on a Sydney gallery wall in the same week that Gaza, Ukraine and Taylor Swift were pushed off our front pages by a story about a gay NSW policeman allegedly killing his ex-lover has given the image a new currency which would presumably have delighted its creator (whoever that creator is, and if anyone has told him/her/they/them about it).

It is not, of course, that the three men allegedly involved in this tragedy were gay that made it such a big story. In enlightened progressive Australia, heterosexual couples don’t have dibs on unrequited love any more than they have a monopoly on breastfeeding. It is that a) the alleged murderer is a policeman, b) that when not wearing his police uniform he is posting selfies of himself stalking celebrities on Instagram and pimping himself on male escort websites, and c) that one of his alleged victims was a fairly well-known TV presenter.

None of which sheds any light on the strange decision by the Mardi Gras board to ‘uninvite’ NSW Police from marching in the parade, thereby mothballing a tradition which is almost as popular as parade perennials Dikes on Bikes and the giant Fred Nile head which used to adorn the float of the Perpetual Sisters of Indulgence. I do not know what larks NSW Police had planned for this year, but by now they must be coming close to atoning for the leading part they played in the harassing and bashing of gay Sydney men from Federation until the mid-1980s. And it is true that in recent years, no state or federal government institution has embraced gender diversity more enthusiastically. So it seems to me that by punishing an entire workforce for the as yet unproven misbehaviour of one of its members, the Mardi Gras board was guilty of a species of identity discrimination with which its constituency – or at least the older members thereof – were not long ago only too familiar. The dithering response of NSW Police management was even less edifying. Having initially acquiesced without complaint to the injunction, they then let it be known that officers would be allowed to march in the parade, but that they must do so sans uniforms – like the army introducing casual Fridays. There were, of course, plenty of uniformed police on duty along Oxford St last Saturday night; keeping an event of that size peaceful and injury-free would have been impossible without one, especially with the prospect of disruption by anti-Israel protesters. So presumably those officers were on strict orders not to tap their feet or sway their hips in time to the music lest they be seen to be flouting the ban. Perhaps they were also told to look stern and impassive. As if they disapproved. Banksy would see the joke.