A Sydney man who mooned the Queen during a royal visit to Australia and waved the national flag from between his buttocks has been fined £500.
By Jonathan Pearlman, Sydney, 6:53AM GMT 14 Feb 2012
Liam Lloyd Warriner, a 22-year-old barman, said his act was a political protest to show his contempt for the monarch during her visit to Queensland last October. The court heard that he dropped his trousers and ran alongside the Queen’s motorcade for 50 metres, with an Australian flag clasped between his buttock cheeks. It is not clear whether the royal couple observed the buttock-borne flag.
"I'm a proud antimonarchist," he said outside the court. "What's uncivilised about it? We come into the world naked."
Warriner was sentenced today in a Brisbane court on a charge of creating a public nuisance. He said the Queen was not entitled to “granny status” and warned he would repeat the act if Barack Obama were to make another visit.
"Any self-important, self-propagating elitist, I will happily bare my buttocks to," he said.
"The Queen represents where people can be born into importance. I don't think that any one family should have any more importance than any other family on this planet."
Sergeant Troy Newman said crowds had lined both sides of the street to see the Queen when Warriner emerged from his workplace and dropped his shorts and underwear. He then lifted his shirt to expose his buttocks, ran with the flag and returned to his workplace but co-operated with police when they arrested him.
Sergeant Newman said Warriner had selfishly disrupted a formal and respectful occasion – and had also shown disrespect towards the flag.
"He's young but old enough to have known better," he said.
Warriner’s lawyer, John Paul Mould, said the incident would not have raised an eyebrow if it occurred outside a rugby league game. "It's really low-level stuff," he said.
Warriner pleaded guilty to the charge of public nuisance. Police dropped a second charge of wilful exposure prior to his sentence. Prosecutors had asked for a AU$1,000 fine.
The magistrate, Anne Thacker, criticised Warriner for disrupting the court proceedings.
"This is a civil society and when a lot of people gather in one place the grouping means there is a vulnerable position if even one person like yourself doesn't behave in a civil manner," she said.
No conviction was recorded against Warriner.
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