But now Polyester is once again up against the weight of official objection. The catalyst for the shop’s latest battle with officialdom came when owner Adam Emslie – who with his wife bought the shop in 2010 from original owner Paul Elliott – sought permission to renew a longstanding permit for the A-frame sign that sits outside the shop. “My wife and I had taken over the shop in the previous March, and so the papers were in Paul’s name. I figured the renewal would be fairly straight forward – the sign’s been there for about 18 years, the Council’s given it a permit 18 years in a row, so I thought I’d put the paperwork in and I thought it’d be a formality.”
The sign subject of the application to council is illustrated with the iconic Polyester graphic, featuring two young girls in an act (it appears) of erotic pleasure. The image was taken from a Manga comic, and was given to Paul Elliott by noted local artist Phillip Brophy at the time the shop first began trading. While the cartoon is undeniably provocative, Emslie assumed its previous acceptance via council permit meant that it would not attract adverse attention.
After a month of silence, however, Emslie decided to make contact with council to ascertain the fate of his application. “I tried calling them, asking them what had happened with the application, but they just said they just kept putting it off,” Emslie says. Eventually in December – three months after the submission of the original application – Emslie decided to attend council in person. “I started getting a bit more active about it, and they finally gave me the decision that they’d declined the application,” Emslie says.
The rationale for Yarra Council’s decision to reject the application was a ruling that the image contravened the Code of Ethics adopted by the Advertising Standards Bureau. “Apparently Yarra Council got a complaint about the sign in 2009, but even after they got the complaint, they still renewed the permit,” Emslie says. “In 2010 the ASB had got a complaint, and they’d decided that the sign contravened their code of ethics – but obviously that had never stopped the council approving the permit for 17 years running, so I didn’t see how that could be relevant,” Emslie.
When Emslie relayed this observation to the responsible council officer, he was confronted with a second, and disturbingly extraneous reason for the refusal. “He said he didn’t like the sign, and he didn’t want his 15 year-old to see it either,” Emslie says. Still smarting from this advice, Emslie offered to cover up the offending aspect of the image, and was advised that this would ensure the permit would be approved – only to be told subsequently that the application had been rejected a second time. “I called him up and he denied he’d ever said the permit would be approved,” Emslie says.
The council’s adherence to basic administrative law processes – timeliness, natural justice and coherent, consistent advice seem to be manifestly absent in the entire saga – has left Emslie frustrated. Emslie contacted his local ward councillor Jackie Fristacky, who proved either uninterested in taking up Emslie’s plight. “She said we’d have to live with the decision,” Emslie says. Faced with manifest indifference on the part of other Yarra councillors, Emslie has decided to resort to community action, including an in-store petition and setting up a Facebook page.
Emslie is also considered more official lines of complaint, including the Victorian Ombudsman, VCAT and the Fitzroy Legal Service. “Everyone I speak to says it’s a bad decision,” Emslie. “Logically, I reckon I’ve got a pretty good case, especially seeing as it was renewed year after year – unless they can demonstrate that public opinion has changed in the course of one year, which doesn’t seem to be the case” he says. “I’ve tried to reason with the council that the decision is a bad one, but they keep just trying to push me aside. I get the impression they just want to break me so I’ll go away and accept it.”
