Stripped down politics down under

Australian Labor Party leader Kevin Rudd is hardly the first decent Christian family man visiting from out-of-town to find himself in a New York strip club. These things happen when a man is away from his wife and family in a sinful place like New York. Rudd, a devout Anglican who cites Deitrich Bonhoffer as his hero, was outed on Sunday by News Ltd papers as having attended Scores, a Manhattan strip club, while visiting the UN on taxpayer funded business in 2003. If St Kevin, as the press have dubbed him, was perhaps entitled to feel a bit miffed at his treatment by the Murdoch press – accounts of the evening suggest that it was New York Post editor Col Allan’s idea that they go there – he wasn’t showing it.

“I accept responsibility for it, it’s my mistake” he told a door-stop press conference on Sunday. “ I don’t make any excuses for myself.