Sydney
Labor Party leader Kevin Rudd, the man widely expected to become Australia’s prime minister before the year is out, admitted this week that he went to a strip club during a taxpayer-funded trip to the U.N. headquarters. Rudd confirmed a newspaper story that when he was shadow foreign minister, in 2003, he hung out at Scores, a New York City strip club, adding that he was so drunk he couldn’t remember whether the women performing there were naked. The revelation has not hurt his election chances. “You can’t condemn somebody for getting on the piss,” said Eva Cox of the feminist Women’s Electoral Lobby. “We would never have elected Bob Hawke in that case.” (Hawke, premier from 1983 to 1991, once set a world speed record for drinking a yard-glass of beer.) Even the Christian Lobby was unfazed. The group’s leader, Jim Wallace, said, “I think it’s a case of, let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
July 13 editorial cartoonsCartoons Sunday's political cartoons include new TSA rules, FEMA cuts, and Volodymyr Zelenskyy complimenting Donald Trump's new wardrobe
-
5 weather-beaten cartoons about the Texas floodsCartoons Artists take on funding cuts, politicizing tragedy, and more
-
What has the Dalai Lama achieved?The Explainer Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader has just turned 90, and he has been clarifying his reincarnation plans
