Politician visited strip club while on UN trip

AUSTRALIAN opposition leader Kevin Rudd yesterday suggested the government may have leaked news of his drunken visit to a New York strip club while on an official trip to the United Nations in 2003.

The Labour party leader admitted visiting Scores, a Manhattan “gentlemen’s club”, during a boozy night out on a taxpayer-funded trip while serving as shadow foreign minister.

Mr Rudd, who says he is not normally a big drinker, said he did not have a “completely clear recollection” of whether there were semi-naked women in the club or what they were doing.

But he suggested officials in the ruling conservative coalition may have been the source of the report that triggered his admission, pointing the finger at Foreign Minister Alexander Downer.

“It’s a question you should put to Mr Downer and his staff,” said Mr Rudd, when asked if he thought there had been a smear campaign against him. A Downer spokesman declined to respond to the allegation.

Mr Rudd said he went to the club with the editor of the New York Post, Col Allan, and a Labour legislator from Australia’s remote Northern Territory, Warren Snowdon, after dinner with the two men.

“We can’t actually recall anything that you wouldn’t see in most pubs across Australia,” said Mr Rudd

“But that doesn’t absolve me for going in that door in the first place. That’s where I made the error of judgment, and it’s something I shouldn’t have done.”