Striptease

This bloke is fund manager and we were on our way to a strip club.

As a finance journalist, the majority of my time spent away is at industry conferences. I’ve travelled to Melbourne, Hobart, Tasmania, Cairns, Perth, Brisvegas and too many times to the Gold Coast. For me, it can be a bit of a chore. For many, however, it’s a time to go nuts.

So now I hear Kevin07 visited a strip club – four years ago – as the shadow spokesperson for Foreign Affair’s. Who cares?

It was some Government overseas jaunt, and for me the only ‘wrongdoing’ is that it was a tax funded trip. But are we nit picking? I had this conversation last night with the managing director of a global ***. He admitted to me that at a conference he too went to a strip club “out of interest”. I admitted to him that I also went to a strip club “out of interest”. And yes I too, was at a conference.

It was in Perth and the evening began at a restaurant. Three bottles of wine and two cocktails later, I was being driven around in a Limousine, champagne flute in hand. Bored after going to Perth’s all of two great bars, I suggested we go to a strip club - one of the 150 things I wanted to do before I died.

It was interesting. Funnily I did get approached by a bloke with $50 in his hand. Apparently this gesture is some protocol for a private lap dance. Odd, I wasn’t scantily dressed (But then again I was wearing Supre)….. I could have done with the extra cash but I declined. I spotted some blokes walk in with plastic shoes and guessed that they were superannuation fund trustees. One of my fund manager’s dared me to ask them and I was right. They were indeed trustees.

Which now leads me to my point – We were at a conference paid for by our employers. Investors and superannuation fund members could be concerned that the fees that they pay should not go to funding such trips.

Unlike Kevin07, of course, fund managers and trustees are not elected to public office. But quite frankly I’d rather have my leader go to a strip club then lock up women and children in detention centres, lie about parents throwing their children overboard, ignore the Kyoto protocol, introduce a dodgy piece of industrial relations and walk down the corridor with Mark Tubby Taylor.

Ps. The strip club was rather boring. My only concern – the ladies were not contributing a portion of their savings to superannuation. I recommended they join the industry superannuation fund Hostplus. They liked the idea.