Transvestite 'used to set up Minister’

Press, 15 September 1988, Page 9

Transvestite 'used to set up Minister’

PA Wellington A transvestite friend of a Wellington identity, Carmen, was used to set up a former Labour Party Cabinet Minister, Mr Joe Walding, in an Auckland nightclub in 1977. Carmen makes the claim in her memoirs, due to .be launched later this week. “It was those sort of dirty political tricks that made me think that the Labour . members of Parliament should have taken time out from being so gentlemanly and thrown a few cans of festering worms at some leading National Party personalities,” the former nightclub owner and mayoral candidate says in her book. “On thinking back, both Mr Joe Walding, who was also a Kirk and Rowling Cabinet Minister, and Mr Kirk himself, used to occasionally pop into my coffee lounge. That didn’t make either of them gays.” Carmen, aged 51, a transsexual, has been based in Sydney since 1980. Her memoirs have been ghost-written by an Australian journalist, Paul Martin. Research for the book was one of the reasons Carmen (born Tione, later Trevor, Rupe in Taumarunui) returned to Wellington briefly in December. In a chapter headed “Those Politicians,” Carmen says a drag queen friend of hers had been set up in the Crypt nightclub, Auckland, by detectives. “On that evening she and a friend were introduced to Mr Walding,” Carmen says. “The group then sat at the one table. A little and quite harmless party got under way. Then, without warning, a photographer appeared and a picture

was taken and later published in at least one major newspaper.” Carmen says her friend complained to the police about the incident, “but was told by a detective to keep her mouth shut or there would be trouble for her.” “I’ve often pondered as to who wanted to make a big thing out of an innocent encounter on Mr Walding’s part,” she says. "Such a big thing that it was organised to the point where standover police and conveniently-present photographers were involved. It was a real setup.” In October, 1977, a senior Auckland police detective was found guilty of conduct tending to bring discredit on the police over the Crypt nightclub affair. A magistrate’s report showed the detective was not involved in any political set-up and was not responsible for the presence of the photographer, the then national secretary of the Police Association, Dr Bob Moodie, said. Carmen says she was not the only person to sit on the edge of her chair when dirty washing was aired around New Zealand as a result of the “Colin Moyle and Gerald O’Brien carry-ons.” "I was waiting for the real big one which never surfaced. “In my opinion the Labour Party should have had the guts to throw good taste to the dogs and retaliated across the floor of the House by knocking the personalities of some Government front-bench-ers. . “Such an action could have humbled some very haughty types and perhaps put a smart end to the work of the group known unofficially as the National Party Dirty Tricks Brigade.”