fifteen minutes of flame

Sorry, Piers Akerman, it wasn't an hour, it was fifteen minutes, according to the owner of the strip joint. At worst, Rudd was "a little rowdy" and "uppity". And Janet Albrechtsen, sorry but you're wrong, too.

Had Tony Abbott taken a detour to the Pink Pussycat one evening, I’m betting that the Labor Party sisterhood would be hissing for his resignation. Likewise if Alexander Downer or John Howard were caught on a pleasant UN tour of duty at Scores, we could expect howls of feminist derision.

Frankly, my dear, I wouldn't give a damn if they did. I have no interest in the sex lives of politicians. The issue would be one of hypocrisy, the gulf between what the conservatives say and what they do, and not of "male exploitation of poor working girls". It wouldn't be a feminist issue but a general political one.
Feminists are 'silent' on this issue (if we are) not because we support Labor policies. I'd suggest we're 'silent' because among consenting adults, we have no problem with a little female nudity, or with women who choose to work as strippers and/or sex workers. Feminists respect women's choices. This is not the Victorian era, and provided there was no exploitation involved, I don't regard this as a feminist issue.
And something I've been wondering about lately. Over the past few years we've been incessantly told by the Right that Howard's long reign means most Australians are conservative. They based this idea on the fact that just over half of the people voted Liberal and extrapolated from this that the minority Left was criticising the Australian people generally whenever it criticised the Howard government. So, now that polls are showing that the majority of people are progressive, can we preach to the Right that to criticise progressives is to criticise the Australian people as a whole?