Family carnival timed to rival brothel opening

Community members think Dr Neil Benson is planning a gala event for the opening of his brothel. Picture / Michael Cunningham

A family-oriented "Good Vibrations Carnival" celebrating "wholesome family values" in a Far North community may run side by side on the same day next month with the nearby gala opening of a doctor's upmarket brothel.

The rival events are scheduled for the afternoon of Easter Saturday, April 15, at the end of Walters Way, a road serving a small commercial and industrial area in Coopers Beach on the Far North's east coast.

Organisers of the family carnival are convinced the community's former GP, Dr Neil Benson, plans to stage a "Red Carpet" gala opening of his brothel in the former premises of his medical practice at the same time and on the same day less than 100 metres away from the "Good Vibrations" scene.

Carnival organisers, a local group known as "Concerned Citizens for Wholesome Family Values - Doubtless Bay," say 200 guests have been invited to the bordello's opening.

These are said to include a number of overseas journalists who have followed Dr Benson's decision to leave medical practice and become a brothel owner in the small Coopers Beach community.

But while the family carnival event is offering free entry, live music, children's activities, art, craft, food and games stalls, for four hours on a 1.5ha area, Dr Benson won't confirm whether his bordello's gala opening will clash with the family event.

"I'm not confirming or denying anything. Our opening will be at a time and date of our choosing."

It would be "a positive business event", he says.

The Canadian GP, married with four children, is pleased the local community wants to debate and talk about family values.

"I have children myself, and I'm very much in favour of celebrating family values.

"If they [Concerned Citizens] are viewing what I'm doing as saying I'm against families, they're 100 per cent wrong.

"I'm providing sex to people in the community who want it, and I don't see that that's wrong," Dr Benson says.

Bob Cooper, a committee member of Concerned Citizens, says the group's carnival "is not in itself in opposition" to Dr Benson's brothel and their event next door to the establishment is not being conducted as a protest.

Its primary aim is to provide an opportunity, just before the brothel may become operational, for visiting and overseas journalists invited to the bordello opening to report that the local community has a much stronger and deeper foundation than "an over-hyped, top-end whorehouse".

Mr Cooper and his committee believe media coverage of Dr Benson's move so far has greatly exaggerated community support for the brothel and, if that's not answered, the good name of Coopers Beach will be "lost".

They believe that if a family carnival coincides with a brothel opening, reporters covering the latter will see for themselves that Coopers Beach has more to offer than "$500 an hour sex" and that print media and TV stories would, hopefully, reflect that.

Meanwhile, Dr Benson says he is gathering women to work in his establishment and was in Australia at business meetings last week arranging for women to cross the Tasman to work at Coopers Beach.

A Far North resident for some years, Dr Benson gave up his sole GP practice last year after unresolved disputes with the area's PHO (primary health organisation) involving after-hours care and rostered weekend cover for doctors in Kaitaia.

He maintains the Tai Tokerau PHO put him out of business and he had "no choice" but to close his practice, a claim the PHO's management has strongly rejected.