KEY POINTS:
Following the controversy over Kevin Rudd, leader of Australia's Labor Party, admitting he went to a New York strip club four years ago, National Party leader John Key has also revealed he visited a strip joint.
Mr Key said he went to a strip club when he lived in New York working in the financial markets.
But he said it was so long ago, he cannot remember much about it.
Prime Minister Helen Clark will not comment on Mr Rudd's New York striptease encounter, but says she does not see visiting strip clubs as "appropriate entertainment".
Mr Rudd admitted to visiting the Scores club with fellow Australian Labor MP Warren Snowdon and New York Post editor Col Allan during a taxpayer-funded visit to the United Nations.
Asked about his drunken escapade yesterday, Helen Clark said she had her "own personal views as a woman ... I won't comment, except to say I don't see it as appropriate 'entertainment'."
One of Britain's leading conservative newspapers has sprung to Mr Rudd's defence.
The Daily Telegraph says the MP's excursion to the Scores club in 2003 is nothing to be ashamed of.
It said striptease was invented in New York and as such is a major cultural attraction that should not be missed.
The controversy has also seen more Australian ministers admitting they had visited strip clubs.
Defence Minister Brendan Nelson said he went to one in Adelaide when he was young and Victorian Premier John Brumby has confessed to a similar outing in Sydney in the 1970s.
- NEWSTALK ZB, agencies
