Kerre Woodham: No sympathy for this princess

Georgina Beyer. Photo / Wairarapa Times-Age

I have absolutely no sympathy for Georgina Beyer.

The flamboyant former politician - famously the first transsexual politician in the world - announced this week that she was going on the dole.

What a downward spiral. After serving for seven years as Carterton's mayor where she was, by all accounts, very good, Beyer stood for Parliament in 1999 as the Labour candidate, famously beating Paul Henry who was in the blue corner.

Her time in Parliament was mediocre - she considered her greatest achievement as an MP was simply being elected.

Perhaps it was. No other parliament in the world can boast a boy, turned prostitute, turned drag queen, turned woman, turned mayor, turned MP among their ranks.

But, after a time, simply existing isn't enough. You have to earn your keep as an MP and Beyer wasn't doing that.

She left Parliament and headed to Dunedin to take the lead role in Fortune Theatre's touring production of Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks.

But just two days before the curtain went up, she pulled out, citing personal and professional reasons.

Basically, she sucked and she hadn't memorised her lines.

So Fortune Theatre took a bath and Beyer fled to her old stamping ground in Wairarapa.

Eventually she found gainful employment at Michael Hill Jewellers in Masterton but this year she resigned from that job to try for the mayoralty of Masterton.

After her Taiwanese financial backer died unexpectedly, however, she was left without funds to mount a campaign and has said that she'll be looking to head down to the welfare office.

"There's not a lot of well-paid employment around in Wairarapa," she is quoted as saying "and I would want more than the 500 bucks a week I was on at Michael Hill."

Actually, you can earn a lot more than that at Michael Hill as a salesperson. If Beyer had worked a little harder flogging rings, she could have made considerably more than $500.

According to the Michael Hill website, there are no caps and no limits on what you can earn. But pulling in a big salary takes hard work and stickability and I think Beyer has shown she's averse to that.

As one of my callers said, she's like our very own Duchess of York, unwilling or unable to believe that the gravy train has been derailed.

She's still spending like she's on the public tit and that has seen her come unstuck.

I know it's shades of Ruth Richardson, but if I was a single woman living in Carterton, I would be able to manage on $500 a week. I managed on less than that when I went from working on television to working in a restaurant. My lifestyle changed radically but it had to.

Georgina should stop the spoiled princess act and pull her head in. Plenty of hard-working Kiwis manage on less and you don't hear them whining.

Maybe Georgina is tired of re-invention. She has certainly packed an extraordinary amount into a relatively young life. But reinventing herself as a dole bludger will be her least popular manifestation.