1995: Mayor Georgina Beyer
March 6, 2025
By AHNZ
On 1 November, 1995, Georgina Beyer became the mayor of the Wairarapa town of Carterton. This political success lasted about 12 years after which Beyer, deprived of other people’s money, toppled into poverty followed by sickness and death (died today, 6 March, 2023.) The life of this Boomer makes for a very interesting and instructive view on New Zealand’s history.
In short, Beyer’s path was like so many other Kiwi deviants described by Lou Reed’s Walk on the Wildside (1972) song: Plucked her eyebrows along the way Shaved her legs and then he was a she. George transformed his body by overdosing¹ on female sex hormones in pill form and his legal status by changing his name to Georgina. The transexual became a dancer, sex-worker, actor, tutor, advocate, politician, mayor, Member of Parliament….then broke, sick, and deceased. Beyer’s sharp wit put it this way: ‘I was a stallion, became a gelding, then mayor, then a Member.’
Only at 27 did George meet his father who was yet another criminal and son of a Maori Battalion Colonel (Bertrand.) Instead, a “disappointing” relationship with a stepfather and a Prescribed Identity in an inauthentic Family of Origin and the prescribed name: Beyer. That marriage failed too. The children, including George, were variously adopted out or sent to extended family. Young George was sent to Wellesley College boarding school for boys. Feeling rejected, the Attachment Disorder led to suicidality and what Erik Erikson’s model calls the adolescent role confusion crisis.
George’s first career, acting, was a success. Then, a co-worker who happened also to be a male stripper opened, up the Wellington’s underground so acting school was abandoned for sex, drugs, and cross-dressing. It was during this time that the persona of George was literally cremated on a funeral pyre, leaving only Georgina. “Drugs helped to blur the reality of what you were doing. Personally, I totally disliked prostitution room for myself. You know, in lots of ways, you just wanted to obliterate your mind to it all before during or after.” said Beyer. Ref. Georgie Girl (2001)
Later, as a Parliamentarian, Beyer said it was time to ‘redeem a lurid past and practise the proper rights of being a citizen’. Brian Edwards was told in an interview that “I’ve lost quite a number of people who I’ve known from that time who have died who never got out of the lifestyle who really sort of never did anything major with their lives and it’s all quite sad and tragic really.” Yet, as we will see, that fearful fate is exactly the life Beyer led too if we only look past the greater heights of fame and money compared to all the other shooting stars Beyer shared a life with. To an Anarchist historian a politician’s career doesn’t mitigate or redeem a misspent life and is not a valuable contribution to his country. Ref. Top o’ the morning with Brian Edwards, Radio New Zealand (1993,) New Zealand Sound and Vision
Beyer made it out of the deviant lifestyle, to Carterton of all places, reinventing a life by acquiring legitimate work skills. However, there was no “ability to get work” according to Beyer who was insisting on presenting as a Transexual Woman. Pleading for a government unemployment benefit fell flat because the Social Welfare Department pointed out, truthfully agreed Beyer, there was no vocational disability here beyond the determination not to “put your trousers back on and get out there.” Had the government redistributed someone else’s income to Georgina it might have all ended there. Instead, a forced adaptation took place: the discovery that prostitution, advocacy, and show business had transferable skills to what our politicians do. Who knew?
“There was no ability to get work…society didn’t treat people like me very well at the time as far as equality of work opportunity or anything like that. I applied for the dole, the unemployment benefit, and it was declined because they more or less said to me, well, put your trousers back on and get out there and work. You’re perfectly capable, which was true. Of course, I was capable. But that’s when I began to stand my ground.” –Georgie Girl (2001)
“I was raped! And yes, I’m a prostitute! And, no, it was not right!” – Beyer addressing Parliament, 1News (2023)
“With marital problems developing between her mother and her stepfather, Beyer was sent to Wellesley College boarding school, where she attempted suicide amid feelings of rejection by her parents.” – Wiki
“Once the CEO’s controlled the staff and the purse strings, the mayors became little more than show ponies; ribbon cutters; figureheads and promoters for their regions.” – Tim Shadbolt (2017,) 1989: The Great Amalgamation, AHNZ
“Some fast-turnaround television sure! Or some commercials if anyone’s listening out there…a cheese add would be great. Well, they didn’t have to name the new rail company after me did they? TranzRail. I think I could do an ad for them.” – Beyer, RNZ (1993)
“Georgina took us all there… she made us feel proud of our community.” – 1News, ibid
Marginal Insider Mayoralty
The wake of the Local Government Reforms (1989) created the right climate for Beyer’s political career. Labour 4.0 put Brian Elwood in charge of a revolution that scrapped the old order our ancestors had built and put a new one in its place for the Baby Boomers. Local Government was not about service any more but about presentation. It had become the government’s explicit job to supply the feelings of recognition and worth that prior New Zealanders had to generate from within and earn for themselves. Vicarious pride in our community rather than self-generated pride. I know this because I have studied Elwood’s papers and his Club of Rome (1993) victory speech. Ref. 1989: Brian’s Revolution, AHNZ and 1989: The Great Amalgamation, AHNZ
First Boomer to show what it was to be a mayor in the new era was “I don’t care where as long as I’m mayor” Tim Shadbolt. The squinty Dutch kid is a fine example of Marginal Insider Effect which predicts that the most zealous people in any social group tend to be those who are not fully of it in the first place. Shadbolt is mistaken for a charismatic Kiwi (perhaps bravely overcoming a touch of being mentally handicapped) but really he’s a Dutch import with specialised early childhood operatic training in New Zealandness. Beyer is the other great exemplar of this kind of mayor and a Marginal Insider when it comes to being male. Ref. 1992: I Don’t Care Where As Long As I’m Mayor, AHNZ
Along with the Elwood Revolution a sort of Woke gentrification appears to have spread northward up State Highway 2 into the Wairarapa. It was probably fueled by Labour 4.0 reforming the public sector and creating refugees from the Wellington beltway². Featherston, Martinborough, Greytown were all “moving ahead” like Progressive dominoes as Beyer indicated in the interview with Edwards. The frontier of the resistance had fallen back to Carterton and was ready for storming. Like Shadbolt’s Invercargill (1993) the time had come to “put our town on the map” and Carton elected its own gimmicky “world first” novelty mayor in Georgina Beyer. Other towns in New Zealand achieved similar results with an outburst of novelty giant objects (fish, fruit, livestock, etc.)
Finally, along with those things, the early 90s were the era of Stack Hat Safetyism in New Zealand. There was post-traumatic stress around the rapid economic and social reforms of recently preceding years so a witty, friendly, dandily dressed figurehead was embraced. A Moral Panic gave men a very bad public image owing to massacres (Bain, Gray, Schlaepfer, Anderson) and duty of care failures (eg. Cave Creek, Peter Ellis.) Georgina was literally a castrated man so like the Pharaohs of old we picked a eunuch to run our public affairs.
“Former Labour MP Georgina Beyer says she is broke and living off the unemployment benefit in a one-bedroom granny flat..with no money and no job, having sold her house and everything she owned in an attempt to stay financially afloat…I have no formal qualifications, apparently my 20 years involved with politics…means nothing.” – Stuff (2011)
“Georgina Beyer, now ill with renal failure, wants to return to Carterton – dead or alive” – NZ Herald (2014)
“Some men think they’re funny. When the laughing stops you’re on your own” – You I know, Jenny Morris (1987)
Georgina was very clever, very funny. Like those men who compete in women’s sports, Beyer excelled with the talents expected in a man and the excuses we excuse in a woman. Mayor of Carterton from 1995 to 2000 and served three terms in Parliament after being elected MP for Wairarapa, with the Labour Party, in 1999.
I would hesitate to say that Beyer never actually did anything. Not all MHRs are legislators or leaders or fundraisers or knee-breakers. Georgina’s place in court was to splurge on her clothing budget to great effect. The best-dressed woman could run media interference, boost moral for Team Red, and help hold the moral initiative in the Debating Chamber. An Agent not an Architect. The issues championed at this macro level seem to be all the ones that Beyer could never fix at the micro level. Homelessness, prostitution reform, benefit cuts were all personal responsibility problems which Beyer had abdicated and now blamed on The System. The Lefties cheered this on: Make Big Brother look after us!
After Helen Clark’s Labour 5.0 Ministry fell it took Beyer (List MP) down too. The downward spiral began as Georgina, now 50, never had solved the problem of becoming a productive member of society. Sex work and showbusiness were out and who wants to hire an opinionated “over qualified” wit? A role in a stage show fell through due to ego or “professional differences.” An attempt to join ex-Maori Party Member Hone Harawira’s Hard Left break-away political party , Mana (2011,) bore no fruit.
Beyer’s life choices reached a dead end on 6 March 2023 after 15 years in the wilderness. From Hero on parade to zero a one-bedroom granny flat on the benefit, assets sold, and suffering from chronic renal failure. The wages of all those flashy friends and dressy, flamboyant costumes, was to be forgotten and frozen out for a decade and a half and left to die. “I have no formal qualifications, apparently my 20 years involved with politics…means nothing.” Beyer realised too late. One very loyal friend, Grant Pittams, donated a kidney and when that failed lobbied for a new street name in Carterton: Georgina Beyer Way. Ref. Carterton District Council
In death, of course, the outpourings of support and love came from all corners. Much too late. If Beyer had friends like these 15 years before then her life strategy would have kept paying off. All platitudes though, nothing of substance. “Blazed a trail” etc. This is particularly true from the Anarchist perspective that filters out all the courtly attire, bejeweled virtue signalling, ceremonial regalia, over-dressed posturing, haircuts and makeup, sanctimonious blame games, Feels over Reals. That leaves only static. Beyer was a creature of the State sustained by our culture’s lack of boundary-setting. The final lesson, well ignored, is the hypocrisy of Aotearoa New Zealand Culture the height of its LGBTQ+ Diversity and Inclusion didn’t give a damn for its most genuine exponent at a time when it counted most.
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1 Ref. Georgie Girl (2001), NZ on Screen
2. Equally, a Reaction Formation of Woke Yuppies and ‘new economy’ professionals who felt the need to overcompensate with Luxury Beliefs
Image ref. Barbican (2018)
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