Skirt-wearing lawyer's extra-ordinary life

By EMILY WATT - The Dominion Post | Saturday, 10 May 2008

Here's something you definitely didn't know about lawyer Rob Moodie: He's actually a little bit shy.

The man who delights in shocking the public - who has sauntered along Lambton Quay in an Alice in Wonderland dress, and who will take on the might of the judiciary and flash his lace garters at reporters on the way to court - is nervous in social situations.

"My wife Sue laughs when I say this," he says.

"I'm quite comfortable in fronting up to speaking at a gathering of hundreds of people, but put me in a room with a glass of wine in my hand and ask me to mix and circulate and I'm looking for the back door."

Outwardly, Dr Moodie is cocky and courageous, a man who takes on seemingly impossible cases with the tenacity of a dog with a bone.

He represented his friend, former police superintendent Alec Waugh, who was reinstated with a $1.5 million payout six years after being forced out of the police, and declared victory this month in the 14-year battle of Keith and Margaret Berryman after the High Court quashed a coroner's ruling that they were "mostly" to blame for a man's death on a bridge to their farm.

Though the judgment was not all the Berrymans had asked for, Dr Moodie called it a "100 per cent victory" and is seeking $4.5 million damages.

To his detractors, his success must be all the more bemusing given his flamboyant technique.

Dr Moodie has tried to sue the solicitor-general, defied court suppressions and posted a secret document on the Internet (a move that cost him a $5000 fine and three months' suspension), clothes his six-foot-plus frame in a dress, and changed his name by deed poll - first name Miss, last name Alice - in protest against the "old boys club" of the legal fraternity.

Dr Moodie is kooky, but you'd be a fool to underestimate him.

"I'm one of those people that tends to stick at things until it works," he says of his stint as a millionaire Mexican goat farmer. "And when it works I move on."

His career has not been one of your typical shrinking violets. He has been a pilot who quit because flying during peacetime was too boring, a dapper young CIB detective in a three-piece suit and suede shoes who rose to the ranks of inspector (while studying law part-time, topping his class and finishing a PhD a year quicker than expected), a Police Association boss in pearls and a dress, a goat farmer in Texas and Mexico, and mayor of Manawatu.

Latterly, of course, he has been a thorn in the side of the judiciary, battling often for free for issues he believes in.

"Nature, or in some people's minds, God, provides us with a programming which includes a reaction against dishonesty and fraud. It's a natural instinct," he says.

"I don't take people on. I've never done that, ever. I take on issues."

He will turn 70 in October, but the battles are not over.

"I've got tons of energy," he says.

He is still fighting for sacked Radio New Zealand boss Lynne Snowdon and is working on a case, similar to the Waugh case, that will soon become public. And he's writing a book entitled Shit Justice.

He is, he says, an "ordinary heterosexual", married for 25 years, a father of three. The cross-dressing is something he has always done, something he is very comfortable with.

"I've always regarded myself as a bit of a hybrid in a lot of ways.

I'm a normal male, obviously, but I've got enormous respect for the feminine values. Everybody's different in their sexuality.

I don't believe it's just a male or female distinction. It's a continuum from one to the other."

He muses this may have stemmed from childhood in Otago.

From the age of seven, he grew up in the Lookout Pt boys home, a pariah of the local school and rejected by his family.

He was one of 10 children, but all the sons were sent away and made wards of state when his father died of tuberculosis. "I came from a family where all of the boys were not wanted," he says.

During the war he saw women as the leaders and decision makers, while the men went off to fight. He still views masculinity as a sort of weakness.

Though the dresses were commonplace at home, they became a political statement in April 2006 when the court brought contempt proceedings against him.

"I decided I had to arm myself so I got myself a pretty dress and changed my name."

He has dropped the moniker Miss Alice, but Dr Moodie still wears a skirt at times.

Last weekend, he wore one to Bunnings Warehouse.

At first the young guys in the store were taken aback, but by the end of the visit, he says, "they realised it's just an ordinary guy in a skirt".

If so, they would have been mistaken. Skirt or no, there is not a lot that is ordinary about the shy Rob Moodie.