Page 4843 - Week 16 - Monday, 25 November 1991
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Of course, that confidential memorandum from the Director of Public Prosecutions, of 1 November 1987, set out a policy of what boiled down to aggravating circumstances. It is under policies like that that the police and the leasing authorities of our lands branch have edged brothel keepers out of some of our near suburbs. Dr Kinloch is familiar with one establishment that became ambulatory during that period.
Mr Stefaniak: I prosecuted that one, Bernie.
MR COLLAERY: Mr Stefaniak interjects that he had the honour to prosecute it. I do not know where he took his instructions from, Mr Speaker. Nevertheless, the police's concerns could be summarised as: The fact that street prostitution is not adequately covered by legislation, and that the incidence of street prostitution will increase in the future, particularly in light of the casino. They were my comments. A Canberra sex worker at the conference I attended said to me, "But don't kid yourself. There are girls who go out and work. There are girls out on the street".
Mr Moore: They meet in the pubs. It is in the report.
MR COLLAERY: I do not know. I can make no comment on that. But they are probably enlightened meetings, and they are certainly not footpath workers, as Mr Moore says by way of interjection. I have no way of judging that. The other concern of the police was, of course, that we in fact have no effective laws against street prostitution - contrary, I think, to what some of the sex workers think. The biggest complaint that they had was that the current practice of police regularly investigating these premises to see whether any aggravated conduct was taking place made them de facto regulators and could lead - and this is my language - to assumptions that they were on the take in one way or another.
I have said before in this Assembly that I do not like the fact that young constables are detailed to this duty. I do not think it is appropriate. Temptations are great in life. I do not think that they fall prey to it, but they may be unmarried young men - I do not know. But I find it totally inappropriate that police are continuing to have to perform a role because we are shirking our responsibility as legislators or as a society to get the police out of the sandwich they have been jammed into.
I do not believe that we can go to the Victorian model. It has not worked. There, the prostitutes collective workers told me, there are brothel kings now. Brothel licences are worth an absolute fortune - millions. It is a restricted class. We all remember the old days of liquor licensing. When you were acting for a liquor licensee in New South Wales you were acting for gold. They had a licence to print money because objections could be made to anyone else
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