Page 4845 - Week 16 - Monday, 25 November 1991
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MR STEFANIAK (5.02): Mr Speaker, there is much in what Mr Collaery has said that I would agree with. The Liberal Party formed a policy on prostitution on 1 June this year, and I will read it out. It is in our police and justice policy. It says:
An ACT Liberal Government will:
a) decriminalise prostitution in the ACT and regulate the activity within brothels and escort agencies which will only be sited within prescribed areas.
b) tighten the law in respect to the involvement of minors in prostitution.
c) ensure that street prostitution remains illegal and, where appropriate, strengthen the existing laws.
Basically, what that does - and I think what Mr Moore is seeking to do - is rationalise the status quo. Mr Collaery has spoken at some length about what has occurred in Canberra in relation to this issue. He is quite correct in saying that Ian Temby, QC, when he was Director of Public Prosecutions, issued guidelines in relation to the prosecution of prostitution offences.
Basically, if prostitution was conducted away from suburban shops in the suburban areas and within an industrial area of Canberra, and provided that children and drugs were not involved, a hands-off approach was taken. That was not perfect in that - as Mr Collaery correctly says - the police often were requested to adopt a quasi-regulatory role within that context. That certainly was not particularly satisfactory for them. I remember certain complaints being made in relation to that. There was initial uncertainty as to what the policy was; but, basically, it did settle down into a reasonably workable arrangement and we have effectively had de facto legalised prostitution here for a number of years.
There were very few prosecutions. Indeed, I can remember, over a five- or six-year period, about seven briefs being sent over, only one of which was prosecuted, which I did. That was in about 1988 and it related to a brothel being run above the Ainslie shops. The brothel owner was fined $1,000 and I was rather amazed at the ability of the police to actually get two prostitutes and, what is more, two clients to give evidence. That certainly established that case. But that, to my knowledge, was the only successful brothel prosecution we have had here for the last 10 years, and that case was prosecuted because it offended the guidelines laid down by Temby and was, in fact, in a residential area.
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