Page 4847 - Week 16 - Monday, 25 November 1991
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be avoided. Certainly, as Mr Collaery states, the police are not the proper people to be forced to regulate prostitution. They should be called in when there are criminal breaches.
There are some very great health problems associated with prostitution. In relation to prostitution, it is essential to ensure - with punitive measures, if need be - that safe sex is practised. I think prostitution is meant to be the oldest profession. I cannot remember which is the second oldest. I always get them confused. Was it the law or something?
Mr Humphries: Being a soldier.
MR STEFANIAK: Being a soldier? I am not too sure whether it was being a lawyer or what. Whatever it was, certainly prostitution is either the first or the second oldest profession. It has been going since the dawn of time. It has been prohibited, but it has always been in the community. I can recall one old lawyer in Sydney - it might have been Clive Evatt; it was one of the Evatts anyway - who basically used to make a living out of his practice by appearing for all the prostitutes. They would turn up in court, be fined a pound, and that was it; off they would go, back to the streets to hawk their wares, as it were.
There has been a lot of hypocrisy associated with prostitution. It exists in every State of Australia. It exists everywhere throughout the world. There have been various attempts, some more successful than others, to regulate it. I think it would demonstrate a great degree of hypocrisy if this were attempted to be swept under the carpet. We have had this ridiculous situation in the ACT where prostitution has been effectively, de facto, legalised, certainly since about 1984, if not before.
So, I do not think that this is earth-shattering legislation. It merely tries to rationalise the status quo. We in the Liberal Party have seen some problems with some of the things that Mr Moore is attempting to bring in. We would have some amendments. We have also been approached by a couple of bodies who have some further suggestions on amendments and I would certainly want the Assembly to look at them; and I would talk to other parties in relation to the detail of this particular Bill. But this Bill does seem to be, at least in principle, in line with Liberal Party policy, which is really in line with exactly what is the current situation in the ACT - except that we would give legal force to what effectively has been the de facto legal situation now for some considerable period of time.
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