Page 5041 - Week 16 - Wednesday, 27 November 1991
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supported the view of the two bishops on this point, it would be appropriate for them to support the Prostitution (Consequential Amendments) Bill, which totally removes all the laws relating to prostitution. (Extension of time granted)
I think it is appropriate for us to understand that this is not a difficult and complex subject to deal with in principle. Certainly, the proposed amendments that have been passed around are also not particularly difficult to understand. Those circulated by Mrs Nolan go to a single principle, with one exception. There appears to be a great raft of them, but the real purpose is simply to remove the board and to replace it with ministerial control.
I have circulated a couple of amendments that I propose to move in the detail stage. I think it is appropriate that I mention those amendments now. The first one restricts brothels to Fyshwick, Mitchell and Hume, as was recommended by our committee. The original Bill was drawn up in the light of the current planning legislation. As we got closer to debating the Land (Planning and Environment) Bill, it seemed to me appropriate that we try to separate this legislation from that Bill so that we would not have to change it when we had just passed it. Therefore, the amendment simply sets out that restriction and makes it possible for the Minister to prescribe any other area. That, of course, would be a disallowable instrument.
My second amendment is to delete subclause 36(2), which reads:
A prostitute shall not provide commercial sexual services if he or she knows, or could reasonably be expected to have known, that he or she is infected with a sexually transmitted disease.
It was always the intention of the committee to ensure that any penalty that applied to a worker should also apply to the client. That subclause can be deleted because subclause 8(3) of the Prostitution (Consequential Amendments) Bill makes it an offence for a client as well as a worker to knowingly infect somebody else with an STD. That was an oversight on my part in the original drafting of the Bill and something that I have therefore moved to correct.
A number of other issues have been raised, particularly by the Victorian Prostitutes Collective. I have gone through those proposed amendments and criticisms of the Victorians. Some of their proposals indicate that they do not really understand the size of Canberra and the scale of prostitution here and also that they had some difficulty in reading parts of the legislation. A quite large number of the things they proposed were already in the legislation.
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