Page 5487 - Week 17 - Wednesday, 4 December 1991
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Each of those amendments is associated with the fact that the Bill was originally drawn up with a licensing board, and they simply remove the licensing board in order to take account of the approach Dr Kinloch took about avoiding condoning prostitution. I have circulated to members a copy of the Bill with those matters struck out, so that members may see what we are doing.
MR COLLAERY (11.16): I wish to refer to Mr Moore's comments on clause 3, and in relation to clause 2. The Residents Rally policy, which was read into the record on 25 November, is that we support "removing prostitution as far as possible from the ambit of the criminal law, while retaining provisions against the exploitation of minors and the use of illegal immigrants". The Rally also believes that, correlative with that and contemporaneously with that, steps should be taken to reduce levels of demand for, and recruitment into, prostitution through social welfare reform. In adopting that policy, the Residents Rally adopts the recommendations in the report of the New South Wales Parliamentary Select Committee upon Prostitution in 1986.
On 25 November I clearly indicated the Rally's policy. There has been no change from it. The Rally's policy is that we do not support the extremes of the Victorian model, which purportedly set up a brothel licensing board, which was never proclaimed, and has had many unintended and deleterious effects, both on sex workers and potentially on the community. I drew attention to the element of clandestine activity that had recommenced in Victoria, and the general agreement that the legislation there was a disaster.
To the extent to which Mr Moore's Bill reflected the Victorian brothel board's standard, we rejected Mr Moore's Bill. Mr Moore has brought forward a number of amendments that effectively excise from his Bill the Victorian-style brothel board, and he takes us back to the deregulated situation in New South Wales. If I could quote from an informed study carried out by university researchers Sandra Egger and Christine Harcourt, in an article entitled "Prostitution in New South Wales : The Impact of Deregulation", which was discussed at a recent national women's conference I attended in Sydney, representing all the males of this Assembly, the authors said:
The Victorian approach and the NSW approach thus represent the two extremes of contemporary approaches to prostitution. Both entail a recognition that the enactment of ... criminal offences has failed to eradicate the industry.
Then they differ thereafter. Mr Moore is introducing, by way of the excisions from his original Bill, what we can best work out to be the deregulated New South Wales model. We have never supported that. In fact, I said quite specifically in this chamber that we do not accept the law
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