Page 5488 - Week 17 - Wednesday, 4 December 1991
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being changed to the deregulated standard. I referred in my speech on 25 November to advice I had received in conversation with a New South Wales senior Vice Squad officer that the deregulated standard requires further review. That was a personal view expressed by that officer.
I believe that members should read this article on the impact of deregulation in New South Wales. I am wary about a referral to the Community Law Reform Committee, because it will put the issue too far onto the backburner. I believe that issues such as decriminalisation of marijuana for personal use and decriminalisation of prostitution, with the addition of social reform measures, do not require any further extensive study. In my view, it is a matter of our making a decision on the best possible reform and implementing it as a chamber.
We have said to Mr Moore for the past week that we in the Rally are totally overboard with work, that we have been unable to draw private members' legislation to fill in the gaps of our Rally policy, which we are bound to give due recognition to in the chamber. In effect, we have made it clear to Mr Moore that we need to see, subject to the provisions of section 65 of the self-government Act, the addition of support services to "deal with the social welfare aspects of recruitment, continuation in the industry, and the ever widening circle of people drawn into the industry by virtue of economic factors".
We concede that many sex workers are there for the profit and are not in the least in the industry because of economic problems. But there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that there is an element of economic compulsion in the employment of some of the women. I quote again from the report I referred to. The authors said, and this is a very involved and professional review:
In the working class western suburbs of Sydney where unemployment is high, fifty per cent of female prostitutes were supporting school aged children. Many of these were single parents, but a significant number were in stable relationships with a long term partner experiencing severe economic hardship.
The Rally's view is that we cannot simply decriminalise and deregulate. The Rally is quite prepared to consider this; but we cannot, given our legislative program. We are not wimping on it; we cannot physically do this within the parameters Mr Moore has set for us. It takes an hour or so to go through his current amendments, which our conclusion is - it may be wrong - revert to the deregulated New South Wales extreme, as Mr Connolly said. We do not support that. We support decriminalisation.
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