Page 3170 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 18 November 1992
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So, what are we hoping to achieve with this legislation? We are attempting to make the industry legitimate in the eyes of the general community and to introduce safeguards against the spread of HIV by putting an onus on clients as well as brothel operators and workers not to spread sexually transmissible diseases. What are the pluses for the community? There will be the quantifying of the profession and, hopefully, recognition of the fact that another survey quoted in the Commonwealth report showed that more than 95 per cent of prostitutes used condoms all the time. Community usage of safe sex practices is accepted to be far below this level. We cannot sustain myths about prostitutes being disease carriers if they are seen to be acting responsibly. The Bill before us will also prevent any community perception of police corruption, as it now removes the offence of running a brothel. The police are now responsible for both prostitutes and the public, and their only punitive function with regard to brothels should be to police the provisions banning child prostitution and general crime prevention.
What, then, will be the minuses for the community? I think these are perceptual. People need to accept prostitution as a fact of life, and many people may not like that. But, Madam Speaker, even the Catholic and Anglican churches during the hearings of the Select Committee on HIV, Illegal Drugs and Prostitution offered no real resistance to the decriminalisation of brothels. Another difficult concept for people to come to terms with is that these women are in fact professionals and that they deliver services to their clients. They cannot any longer be blamed in isolation for the moral issues surrounding prostitution. This Bill makes both prostitute and client responsible for disclosing any possibility of disease transmission.
In achieving the decriminalisation of brothels and the regulation of the prostitution industry, we have had to be careful to avoid making the mistakes that have occurred elsewhere. For the past few years the Victorian police force has had to deal with inadequate prostitution laws which have done nothing to stop illegal prostitution and indeed have seen the proliferation of illegal activity. The scope of the ACT's legislation has to be wide enough to cover all workers employed in the sex industry, male and female. To this end, escort agencies are included with brothels.
Resulting from the passage of this legislation today, there will be occupational health and safety implications, and the organisations representing workers in the sex industry may also want to consider taking up the issue of the relationship between prostitutes and brothels or escort agencies. Are prostitutes employees or are they independent contractors who use the agency or brothel premises? I applaud the concept inherent in the legislation that women and men who work in the sex industry have rights. It is important that they are protected from duress and supported in their insistence on the use of prophylactic devices such as condoms when providing sexual services.
Madam Speaker, the legislation we are debating today and which has been discussed at length in the community is landmark legislation, as has been commented on by Mr Connolly. I congratulate my colleague Mr Moore on his work on the Select Committee on HIV, Illegal Drugs and Prostitution and on his work in stimulating wide community debate and discussion which have ultimately led to the appropriate reform of the ACT's prostitution laws.
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