Page 5253 - Week 12 - Thursday, 28 October 2010
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(4) the adequacy of, and compliance with, occupational health and safety requirements for sex workers;
(5) any links with criminal activity;
(6) the extent to which unlicensed operators exist within the ACT, and
(7) other relevant matter.”
The Canberra Liberals welcome the motion from the minister today, as do the members of the Standing Committee on Justice and Community Safety, who have discussed this matter over quite a long period of time. I think it is useful to put a little more background onto why we are here today. Just after the 2008 election, the issue of the operation of the Prostitution Act came to the attention of the people of the ACT with the revelation of the death of a 17-year-old girl at an ACT brothel. The revelation at the time was that the Office of Regulatory Services had not inspected any of Canberra’s brothels for, I think, five years prior to that, and that was a matter of some public comment. I know that I made comment on it, and Ms Bresnan at the time also expressed concerns about that apparent failure of the legislation.
In the course of a number of discussions over time by the Standing Committee on Justice and Community Safety, the committee expressed a view that, when we had a little clear air, we would like to look at the operation of the Prostitution Act. There seemed to be since 2008 some growing support for that. In the middle of this year, the attorney himself made public statements to the effect that he would welcome an inquiry. At that stage the members of the justice and community safety committee revisited their discussions on the matter and agreed that early next year, when we had cleared the decks of two major inquiries that we had, we would look at this matter, and we began to discuss some possible terms of reference.
It was with some surprise a few weeks ago that the attorney made a statement to the media to the effect that he was going to move this motion here today, because previously there had been general agreement that the justice and community safety committee would inquire into the matter, and we had embarked slowly upon that process. Whether or not the justice and community safety committee self-refers or a matter is referred by the Assembly really does not make much difference to the sort of inquiry that we have.
I was a little surprised when the draft terms of reference were circulated by the minister a couple of weeks ago. The minister said that he would be happy to discuss these with me and, I presume, other members of the committee. There were not any discussions, and the committee took the view that the terms of reference of the sort the attorney has moved today were far too narrow for a proper inquiry into a piece of legislation that has been operating for 18 years, I think.
The committee communicated with the attorney that we had had some preliminary thoughts, and we communicated our preliminary thoughts to the attorney. In doing so, members of the committee have refined our thinking on that, and I think that the amendment I move today represents the collective thinking of the members of the justice and community safety committee about an appropriate way to expand the terms of reference.
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