Page 722 - Week 02 - Thursday, 23 February 2012
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As I said, I did dissent from a number of the recommendations. I will use the remainder of my time to concentrate on those. In doing so I want to put on the record that I think that, although there was a great deal of disagreement in the committee and there was a clear dichotomy of views from people who gave evidence, there was no ill will; there was no animus. I think there was a very professional approach to dealing with the issues where we vehemently and passionately disagree.
I believe that this report is a lost opportunity. I think there are issues that are touched on in this report which have been minimised and others which have been ignored. I think that we have missed an opportunity for sensitive reform in an area which is vexed in the community. As I have said, we received a wide range of submissions. Most of them fell either on one side of the camp or on the other. I would say, probably with the exception of the Australian Federal Police, whose submission and evidence were about practical issues rather than some ideological stance, that most of the submitters came with a presupposed position.
There were a group of people who would be called supporters of the status quo, supporters of legislated support for prostitution, who were mainly representatives of the sex industry or agencies of government. People from a variety of backgrounds—some religious and some not, and some with a feminist perspective—brought forward positions on the other side and brought evidence from across Australia and other jurisdictions.
I think it is disappointing that we could not have a meeting of the minds. I need to put it on the record that I, like everybody else, came to this with views on the issue of prostitution; they are based on a general philosophy of life. But having views which are just my general predisposition are not in themselves sufficient for making good policy. I have informed myself over many years on issues relating to prostitution and associated issues of sexual slavery and trafficking. I have done this through a desire to advance the status of women in this area. I have worked extensively both in Australia and overseas with people in the sex industry. I have dealt with trafficked women. I have dealt with government and non-government agencies and volunteer groups in addressing this issue. That is how I come to this place. I did not come to this with an empty mind.
I believe that there is a process underway in the ACT of normalising prostitution. This campaign is ongoing. It is not just in the ACT; other jurisdictions in Australia are in this process. The first stage is for proponents to argue that there are risks associated with prostitution, such as sexually transmitted diseases, the involvement of crime and the involvement of minors, and then they say that the best way to address this is to legalise and regulate and take a harm minimisation approach—and this is what we achieved in the ACT with the passing of the Prostitution Act in 1992.
Having regularised and legislated, we now move on to the next phase of saying: “Look how wonderfully it works over here. Let’s not talk about all the things that we can’t measure because we don’t know what’s going on in the illegal industry.” But we do know that every time we regularise and normalise the prostitution industry, we still have a large, unregulated, illegal system that runs in tandem. It has been variously
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