Page 723 - Week 02 - Thursday, 23 February 2012
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estimated in various jurisdictions to be three times the size of the legal industry in Victoria and up to nine times the size of the legal industry in Queensland.
We do know that that is the case and we do know that that is the case here. We heard evidence of it. The Chief Police Officer said to us that, while he knows that there is illegal activity going on, he is unable to quantify it. We saw evidence of the extent of the illegal activity when we asked questions of the attorney in relation to the brothel fire earlier this year, when we discovered that the brothel that burnt down was in fact unregistered. We asked how this came about and the answer was, “Well, there used to be a brothel on that site which operated as a brothel until its licence expired in about September 2010.” After that brothel licence expired, another one opened up in the same place. No-one applied for registration and no-one ever checked.
Something odd happened there, which is a matter of police investigation. But we know that a brothel operated on that site from September 2010 until it burnt down and there were no police checks, because the police presumably did not know it was there. The Office of Regulatory Services did not know it was there, although I understand that it was advertised. In that time there was no checking of occupational health and safety, there was no checking to see whether there were minors living on the premises and there was no checking to see whether there were minors working on the premises. There was no checking to see whether there was any number of other offences or whether the person was excluded from operating a brothel under the Prostitution Act because the operator had been found guilty of a whole number of offences under the Prostitution Act. None of those things were checked.
I find it disappointing that, although none of these things were checked, we have this process, which is covered by recommendations 1, 2 and 3, of further normalising prostitution in the community. I do not think that the family of the young woman who died in a brothel would feel that this is an appropriate approach. I do not believe it meets community standards that there should be a continuing normalisation of prostitution.
I also dissented from recommendation No 6, which calls upon the government to take out reference to sexually transmitted diseases in the Prostitution Act and rely, rather, on the public health regulations, which I do not believe provide sufficient protection against STIs for individuals or the wider community. The Human Rights Commission claimed that the current section 25 of the Prostitution Act was discriminatory and disproportionate. We will essentially be turning a blind eye and allowing people who are infected with STIs to be active in the paid sexual industry. That is not fair and not appropriate in the circumstances and it does not accord with a good approach to occupational health and public health.
The majority of the committee made recommendations about the number of sole operators who could operate together, which is a bit of a contradiction, and also that sole operators should not be required to register. I think that this is a real problem. It goes to my concerns about the fact that the majority of members did not support the call for extra police powers that would allow them to have better observation of what is going on in the sex industry and would better allow them to have oversight of whether underage people are working in the industry. The police also called for more
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