Page 2386 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 31 July 2018
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The recognition that the sex work industry attracts criminal behaviour is well-known across the globe. There are claims that quite contrary to the claim that decriminalising prostitution keeps sex workers safe, it actually creates more dangers for them.
Politicians across the globe are now starting to realise this and take action. Some countries have considered the so-called Nordic model, and its popularity is expanding, especially in the non-English speaking world. This was an issue that I looked at with some colleagues from this parliament and elsewhere in a study tour in 2014. This model decriminalises prostitution from the sex workers’ viewpoint but makes it a criminal offence to purchase sex. It also offers help to sex workers, especially those wishing to exit the industry.
Closer to home, Madam Speaker, the Victorian Liberal Party rank and file has voted to introduce the Nordic model in Victoria. Putting it simply, other countries and other parts of Australia are seeing the sex industry as a magnet for violence, as well as for drug, human and sex trafficking. Inherently, prostitution is an unsafe activity on many fronts.
I am pleased to see that the Prostitution Amendment Bill does a bit of tightening up and the Canberra Liberals will not oppose those amendments. We will, however, be opposing those parts of the bill that seek to deregulate the industry even further and to open it up to more potential risks. I will address those issues specifically in the detail stage.
This bill comes about primarily as the result of an inquiry into the Prostitution Act by the Assembly’s Standing Committee on Justice and Community Safety in 2010-12. I had the privilege of chairing that inquiry. In that inquiry, the committee received 58 submissions. Five exhibits were received and the committee made 17 recommendations of which 11 were unanimous and six were from the majority of the committee.
The amendments proposed in this bill reflect much of the government’s response to the inquiry report, but not all of it. Some parts of the inquiry report are not acted on in this bill. I welcome that, especially the recommendation to allow two sole operators to work together, thus creating mini-brothels in the suburbs. I do not think that has received support from the community. It certainly did not receive support from the community at the time. I am glad that has not been brought forward. But there are other aspects that should have been brought forward, and I regret that they have not.
The issue in relation to multilingual signs, which was a unanimous recommendation of the committee, would have alerted people to the issues of sex trafficking and the like and how they might take steps in relation to sex trafficking. This has not made it into this legislation, apparently, according to media reports, because the very limited reference group could not agree on the wording.
This bill seeks to make some changes to the language used. It will change “prostitute” and “prostitution” to “sex worker” and “sex work” respectively. This will mean that the name of the act will change. It will become known as the sex work act 1992. The
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