Page 2390 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 31 July 2018
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the emphasis on creating a safe working environment for sex workers, and ensure that they are in a position to meet their own legal obligations.
This bill will also make changes so that it is easier for sole operators who are sex workers to carry on their business. At the moment, sole traders who are sex workers have to register with the Commissioner for Fair Trading. That requires several administrative steps and hundreds of dollars. It is a far cry from the usual steps that sole traders in other businesses have to carry out to set themselves up, where getting an ABN and registering your business name is sufficient to open your doors.
With these amendments before the Assembly today, sole trader sex workers will no longer have to register with the Commissioner for Fair Trading. Not only will this save time and money; it will also address privacy concerns, as the Commissioner for Fair Trading will no longer have a database of sole trader sex workers.
It is worth bearing in mind that the reality is that there are sex workers in our community who are not registered with the Commissioner for Fair Trading. Having failed to comply with the requirement to register, these sex workers may be hesitant to identify themselves to other government services. By doing away with the need to register with the Commissioner for Fair Trading and legalising the unregistered status of some sex workers, we will be bringing these workers into legitimacy and facilitating engagement with outreach and health services.
Madam Speaker, sex workers in our community are pursuing a legal and legitimate profession, and deserve to be treated as such. The bill before you today will extend decency and respect to sex workers, increase the ease of doing business, and take steps to improve their safety at work. I commend this bill to the Assembly.
MS CODY (Murrumbidgee) (12.22): The Prostitution Amendment Bill 2018 is a fantastic opportunity for us to talk about the good work that our sex worker community undertakes. My colleague Ms Cheyne has spoken about a number of areas I would have loved to speak about, but let us not repeat ourselves today.
As we know, prostitution has many different names, and has often had many different names, some of which I am able to repeat and some of which I am not able to repeat. It is really good to see that this Assembly is working hard to remove the stigma that is sometimes attached to a line of work that people often frown upon. It is a legitimate form of business. It is a legitimate way to make money. It is a legitimate way for people in our community to be able to earn a living to support themselves and to support their families.
I agree with the removal of red tape for sex workers; the reduced stigma, which I have just spoken about; and the fact that discrimination around sex work will start to diminish, I believe, the more we talk about this and the more we continue to bring it into the daylight.
Another area which I believe is very important is safety. Workplace safety is a huge bugbear. We should be fighting hard to ensure that there is workplace safety on every worksite and in every place of business that we have. Removing the onus from the sex
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