Statutes Amendment (Decriminalisation of Sex Work) Bill

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 19 October 2017.)

The Hon. P. CAICA (Colton) (10:46): It should come as no surprise to people in this chamber that I would support a bill that reforms the sex industry. It is not very often that I am heartened by anything I read in The Advertiser, but I think it was yesterday's editorial that detailed the need for reform in the sex industry. I believe that had come as a result of brothels that have been established that are being occupied by international students. The point is that The Advertiser had come to the fore. In fact, in my reading of it, it was urging this place to take the steps that are necessary to make sure that we do reform this industry.

My friend the member for Ashford will correct me if I am wrong, but I think our state lags behind the rest of Australia with respect to the reform that has been undertaken in those particular states. It seems quite simple to me. The sex industry, including people who engage in the sex industry, is not going away. It has been here for as long as humans have been on the planet. We should recognise that that is the case.

The simple fact is that measures that have been put in place previously to outlaw that industry and to criminalise that industry have not worked, so why do we not look at ways by which we can ensure that, through progressive, obvious and needed legislation, firstly, we recognise that it is an industry that exists and, secondly, we make sure that we create a regulatory framework that makes that industry safer than it currently is? The bill before you today aims to do that.

I will also alert the chamber to the fact that I have lodged a couple of amendments. I intend, depending on how this progresses, to lodge another amendment, which will in fact strengthen those amendments that I have lodged in the first instance. Quite frankly, I would like to see this matter resolved before we rise. I will not be here this time next year; in fact, I will not even be here in February.

Ms Chapman interjecting:

The Hon. P. CAICA: Yes, that's right. It would be nice to be part of a chamber that has recognised this industry and recognised it in such a way that we are doing something that is positive for the industry and, indeed, positive for our community, by making sure that it is a safer industry than it currently is.

I want to refer to some correspondence that was sent to us by the Australian Sex Workers Association—that includes Scarlet Alliance and SIN—that refers to the passage of the bill in the upper house, the bill that is before us today. The organisations that are represented within the Australian Sex Workers Association, which includes, as I have mentioned, those two groups and others, have told us that a majority of 13-8 of those people in the upper house that we are aware of voted in favour of the bill. I was very pleased with that result. I do commend those people who have been working on it, in particular the Hon. Michelle Lensink in the upper house, who I think has done a very good job in ensuring that the bill found its way to this chamber.

From my most recent meeting with representatives from the SIN organisation, they themselves were in favour of reform of the industry. That message came through very clearly to me. It might be a different matter if you want to talk about their support or otherwise for the amendments that might come up subsequently, but those amendments will be a matter for the chamber. I am not being disrespectful to anyone in the industry or the industry as a whole, but I think it is incumbent upon us to do what we can to recognise that the industry exists and, in doing so, put in the necessary measures that will make that industry safer for those people who work in it and safer for those people who use it. As I said, sex work is not going to go away and, in fact, neither are the people who are customers or clients of those who work within the sex industry.

I do not want to keep the house very long. You know my position and my speaking is not going to change anyone's view as to what their view is.

The Hon. M.J. Atkinson interjecting:

The Hon. P. CAICA: No, it's not, Michael, and you know it, just as your contribution most likely will not change the way I might think, but I am looking forward to your contribution when you get up and speak. I respect people's rights to have their own views, providing that we treat each other in a respectful way. This legislation essentially is about treating those people who work in the sex industry in the way we treat each other—respectfully—and acknowledging that the industry exists, that they are in it, and that we as legislators can do something to make sure that industry is far more safe and effective than it is at this point in time.

As I said, I do not want to hold the chamber up for any great length of time or, indeed, any more time. What I want to do, though, is make sure that we in this chamber do the very best we can to make sure that this debate is concluded during the time that we have left and that it does not go off into the netherworld for a future parliament to have to deal with it. I think it is incumbent upon us and responsible of us to actually deal with it and do what we can. If it goes down, it goes down, but for goodness sake let's have a crack at making sure that we actually deal with it and not shunt it off to the netherworld.

I commend the bill to the house, and I know there will be some amendments, but I am very pleased to be standing here today supporting attempts by this parliament—long overdue—to do something about the sex industry in the positive way that is being proposed.

The Hon. M.J. ATKINSON (Croydon) (10:53): Much of conservative opinion and Christian opinion in our state is attached to the current 110-year-old law about prostitution because it thinks it bans prostitution. Well, it does not really. Our law has never punished the sale of sexual gratification simpliciter. If some conservative opinion has no illusions about that, it still thinks the law is a totem worth preserving.

For the member for Ashford, the Hon. J.M. Lensink, the Hon. T.A. Franks and the association of people who have an interest in brothels, the Sex Industry Network, changing the law is principally totemic. They want sex work treated as a normal vocation, one that has no stigma, and they look forward to a world in which prostitution is a commodity that becomes a form of entertainment and advertised like any other. They were comfortable with or quoted testimony that denied sex workers use drugs more than the rest of the population or have backgrounds more troubled than the rest of the population or that sex workers ever regret the work they do or even that they had pimps.

This is why any attempt by my constituents who attended street corner meetings about the bill to use the word 'prostitute' or 'prostitution' were howled down by Sex Industry Network activists who came to the meetings. For these activists, the English language should be legally restricted to prevent the expression of the thought—indeed, the formulation of the thought—that a woman selling her body to any man for sexual gratification could be morally wrong in any circumstances.

None of these activists lived in the area principally affected by street prostitution and, when asked by me as the co-chair of the meetings which suburb or street they lived in, lied to me by nominating streets that did not exist. One in particular, Zrebar Karimi, who gave a second false address at a fourth meeting for local people, told me lying was necessary to prevail in political struggles like these.

The law we have against prostitution is this patchwork of offences, mostly dating from 1907: being on premises frequented by prostitutes, living off the earnings of prostitution, keep and manage a brothel, receiving money in a brothel, procuring a person to be a prostitute, keeping a common bawdy house. The effectiveness of some of these laws has been undermined by credit cards, mobile phones, the internet and the mobility afforded by motor vehicles.

I served on a two-year parliamentary inquiry into prostitution in the 1990s and, together with the then member for Hartley, I wrote a dissenting report and moved a private member's bill to give effect to it. I think both stand the test of time well. I would be pleased to leave the parliament having repealed most of the old laws and replaced them with new and effective ones that make brothels legal, subject to a range of precautionary conditions, and that recognise that merely decriminalising sex work does not sanitise it, as the proponents of this bill think. I filed amendments to this bill to give effect to that aim.

It has been impossible for any reform bill to succeed in the past 28 years I have been in parliament because debates about prostitution lead to a clash of values and cultures, and the devil is always in the detail. We cannot agree on anything. I threw myself into this debate after its proponents passed it through the other place in unseemly haste, in terrible ignorance of the history and the detail and in a form they must have known would fail in this house—namely, the decriminalisation of street prostitution without restrictions of any kind. Not even the New South Wales parliament has done that.

The way to get progressive legislation through the parliament is not to consult diehard supporters repeatedly and frame your bill in doctrinaire terms that appeal to them, but to analyse carefully who may oppose your bill and why, and negotiate with them with a view to getting a majority. Nick Xenophon worked out legislating soon after he was elected, but MPs, such as Sandra Kanck, never could.

As it happens, the state district of Croydon covers Hanson Road and its surrounding conurbation: Athol Park, Mansfield Park, Woodville Gardens and Woodville North. These are the main street beats in Adelaide, and I would have failed my constituents and neighbours (I live in Woodville Park) if I had not told them about the Lensink bill and the debate in parliament about it.

I am open to the decriminalisation of brothels but not street prostitution, which I think is the most dangerous kind of sex work: harmful to sex workers and offensive to the communities that are forced to host it. But I do not want to give the house the impression that the maximum $750 fine for soliciting in a public place is much of a deterrent to street work. The women who do this work used to work in escort agencies and brothels, but this was no longer an option for them owing to advancing age, poor health (such as loss of teeth) and an obvious drug habit, or all three. Having the most sanitised legal trade possible will not stop women who drop out of the legal trade going on the game in public places.

From time to time, a kerb crawler (a client) picks up one of these women in his vehicle, receives the services and then bashes or murders her. This is not sufficient to deter them from being on the game in the street, so a fine is not going to deter them either. When the magistrate at Port Adelaide has imposed the fine—probably about $100—the defendant is back on Hanson Road or the streets nearby earning money to pay the fine. As you can imagine, the average copper at the Parks Police Station does not relish being ordered to go down to The Avenue at Athol Park to arrest a sex worker who is high on drugs.

My hope lies not in the full Nordic model but in tweaking the soliciting in a public place offence, making it plain that it applies to kerb crawlers and encouraging police to go after the kerb crawlers, with policewomen disguised as sex workers wired for sound and with micro body cameras and backup to photograph the vehicle registration plate and the face of the kerb crawler. If we can deter kerb crawlers from coming into our neighbourhood, there will not be much point in street prostitutes patrolling Hanson Road and the streets around it.

I accept that there are people who need sex workers: people who are disabled, people who do not have the emotional skills to form a relationship, men who have a repellent appearance. The Nordic model would criminalise their hiring of prostitutes in all circumstances. That seems cruel to me. When I sat on the social development inquiry, Helen Viqua gave evidence of attending the Julia Farr Centre, the former Home for Incurables, to provide sexual services to patients there in a house on the grounds of the institution. In my opinion, the services she provided were probably not unlawful under the current law but, if they were, I would not be a vote to make them unlawful.

Other than street prostitution, the other big vice of the trade is the big brothels, some of them licensed in other states and one I know of listed on the Stock Exchange. I attended one of these brothels, Top of the Town, near Southern Cross Station in Melbourne, with the committee. A young woman who worked in the Public Service talked to us about how she was working to pay off her credit card debt.

Sandra Kanck noticed that there was a menu on the wall, but she could not read it in the gloom of the brothel even when she put on her glasses. She asked if the brothel served food or drink. The manager laughed and explained that it was a list of sexual services. The menu was long. You see, customers do not come to a brothel for company or kissing or missionary position sex: customers come to the brothels for the kinds of things they have seen in pornography videos, the kinds of things their wives and girlfriends do not do.

The big brothels force the sex workers to work the entire menu. This is modern, market-governed slavery. The only places sex workers govern themselves in Victoria is in the illegal, unlicensed brothels where the workers themselves abbreviate the menu and work only the menu they are comfortable with. More power to them.

Debate adjourned on motion of Mr Treloar.