Legal Brothels in Australia

Another bid will be made to decriminalise prostitution in South Australia. Labor MP Steph Key will introduce new laws to parliament next week to decriminalise all forms of sex work.

The new bill will require owners of brothels to register their business with consumer and business services to allow for more regulatory controls. Ms Key said sex workers would be required to go through the same planning approvals as other businesses.

With MPs to be given a conscience vote, she believes the legislation will pass this time after her previous attempt in November last year was rejected.

But Family First MP Dennis Hood said the legislation was being brought back to parliament just 12 sitting days after it was voted down. Hood claimed it would be a waste of time to have another debate on the issue.

Laws to decriminalise prostitution in South Australia have been defeated by one vote in State Parliament.

But the absence of eight MPs from the chamber at the time has prompted calls for the vote to be taken again and changes to the parliamentary system to give MPs more notice of conscience votes.

Labor MP Steph Key's Private Member's Bill would have decriminalised all forms of prostitution, including at home, in brothels, escort services and some street work, but retained soliciting as an offence where it occurred in the presence of other people.

But in a vote in Parliament's Lower House yesterday the proposed laws were defeated 20 votes to 19. 8 MPs were missing from the chamber, including two who were locked out after they failed to get there in time.

Ms Key said she would seek advice on whether she could recommit the legislation to another vote at a later date when all or more MPs were present. She said:

There were a couple of people that were caught outside for some reason and they were going to be supporting the Bill. And there were a number of people that were paired (out of the chamber) today that support the Bill. So people are saying this isn't a real indication (of the level of support for the laws).

An appeals court in Queensland has ruled that hotel and motel owners do not have the right to turn away escorts because of their profession.

The working girl who filed the lawsuit and who goes by the name GK sued a hotel who turned her away in 2010 after discovering his profession. Originally a local court ruled that the hotel did nothing wrong, but an appeals court has now overturned that ruling.

The incident occurred at the 3.5-star Drovers Rest Motel after GK had stayed at Drovers Rest Motel 17 times over a two year period. Hotel officials turned her away after discovering that she was a sex worker.

Unfortunately for the hotel, Australia has legalized escort services and sex workers can not be discriminated against because of their job. By turning away GK the motel according to the appeals court acted in a discriminatory manner based on her profession.

Western Australia Attorney General Christian Porter said that under the new Prostitution Bill 2011, brothels would be banned from suburban areas.

Limited prostitution in non-suburban residential areas would be licensed and monitored.

The Government will also create an exit fund for prostitutes seeking to leave the industry.

Attorney General Christian Porter said the Bill had been carefully developed after the release of a draft for community consultation earlier this year. He said:

Prostitution is a controversial issue for any Government to address. Overwhelmingly though, ordinary West Australians do not want prostitution businesses of any size near their homes, in their residential suburbs or near their children's school.

Update: A Dangerous Step Backwards for Health Promotion

18th November 2011.See  article from  sexparty.org.au

The Australian Sex Party has called the WA Prostitution Bill a dangerous step backwards in health promotion. The 2011 Bill, introduced into WA Parliament by Attorney General Christian Porter last week, was developed without proper consultation with sex workers or sex worker organisations, and acts in direct opposition to the health safety, and best interests of sex workers.

Sex Party Candidate Zahra Stardust says This Bill will severely increase sex workers' likelihood of harassment, vilification and imprisonment and decrease their access to health and support services .

The Bill bans sex work in residential or suburban areas and prohibits escort agencies, forcing sex workers into brothels. The Bill then requires sex workers to disclose their legal names in the workplace, meaning that sex workers are singled out for surveillance, restricting their opportunities for employment and further education and introducing bias in custody cases. The WA Bill criminalises the clients of sex workers, despite international evidence that this has severe consequences on the safety of sex workers themselves. The Bill criminalises all street-based sex workers, despite no evidence that they cause adverse societal impact.

The Bill increases police power, despite the finding of the Woods Royal Commission that systemic corruption and misuse of personal information is rife when police act as sex industry regulators. Ms Stardust says, Police powers to issue move-on notices, stop, detain and search anyone on suspicion that they have breached the law, and to order invasive cavity searches of sex workers, mean that sex workers will be unlikely to seek police assistance in the event of a crime.

She continues, The Bill will be disastrous for sex workers occupational health and safety and industrial rights, as an unlicensed sex worker under the Bill is expressly excluded from accessing Workers' Compensation. The Bill also prohibits advertising for any staff relating to sex work services, preventing sex workers from advertising for drivers, receptionists or security. This will clearly present obstacles to sex workers' health, safety and access to support.'

Further, the Bill criminalises all migrant sex workers, providing that a licence can only be issued to an Australian citizen or permanent resident. This means that sex workers on student or temporary visas are immediately rendered illegal, subject to heavy penalties, experience reduced access to health services, are denied access to peer education programs and are increasingly marginalised. The Bill introduces heavy penalties (up to 3 years imprisonment) and fines (up to $50,000) for non-compliance.

Low rates of STIs and HIV among sex workers illustrate that sex workers are highly aware of safer sex practices and are skilled at negotiating and managing risks. The recent Law and Sexual Health (LASH) study in Western Australia by the Kirby Institute states that health promotion for the sex industry is much easier when the target group is not covert and is working without the daily fear of a criminal prosecution. Similarly, the World Health Organisation acknowledges that 'Legislation criminalising prostitution-related activities has frequently been identified as a barrier to the promotion of safer sex practices'.'

A South Australian Labor MP has launched another bid to decriminalise prostitution, the latest in a handful of attempts to reform sex worker laws over the past 30 years.

Steph Key will later this year introduce a bill to decriminalise all forms of prostitution, including home or brothel-based sex work, escort services and street work.

It will also ban minors from being involved in the industry and will prevent brothels being established within 200 metres of schools, any centres for children and places of worship. It seems to be an appropriate time to put the reform of our sex industry in SA back on the legislative agenda, Ms Key said. She said there had been five attempts to introduce reforms over the past three decades, the last being voted down in 2001.

But Christian nutters of FamilyVoice Australia said there had actually been six attempts to decriminalise brothels since 1979, with each attempt failing once MPs realised the implications of the changes. Steph Key's latest attempt to decriminalise brothels is worse than any of the previous six, FamilyVoice researcher Ros Phillips said: One of its disastrous features would allow three prostitutes to operate a brothel next to suburban homes without any controls by government or police.

Supporting Ms Key's bill, about 50 sex workers and their supporters rallied on the steps of parliament house in Adelaide on Thursday and presented the MP with a 2000-signature petition backing law reform.

Sex Industry Network manager Ari Reid said sex workers in South Australia were still treated like second-class citizens: Decriminalisation isn't about putting a brothel on every corner. It's about providing basic workplace rights and protection for hard-working South Australians.

Legislative Assembly Member Christian Porter is confident the drafted prostitution reforms will be able to completely eradicate prostitution in Western Australia suburbs.

The reforms, which Porter expects to go back before Parliament in the first half of the year, would see brothels banned from all residential areas and be only allowed to operate within industrial zones.

Under the reform, police would be given more power to shut down brothels operating illegally within suburban areas.

Porter said he was hopeful the reform would reduce the amount of customers to brothels:

One part of the legislation is that, where there is an unlawful brothel, we would target not only the prostitutes who are unlawfully operating and the owners who are unlawfully operating, but we would also target customers with criminal penalty infringement notices for first offences and then prosecutions after that, so we're targeting all of them.

However, Porter said regardless of what measures were taken, prostitution could not be eradicated completely, which was why reforms such as this were needed to be put into place.

Brothels in WA have always existed and are likely to always exist despite our best efforts and the fact is that at the moment, prostitution is in effect illegal, but we still have brothels.

What we have to do is corral them into areas where they cause the least amount of damage and destruction to average, law-abiding West Australians. We're going to mean business in the suburbs.

Prostitution laws in the Australian Capital Territory (Canberra) will be reviewed for the first time since being introduced 18 years ago.

The review has been partially prompted by a letter from a coroner who conducted the inquest into the death of 17-year-old Janine Cameron who was found dead in a Fyshwick brothel two years ago.

Attorney General Simon Corbell says the coroner's comments will form part of the terms of reference for the review: Whilst the coroner made no adverse findings in relation to that matter, the coroner has drawn to my attention his view that it would be worthwhile for the Government to look at the issue of proof of age and to make sure people working in brothels were requiring a higher level of proof age and identity before they commenced work.

Corbell says the Government remains committed to a regulated sex industry: It's a good thing. It keeps it out in the open. It keeps it public and transparent and it stops black market and illegal activities occurring within the industry.

But there are I think areas for some potential improvement. Those include issues potentially around proof of age to make sure people who are working in the industry are appropriately demonstrating that they are 18 years or older.

There may be other issues arising as well that stakeholders want to express a view on and this review will allow that to occur.

The Government will move a motion in the Legislative Assembly next month referring the Prostitution Act 1992 to a committee.

The Opposition has welcomed the move. Shadow attorney general Vicki Dunne said: There have been issues raised as to whether or not individual sex workers should have registration, compliance inspections and the level of police activity around brothels in the ACT and what developments there may have been both interstate and overseas that have moved on public discussion about the regulation of prostitution.

Banning brothels in residential areas would be a welcome first step to curbing prostitution, though laws need to go further by making it illegal to pay for sex, Perth's Catholic Archbishop Barry Hickey says.

He supports the so-called Swedish model, which makes buying sex and brothel ownership illegal, rather than prostitution itself.

Attorney-General Christian Porter is working towards delivering the Government's election promise to ban prostitution outside designated zones but has rejected calls from some Not So Liberal backbenchers to adopt the Swedish model on the basis that he did not support a system which punished only the men who bought sex. He was prepared to consider introducing tougher penalties for men caught buying sexual services outside designated areas.

Archbishop Hickey said men had to be held responsible for what was effectively a form of abuse against women: (Under the Swedish system), at least men will get a different message than the one they are getting at the moment, which is almost encouragement.