BY ELENA JEFFRIES
PERTH — Police powers contained within WA's Prostitution Act already affect all people, especially those who work in the sex industry. They include the "right" to enter premises without warrant, strip search and cavity search without charge, detain without charge, issues "move on notices" and restraining orders. Now in government, the ALP is set to make the powers worse with their proposed Prostitution Control Bill 2002.
The new act will include 42 indictable offences and 55 other offences with fines up to $100,000. Sex workers and their advocates have rallied together for the last three years in an attempt to change the laws, and the campaign will be stepped up in response to the Labor Party's proposal.
The Sex Worker Action Group was formed in 2000 to provide the perspective of people who worked in the sex industry into the debate. The SWAG campaign began with a rally at Parliament House in September 2000 and the launch of a petition. Since then it has organised demonstrations, lobbying, conference papers, community development events, fundraising and research. SWAG gives a sex-work perspective without outing individual workers.
SWAG conducts research into the effects of the Prostitution Act 2000. A private sex worker has explained to SWAG:
"The act requires me to work alone, and by law it is an offence to work with anyone else in the house. This is not only impractical and unrealistic, but is totally offensive... it does not take into account the tradition of working with a receptionist or a fellow-worker, for the purposes of safety and the running of a good business."
A street worker described her relationship with the police: "I was consistently the target of the police who were in control of street prostitution. I guess this was because I took the stance where I stood up for my rights and the rights of fellow street workers. This meant that I attracted more than my fair share of attention from the police such as them pulling up on the front verge of my property, putting their loudspeakers on and calling out my name over the loudspeaker thus causing me to feel embarrassed, angry."
Queensland and Victoria have, in the last decade, already established a licensing regime for the sex industry. Tight rules, character checks, high costs and zoning requirements have resulted in sex industry operators not being able to successfully gain a license.
In Queensland, the average time for license approval is 231 days, and less than 10% of the industry is licensed. For every premises that was approved for the sex industry, 10 towns or regions were granted permission to refuse brothel development. In Victoria, the Attorney General's Street Prostitution Advisory Group noted the number of illegal sex industry premises has doubled since the introduction of licensing.
In NSW, local councils were left to develop their own policies and liaise with the industry after the laws were relaxed there 10 years ago. South Sydney Council's sex industry policy won a national award from the Royal Australian Planning Institute last year.
WA has taken licensing and criminalisation further than any other state. Under the proposed laws, individual sex workers will have to pay for a license. Workers will have to be licensed either to a particular boss or to their home address where they will have to work alone.
Referring clients from one worker to another, employing another worker to see clients while on holiday or describing service in advertising will be illegal. Sex workers' doctors will be determined by the board, and their medical records the property of the board. Sex workers may not have advocacy when applying for a license and the board may investigate a worker at any time. The intention of the bill is for workers to have no access to natural justice, procedural fairness or administrative law.
The Coalition for Decriminalisation of Sex Work was formed by the initiative of SWAG to campaign for changes to the prostitution act. Its members include the Women's Electoral Lobby, UnionsWA, the Greens WA, the Democrats, Family Planning WA, the Scarlet Alliance, the Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations and many others.
To keep up to date with the SWAG campaign you can visit the SWAG website at <http://home.iprimus.com.au/hunter5/> or join the CDSW by emailing <mboetcher@iinet.net.au>.
From Green Left Weekly, February 12, 2003.
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