FLEUR* is worried. Worried she will be blackmailed into sex, worried she will be forced underground, most of all, worried the police will turn her protector to her persecutor.
Fleur works from home, has a long list of clients, and is scrupulous when it comes to paying her taxes. But she fears her job, her entire industry, could go from being open and transparent to closed and ripe for corruption.
“We don’t want to return to the situation where we would routinely either have to pay off police, provide sexual services or be arrested,” said the Sydney sex worker.
Her worries have risen due to a recent NSW inquiry into the regulation of brothels which is due to hand down its recommendations next week. Currently the state is one of the few places worldwide where sex work is completely decriminalised.
But just as momentum builds towards other countries following NSW’s lead, with Amnesty recently calling for full decriminalisation globally, the inquiry could recommend adopting far tougher regulations already in place in Victoria and Queensland. Sex workers say this will lead to corruption and illegal activity, with vulnerable women the victims.
MASSAGE PARLOURS
The chair of the committee overseeing the inquiry, Ku-ring-gai MP Alister Henskens, said its investigation was vital to “close loopholes” that allowed undercover brothels to masquerade as massage parlours, often only metres from schools.
“Local councils and residents are concerned about how to deal with unauthorised brothels and sex services premises,” he said.
Willoughby council, on Sydney’s north shore, has 10 authorised brothels but the authority said it has served closure orders on 34 unauthorised premises since May 2009.
Sex work in Australia is mired in a confusing tangle of laws from completely legal in NSW to utterly illegal in South Australia.
“I’ve been working as a sex worker for ten years,” Fleur tells news.com.au, “In the past I used to work in [brothels] but now I’m an independent home-based sex worker. Most of my clients I would see more than once and some I’ve been seeing some for close to a decade.”
Proposals to increase red tape alarm Fleur who said she would effectively become an outlaw.
“I used to live in Melbourne and there one job you do could be legal and the other illegal.”
Tough regulations won’t stamp out sex work, it will send it underground, she said. “It sets up sex workers as second class citizens.”
The CEO of Australia’s sex workers association Scarlet Alliance, Janelle Fawkes, said it was “absurd” they were having to defend the industry from regulation, the high cost of which led some people and brothels to simply fail to register and operate outside the law.
SEX WORK LICENSING
“Licensing in Queensland and Victoria has been a failure and has resulted in high levels of noncompliance while decriminalisation [in NSW] has delivered extremely good health outcomes and removed barriers to reporting crimes.”
“So what needs to be fixed? Do we want to return to a time when we risk major levels of police corruption?” said Ms Fawkes.
Police corruption was one of the key reasons behind sex work being decriminalised in NSW in the mid-1990s after evidence emerged in the Wood royal commission that brothel owners would regularly ply officers with alcohol and sexual services in an attempt to keep their business activities under wraps.
But NSW Police Deputy Commissioner Nick Kaldas told the inquiry the pendulum had swung too far and sensible oversight was now required. Brothel owners banned elsewhere “simply move to Sydney and set up shop,” while women — particularly from Asia — were being corralled into sexual slavery.
“As it is right now, there exists next to no regulation, no enforcement and abuses are far more likely to go undetected with horrible consequences for individuals.”
TOUGHER REGULATION NOT WORKING
However, the Australian Federal Police, which has the primary responsibility for policing sex trafficking, said of the six investigations it has recently conducted in NSW no offences had been identified and no convictions recorded. This was in contrast to Victoria, which has tougher regulations around sex work and where ten investigations were underway.
Ms Fawkes said registration of individual sex workers, which was flagged by Mr Kaldas as a possibility in NSW, would drive women into the shadows.
“If a person has to balance up whether they would participate in registration and the risk it may be used against them in, say, a custody battle then of course you wouldn’t register,” said Ms Fawkes.
Victoria’s Brothel Licensing Authority confirmed to news.com.au it would be illegal for a sex worker, like Fleur, to operate from home in the state. If she wanted to operate independently, and visit hotels or clients’ homes, Fleur would be required to register with the authority. But this registration could never be scrubbed from the history books even if the person later left the profession.
Sex workers are not required to register in Queensland and the state’s Prostitution Licensing Authority said there had been no convictions of sex trafficking since the organisation was set up 15 years ago.
But, said Ms Fawkes, with only 23 legal brothels in Queensland, it was likely much of the industry was operating outside the law with no oversight.
TRUST
Inquiry committee member and MP for Sydney, Alex Greenwich, said the positive relationship built up between the sex work industry and the authorities was at risk.
“I would be really concerned at the possibility of further regulation over sex workers and it would show we have learnt nothing from the historic connection between sex work and police corruption.”
In Victoria, Fleur said, she knew of sex workers who had, “faced standover tactics, not from clients, but from people who know the laws around sex work and know sex workers are unlikely to go to police”.
In NSW it was different. “Sex workers feel able to go to the police and that would change under a licensing system because we would no longer trust them.”
If MPs moved to enshrine new and restrictive laws on sex work in NSW, Fleur said, they could be assured those in the industry would hit back with a “colourful” response.
“I’m sure there will be more than one pollie who will deserve a spanking.”
*Name changed to protect identity.
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