Emblazoned on Fiona Patten’s former Sex Party T-shirt are the words; ‘we’re serious about sex.’ Well Fiona, so is the Australian public who deserve the truth when it comes to the viability of prostitution matters. If you haven’t already heard the news, Fiona Patten is set to spearhead Victoria’s review into the sex trade – the largest inquiry of its kind into the ‘industry’ in 35 years.
How can a member of parliament be expected to conduct an unbiased review into the issues pertaining to the sex trade, when the MP is in fact the leader of a party formerly known as the ‘Australian Sex Party’? Patten is known for promoting the misleading idea that the sex trade is a viable industry for the participants involved. The entire premise of the review is riding on the fact that the sex trade is running rampant with abuse, criminal activity and carries with it, negative stigma. This is the premise of the review that Fiona Patten wishes to lead in order to reverse the damage. Instead of doing the logical thing, and criminalising an industry that is fraught with unlawful behaviour, Fiona wishes to attempt to legitimise this corrupted trade. It’s a bit like attempting to put forth a case to legitimise drug use, by getting the government to begin facilitating the use of psychedelics.
The review into the sex trade will be nothing more than Fiona’s misguided attempt to regulate a criminal industry – not realising that there are just some issues in the world that the government cannot regulate effectively, because alongside the regulated stuff, unregulated stuff proliferates because the demand for the lawful stuff begins to increase, creating the perfect environment for criminals to get away with more than what they otherwise would have if the enterprise in question was illegal altogether.
If Fiona Patten conducts this review, there will be a conflict of interest that would potentially undermine the integrity of the review in terms of having it do what a review should be doing. In order to conduct a review of this nature properly, ideally there should be a member of parliament leading the inquiry, who will competently conduct the review with full intentions to mitigate the damage of the sex trade. After observing the research available regarding mistreatment, coercion and drugs, regarding the sex trade scene, it will be almost impossible to conduct a review into the industry and come to the conclusion that it is a viable, economically sound trade that benefits the majority of those involved. For one thing, the review will, by virtue of investigation, uncover a good deal of criminal activity, and secondly it will strive to mitigate it. But how will the government be able to step into an industry and properly regulate a trade that proliferates under criminal behaviour? According to research conducted by Curtin university (and led by Julia Bates, a sex trade advocate), 40% of the prostituted individuals surveyed (the majority of whom were non-migrants) responded suggesting that the sex trade benefitted them. That’s less than half of those who were surveyed, and those who were surveyed were amongst the most ‘privileged’ prostituted individuals to begin with. The claim Fiona Patten would have to make as both a sex trade advocate and the figurehead of the Victorian review would then have to paint the sex trade as either a significantly more romanticised trade then it truly is, or implement policies that abate trauma within the industry, which would be both expensive to the taxpayer and illogical, to put women in vulnerable situations by making the industry out to be something worth working within, when current research says it clearly isn’t.
The truth of the matter is, that the purchase of sex is nothing more than a rape that has been consented to, largely because the prostituted individual involved has limited means of making a living elsewhere. A job where coercion, STIs, assault, rape, murder, torture, mutilation and psychological infliction may be an everyday occurrence is not the sort of industry one readily walks into unless they believe they have no other options.
Some may take on a liberal feminist stance, claiming that they enjoy being part of the trade, but these individuals are few and far between, and greatly outnumbered by Australia’s most underprivileged individuals, non-citizens or illegal migrants who make up the vast portion of prostituted individuals within Australia.
In retrospect, the truth is, Australia does need to conduct an inquiry into prostitution in order to understand the full scope of societal crime and trauma that is proliferating within this sphere. Such an inquiry however, should be free from the bias of the likes of sex work advocates, and it should be spearheaded by adequate criminal investigators – not those who want to see a trafficking operation manifest itself in broad daylight, under the guise of ‘sex work,’ which is a euphemistic title designed to mislead the public regarding the true depravity of this so-called ‘industry.’
