Wednesday, 18 June 2025

Operation Inglenook

Gabrielle DE VIETRI (Richmond) (19:13): (1197) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Health: for the state government to call on the federal government to end Operation Inglenook. Operation Inglenook has seen dozens of armed police in midnight raids on legal sex work venues. Sex workers have reported police forcing their way into rooms while a worker is mid-booking, cancelling visas and detaining people on the spot. Some workers do not speak or read English and have not been allowed to access interpreters or lawyers or even been given information about their legal rights. Ninety-three per cent of people deported through Operation Inglenook since 2022 have been young women, nearly all from Asian countries. Singling the sex industry out for visa compliance enforcement causes widespread harm and fuels stigma and discrimination against migrant sex workers in my electorate in Victoria and sex work more broadly. We do not see raids like this in other industries. You do not see armed squads raiding cafes and putting hospo workers in cuffs or forcing their way into aged care facilities in the middle of the night.

Decriminalisation in Victoria has been life-changing for people who work in the sex industry, but raids like this put everyone at risk. They push workers and workplaces back underground because they foster a feeling of criminality in workplaces that are actually lawful. This operation, which claims to protect migrant sex workers, actually just profiles and threatens sex workers. As a result, sex workers are living in fear and are not accessing basic services that support their health and wellbeing while they are working. Research shows that these raids do not work as an effective deterrent and disproportionately hurt the workers at these sites without resulting in substantial detection of unscrupulous migration agents or bosses.

The Scarlet Alliance asserts that exploitative bosses or fraudulent migration agents can be uncovered in other ways: by empowering and supporting sex workers to report crime, have access to legal migration pathways and be protected from deportation when they come forward. This government must also continue to support the organisations that support sex workers, like Southside Justice, like the Scarlet Alliance and like Vixen. Minister, please call on the federal government to end Operation Inglenook and instead empower and support sex workers to report crime and exploitation.