Thursday, 10 February 2022

Bills

Sex Work Decriminalisation Bill 2021

Second reading

Debate resumed.

Mr GRIMLEY (Western Victoria) (12:48): Child Wise research with young people in sex work in Melbourne found that 16 out of 30 participants had been in the state care system, while 13 had left home because of physical or sexual abuse or neglect. For many sex workers on visas and migrant sex workers, family violence is also a common experience. We need transition services for these women who do not want to be part of the industry anymore, and they need to be funded properly. If the sex work lobby tried to turn this into a discrimination, I would ask them to consider that whilst they may be educated, enjoy their work immeasurably and be huge advocates for sex work and its perks, there are others who are not doing this work by choice. There are others being exploited, and there are those who have left the industry after traumatic experiences.

You may have read in the explainer that I sent out with my amendments that the sex work industry in the Netherlands is moving away from the full legalisation of sex work. They have the most well known industry in this space in the world, yet they are moving away from the system which we are about to adopt. Shortly after legalising the sex industry in the early 2000s the USA’s Department of State ranked the Netherlands as one of the top five countries of origin for trafficking victims worldwide. Given this, it is not shocking to see the Netherlands moving towards requiring all sex workers and sex work businesses to have a permit as well as raising the age of legal prostitution to 21. They say:

A national register of sex business with a permit will be set up. There will also be a register of prostitution permits.

They say that this is due to the growth of the industry and the fact that it is ‘unchecked’. Basically this means that with the passing of this bill without amendments we will have an unchecked industry with virtually no oversight. As other evidence shows, we will also continue to have a two-tier system like they still have in the Netherlands, where certain businesses avoid all planning processes and local compliance despite the bill seeking to move away from this two-tier system.

Victoria Police, Professor Peter Miller, the Uniting Church, Project Respect, the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women Australia (CATWA) and a whole range of other bodies are not happy with the supply of liquor in brothels. I have to say that I was a bit perplexed as to why we need to supply a substance that blurs the lines of consent in places where sexual services are offered. A review of literature on alcohol use among female sex workers and their male clients published in 2010 reviewed 70 articles covering 76 studies. The review found that alcohol use by female sex workers and their male clients was associated with adverse physical health, illicit drug use, mental health problems, victimisation and sexual violence. A study from the Netherlands found that sex workers working in contexts where alcohol was sold drank more than other sex workers and that clients’ use of alcohol increased aggression towards sex workers. Further, there are concerns among several groups that some brothel owners may adopt a practice of having their employees promote the sale of alcoholic beverages to their clients to drive up the profits of the alcohol side of the business. I really hope that this is not the case. Interestingly the discussion paper for the bill points to how the industry might benefit from liquor licensing but does not talk about the benefits for the workers themselves. This is disappointing.

I will speak further about my amendments in the committee of the whole, but I would like to have these circulated now if I can.

Derryn Hinch’s Justice Party amendments circulated by Mr GRIMLEY pursuant to standing orders.

Mr GRIMLEY: In short, these amendments will seek to, firstly, transfer the minister’s delegate review to the Victorian Law Reform Commission; secondly, introduce an offence for prohibited persons owning or running a brothel; and, thirdly, introduce a brothel owners certificate.

In summary, despite all of this talk of sex work reform and reducing stigma around the occupation, it seems to have been lost on the policymakers that there are many sex workers who want to leave the industry. The government needs to provide a commitment that programs assisting with the transition from the industry will be available to all sex workers, whether citizens or those on visas.

I would like to thank the number of people my office has met with in preparation for this bill, as we have not found it easy to assess and form an opinion on it in the absence of the review on which the bill is based. There are good bits in the bill, but as you can tell by my contribution, we do not think it is perfect. We have tried to get as many perspectives on the legislation as possible to make sure as many voices are heard as possible. I would like to thank the New South Wales police and Victoria Police members, including those from the sex industry coordination unit, who do a tremendous job in trying to keep sex workers safe; Professor Peter Miller; Uniting; CATWA; Project Respect; Sex Work Law Reform Victoria; Scarlet Alliance; Vixen Collective, especially Dylan, who my office met with a few times; Tish Sparkle; St Kilda Gatehouse; Jade—a pseudonym—a former sex worker; a number of university professors who have researched in this area; the Queensland sex industry licensing unit; the owner of Lorraine Starr and other premises where sex work occurs; and a range of others. As you can see, we have not taken this bill lightly at all and have sought opinions from far and wide. The welfare and safety of sex workers should be at the forefront of this bill.

In conclusion, we will support this bill due to its decriminalisation of street-based sex work but would caution that this bill does nothing to help women transition out of sex work, nor does it have any prohibition on criminals, sex offenders or other questionable persons owning premises or managing sex workers. This is a problem that we will seek to address through the amendments later.

Sitting suspended 12.54 pm until 2.03 pm.

Mr FINN (Western Metropolitan) (14:04): I rise to speak on the Sex Work Decriminalisation Bill 2021. There would be a good number of people around this state at the moment who would be asking just one question: ‘Why?’. Why would we have this legislation when we have a pandemic to worry about? Why would we be pushing through this legislation when we have a health crisis? We have 80 000 Victorians—many in pain, many in agony—who are on a waiting list for elective surgery. Why would we be pushing through this legislation when we should be concentrating on getting them the treatment that they deserve? Why would we be concentrating on this bill when in fact there are thousands of people who have been forced out of work because of mandates, because they have decided that their right to choose is more important than the government’s right—right, maybe—to tell them how to live their lives? Why are we debating this bill at a time when the Melbourne CBD is dead? Shouldn’t we be concentrating on putting a bit of life back into it? Why are we doing this when small businesses around this state are turning up their toes?

Mr Ondarchie interjected.

Mr FINN: Don’t start that again about going down Bourke Street. We know, Mr Ondarchie, what is going on in this state, and it is tragic. There is so much misery in Victoria, and here we are decriminalising sex workers. Well, that mystifies me. To anybody who asks why we are doing this and why our priorities are the way they are, well, I am going to reply to them in two words—

Mr Ondarchie interjected.

Mr FINN: And that is not it. The two words are ‘Fiona Patten’, because this is the Fiona Patten pay-off bill. It comes very shortly after the pandemic legislation at the end of last year, and of course we know that Ms Patten’s vote was crucial to getting that legislation through, as indeed a whole range of legislation has gotten through—

Mr Ondarchie interjected.

Mr FINN: Well, she said she was not going to vote for it, but she did, and we know why—because this legislation was coming. Basically the government gave her a clean sheet. ‘Do whatever you like’, they said, so she did, and this legislation is a result of that.

I do not know who it was who said this originally, but I recall the late great Senator Frank McManus saying it some years ago. He said—

Mr Ondarchie interjected.

Mr FINN: ‘Vote Mac Back’ indeed, absolutely—when ‘Big Mac’ was not a hamburger. I recall Senator McManus saying that the definition of an honest politician is a politician who, when bought, stays bought. If that is the definition of an honest politician, Ms Patten is a very honest politician because this government has bought her, body and soul, and this legislation is a part of the payment.

We have heard during this debate—and I heard some speakers on Tuesday talking about this—about the need to legitimise prostitution. It is very important, apparently, that we legitimise prostitution. I have to say this confused me a great deal, because I always thought, from listening to many women activists over the years, that prostitution was in fact exploitation of women. This was the argument that was put for many, many years by many feminists. But here we have these same people—or people of the same views—now saying that we have got to legitimise it. It is a total mystery to me. It seems to me that we can do a lot better for marginalised women than to legitimise putting them into prostitution. It seems to me that we can do a lot better for many women by actually helping them. Instead of saying, ‘Go and sell your body on the streets’ or ‘Go and sell your body in a brothel’ or whatever, we could actually help them.

I am grateful to a dear friend of mine over in New Orleans who actually goes out to the brothels and the strip clubs. She and her fellow workers offer help to the women and help them get out of the industry. That might be something that this legislation should look at, but no, not at all, and I think that is pretty sad. Over I am not sure how many years, but certainly over recent years, we have seen women who have been brought to this country, predominantly from Asia, who have had their passports confiscated by people who they trusted, people they believed, people who then went on to exploit them, sometimes for years. They were basically kept captive. They had to sell their bodies, and they got a pittance for that. And you know, there is really nothing in this legislation which is going to challenge anybody who wants to do that, and I think that is very sad.

Now, I want to make it clear that I do not condemn sex workers. I do not condemn anybody who freely wants to involve themselves in sex work. That is up to them. That is their choice, and I wish them well. But there are a lot of women who wish, desperately wish, that they did not have to do this. They want to get out, and this is something that we have not addressed at all. We are saying to these women who find themselves in a situation where they have to do this, otherwise they starve or perhaps their children starve, ‘Well, that’s just the way it is’.

In my view that should not be the way it is. If we are a compassionate society, if we are fair society, we should be giving women more choices. We should be giving women a greater opportunity to live the life that they want to live without having to prostitute themselves. That, to my way of thinking, would be fair, would be compassionate, would be a very reasonable thing. Instead we have legislation which is just going to basically legalise prostitution on every street corner. That in itself is somewhat of a problem, and I will get to that in a minute. But as I say, there are some women, I am sure, I have no doubt, who enjoy the sex work, who enjoy the sex involvement—

Ms Patten: Having sex.

Mr FINN: Well, having sex. They probably enjoy that too. There are a lot of people who enjoy having sex. Ms Patten might be interested to know there are a lot of people who enjoy having sex, and a lot of them are not paid for it. You would not believe it. You would not believe it, would you? That is just extraordinary. I know Ms Patten is really going to struggle to understand it, but that is the simple fact of the matter.

As I said, if people want to do that and they are proud of that, well then I say good luck to them. But you know, where I come from there are not too many little girls—when you say, ‘What do you want to do?’ and they say, ‘I want to be a nurse’ or ‘I want to be a doctor’ or ‘I want to be a teacher’—who say, ‘I want to grow up to be a prostitute’. You do not get that. You know, I would hate to see, if this legislation gets through—and it probably will, I have to concede—this profession legitimised to the point where little girls will say, ‘I want to grow up to be a prostitute’. I think that would be very sad indeed.

Now, I want to get to the planning side of this, because I think this is vitally important. Over the last year or two in my own electorate in the suburb of Williams Landing, a new suburb that has sprung up in the western suburbs, we have been dealing with an illegal brothel which just popped up. They have been using a home in a residential area as an illegal brothel, the owners, and this obviously has caused some consternation, to say the very least, among the neighbours, many of whom are families, many of them with children. That is not something that they want in their neighbourhood.

I just wonder if this legislation is only going to encourage what we have already seen. I do not want to see people having this profession springing up around them in their neighbourhood. I do not think that anybody would really want that. I am not reflecting on the women involved, but certainly I am reflecting on some of the clientele involved, I think it would be fair to say. And whilst I have not surveyed them—Mr Ondarchie might like to; he is particularly good with surveys, I know—I would suggest that there would be at least an element in the clientele that would be undesirables.

You would not want them coming to your own home or indeed to a residence nearby—you would not want them there—and if we have widespread prostitution, brothels, in residential areas, then we are going to have big trouble for a lot of people. All they want to do is live a quiet life. They want to go to work, look after their kids, pay their mortgage, pay their taxes, do all that sort of thing. All of a sudden they have got an illegal brothel next door and everything that goes with it. We do not want that and I would hope that this legislation would not allow that, although listening to Ms Terpstra in particular on Tuesday speaking about the need to legitimise, as she said, sex work, it seems to me that she would have one on every block. It just astounded me, and I am sure it would astound anybody and everybody who has a home.

The question is: is this legislation necessary? I do not think so. We have had legal prostitution in this state for years. I think it was the late John Cain Jr in fact who legalised prostitution back in the 1980s. So we are looking at nearly 40 years of legal prostitution in this state. I am not sure why we need to take it further. Police are not raiding legal brothels and arresting women and locking them up—that is not happening. It has not happened for a very, very long time. God knows it is hard enough to get street prostitutes off the streets, much less those who work in a legal brothel. There is very little need that I can see, if indeed any, for this legislation at all.

Instead we have a wide variety of needs in this state. In fact I would go as far as saying that the needs in this state are more than we have seen probably in the past hundred years. There is an enormous need for government to get out there, roll up its sleeves and do the things that make people’s lives better. This legislation I do not think will do that. Certainly for the average person it will have absolutely no impact at all, and that pretty much sums up the position of most people. If you went out there and told people in the general community that that is what we are debating today, they would look at you sideways. They honestly would be stunned, given the needs and the desperate situation that so many people are in in this state at the moment. If you told them we were voting to decriminalise prostitution, they would be stunned, and they would wonder what the hell the MPs in this state, and particularly the government of this state, are thinking about. I think that is a particularly fair question.

I will be supporting the amendment moved by Mr Ondarchie, and if that amendment is defeated I will be joining with the opposition in opposing this bill.

Ms WATT (Northern Metropolitan) (14:19): As a little girl in the 1990s I lived on Vale Street, St Kilda. I have indeed lived in a number of places, but there was something about that place in particular that has stuck in my memory even all these years later. Anyone that has lived in St Kilda, particularly in those gritty days, will know of Vale Street. It was the centre of street sex workers in St Kilda. I must confess, when my folks moved into St Kilda we were a little naive as to the neighbourhood. Little did we know that, fast-forward a few weeks, we would be all too aware of why the rent was so cheap. My late father was appalled at what was happening on our street and in particular the working conditions, lives, health and safety of those women.

He decided to be a one-man safety and support crew for these workers and for these women. He cleaned the streets, provided medical care and talked to the police all too frequently when required. I often wondered when I was little why it was up to Dad to ensure a safe street for the residents and to support these workers when they lived with violence all too much? So today I am feeling pretty reflective of those early years in the 1990s as I rise to speak on the Sex Work Decriminalisation Bill 2021.

I am just flooded with memories, and I just want to take a moment to thank the friends that I made on that street as a little girl. I am hearing all sorts of stories about little girls and what they dream about, but I dreamed about being as nice and compassionate, kind and warm as those women were to me as a little girl. I made some very foundational judgements about women in those years. I saw women working, and I saw women being proud of who they were. Sometimes I became enormously proud of my dad. More and more I think about those years. I think about how many times he was arrested for coming home. I think about the fact that I learned about dealing with police and talking with police when we lived on Vale Street. I do not have this in my remarks. I am just completely flooded with the memories of those years. And I am thinking now about coming full circle and now being able to speak here as a member of Parliament in defence of sex workers. So this is pretty special.

This is a pretty big reform. It is one that is wildly overdue. Currently in Victoria sex work is regulated under a legalised model. This means that sex work is only legal if it takes place within the licensing and registration system established by the Sex Work Act 1994. Any sex work that occurs outside this act is criminalised. At the core of this current system is the underpinning ideology that sex work is not real work, that sex workers do not deserve to be treated in the same way as other workers—that is something my family rejected a really long time ago and we continue to reject now—and that sex workers do not deserve protection in their workplace or access to health and safety mechanisms that keep other Victorian workers safe when they go to work each day.

But from the outset can I just say this: sex work is legitimate work, and it is time that Victoria recognised this. This bill affirms this statement, ensures that we can support sex workers’ safety and ensures that sex work is safe work. Our current system of criminalisation is not fit for purpose. It is complex, it is costly and it is onerous. Because of this we see poor compliance and the growth of a large unlicensed sex work industry here in our state. As a result we see a two-tiered system for the safety of sex workers based on where they work, with many sex workers in unlicensed workplaces facing unsafe working conditions, exacerbated by the stigma, discrimination and lack of autonomy experienced by sex workers. This impacts the health and safety of these workers at work and in our community.

The stigmatisation of sex work is a key factor in the need for this reform. Criminalisation perpetuates the stigmatisation of sex work, and it helps to entrench our dated negative perceptions of the industry, perceptions which impact the mental health of these workers; drive violence against sex workers; create barriers to accessing appropriate health care—hopefully that health care is much better than we provided back in the 1990s on Vale Street—social services and housing; and limit educational and employment opportunities for workers. And we know that sex workers working in unlicensed sectors are even more vulnerable in the system. They are often the most disadvantaged sex workers, those from migrant communities and gender-diverse sex workers. These are the workers who are more likely to be in the illegal area.

The consequences are clear. They are not safe. They do not feel they have the agency to report unfair work practices even all these years later. They do not feel like they have the ability to report crimes to police. I am just so surprised that this is still the case—when I think about the women that my dad supported near on 30 years ago that in fact it is still the case. This is discrimination and stigma in action impacting the health and safety of workers in our state. We know that many sex workers are afraid to report crimes to the police out of fear of self-incrimination. This approach pushes bad behaviour in the industry further underground, out of the eyes of regulators, social services and the community. It does not help anyone. It does not reduce harm or reduce the impact on the community. Rather it increases it. Decriminalisation is a much, much needed reform.

This bill recognises that sex work is a legitimate form of work and enshrines that position in law. The reforms in this bill will safeguard sex worker safety and rights and ensure that sex work is safe work. Under this bill and the decriminalisation framework sex work businesses will be treated in exactly the same way as other Victorian businesses and will be regulated through standard planning, occupational health and safety and all the other business regulations that apply to businesses in Victoria. Victoria Police will remain responsible for enforcing criminal laws. This bill repeals the Sex Work Act of 1994, an act that criminalises any sex work outside of its bounds. As I said earlier, this system is clunky, it is complex, it is costly and it is onerous. Indeed it does not make the community or sex workers any safer. This bill repeals the act and will make amendments to other acts to decriminalise consensual sex work between adults. It will abolish the sex work licensing system and instead will regulate sex work businesses through mainstream regulators.

This bill brings in a range of reforms to be implemented over two years after royal assent. These reforms will increase safety, reduce stigma and improve access to government health and justice services. Stage 1 will commence no later than 1 March this year and will include the following reforms: decriminalisation of street-based sex work in most locations, repeal of public health offences under the Sex Work Act, repeal of the small owner-operator sex work service provider register, amendment of advertising controls applicable to the sex work industry, amendments to the Equal Opportunity Act 2010 and a number of other transitional arrangements.

Stage 2 will commence no later than 1 December 2023 and will include the following reforms: abolishing the licensing system, re-enacting offences relating to children and coercion in other legislation to ensure their continued operation following repeal of the Sex Work Act, amending definitions across the statute book that relate to the sex work industry, making further changes to advertising controls to reflect the repeal of the licensing system, establishing appropriate liquor controls for the sex work industry—I have got a couple more here—amending the Public Health and Wellbeing Act 2008 and a number of other consequential amendments.

A number of other speakers have spoken about the planning rules and what that will mean. These parameters will create new guidance for local governments and the community about where sex work premises can be located. These parameters include that sex work premises should be treated the same as shops, which is a category of land use across the Victorian planning system, with no additional controls or conditions. This means that sex services premises will be encouraged to be established in mixed use and commercial 1 zones and be able to apply for permits in a wide range of relevant zones. Sex services premises should also be able to continue to operate in industrial areas with a permit. Sex workers working from home will be treated like any other home-based business with no additional controls or conditions. These businesses should be subject to the same restrictions on the number of workers and permit thresholds. Statutory guidance should be issued to ensure local governments cannot introduce measures that conflict with these policy parameters or undermine the intent of decriminalisation. The Minister for Planning will be responsible for implementing these under the Planning and Environment Act 1987, including further technical consultations with local government that will occur.

This is a really complex reform, and I have got much more to say. But it does cover a range of areas and issues to ensure that this is done right and it is done properly and achieves the desired outcomes. And of course it comes after a very comprehensive piece of work. As this place would know, in 2020 before I got here the Victorian government asked Fiona Patten, one of my fellow representatives in Melbourne’s Northern Metropolitan Region, to lead a review into the decriminalisation of sex work in Victoria. I recall it because at that time I was involved in Women’s Health Victoria, and I believe we made a submission, and by ‘we’ I mean that organisation which I was previously affiliated with. As part of this review there were 54 individual consultation sessions as well as 64 written submissions. I know that this is an issue that can be polarising in the community, and I have had a wide range of stakeholders and constituents contact me about this issue. I am confident, after listening to these voices and knowing the large amount of engagement no doubt that was done throughout this review, that the balance here is right and it is appropriate. Can I thank those that contacted me about this bill before us today.

I note the submission from the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission discussing what the evidence shows with respect to other jurisdictions that have decriminalised sex work and have regulated it in a consistent manner and that in that we have seen far greater public health and human rights outcomes, health care access for sex workers increases, access to the justice system and community services increases. Equal opportunity and human rights law support the decriminalisation of sex work. So thank you to Ms Patten, who had been advocating for this reform long before she came into this place and before I did and who has done the work to get it done. Thank you, Fiona, for helping to push for this reform to happen. It is important work, and I am just so proud to be here.

This is indeed a complex issue, but ultimately, regardless of one’s personal views and beliefs about sex work, one thing can be certain: Victorian workers have the right to be protected at work. For far too long we have allowed a group of workers in this state to be exposed to unsafe and in many cases harmful situations at their workplace, and for far too long the stigma and entrenched and outdated ideology have been reinforced through the frameworks that deal with sex work, which are worse. They are ineffective. This is a reasonable and balanced step forward. This is about listening to sex workers and the industry, and this is about making sure that they can go to work and be safe. Sex work is real work, and sex work should be safe work. This is a message this bill sends loud and clear. I know that this is a reform that many have been waiting for—and for a long time. It is time to get it done.

I just want to take a moment to reflect on Vale Street. I know how much of a tough street that is and the folks that have been involved in that for such a very long time, and I cannot help but, when I go past it, each and every time that I do—and I was reflecting with the member for Albert Park very recently about the history of Vale Street—not only reflect on my history there in the early 1990s but proudly sit up and say I did something for the memory of Vale Street, for the memory of those women who I had seen one day and never saw again and for my late dad, who stood up for them all too many times that I can count. This is for me a really special day, so thank you. I commend this bill.

Ms LOVELL (Northern Victoria) (14:34): I rise to speak on this bill before the house, the Sex Work Decriminalisation Bill 2021, as well. I just want to make a very short contribution. There are a couple of points in this legislation that do concern me. Victoria has had a very highly regulated sex worker industry for a long time now. I think that all of us are adult enough to know that this is the oldest profession in the world, it will not go away and it serves its purpose. But it also needs to be regulated in a way that protects both the workers and their customers. The two sections of this bill that do worry me are the removal of the health checks and also the changes to the Equal Opportunity Act 2010.

A brothel owner from my electorate has written to me, and I would just like to read a very short piece of his letter to me to indicate his concerns about this legislation too. This owner said he has had 20 years of being a licensed sex service provider and that has taught him a lot about the sex industry. He writes:

One feature of my learning has been the respect I have for women working in the sex industry.

I am proud of my record of helping women in and out of the sex industry.

I am not proud of what the Andrew’s Government is doing with the Sex Work Decriminalisation Bill 2021.

The Bill sets out to threaten the well-being of sex workers, their clients and the community at large; I refer to the transmission of sexual infection and disease.

The Bill now before the Parliament if passed in its current form will remove in March 2022 the need for sex workers to have their medical checks.

Minister Melissa Horne is wrong when she says the incidence of STI is now very low so we don’t need the medical checking of the sex workers. The Minister is right that the incidence of disease is down, but wrong because it is the very medical checking that has brought the incidence of the disease down.

The Minister says she will develop a program to educate the sex workers but she has done nothing about that at his moment.

I think that owner of that brothel has a very good point. It is a concern that the medical checks are being removed, and that may place sex workers and their clients at risk of the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases and infections. Of course these changes to the Sex Work Act 1994 will bring a whole new cohort of workers under the new regulation—people who were not regulated before. They will not be required to have health checks, and they have not been required to because they were not operating within the boundaries of the law, so we do not know what that may mean for the incidence of sexually transmitted diseases in the future. I think that that owner of that brothel has a very legitimate point and that the government should not be seeking to remove those health checks, because they are there for the safety both of the workers and their clients.

The other part of the bill that particularly concerns me is the repealing of section 62 of the Equal Opportunity Act 2010, which is of course the section that gives people the right to refuse accommodation to a person who intends to use that accommodation for sex work. I remember when there was a brothel application before the Greater Shepparton City Council some years ago, and it was very contentious. As we know, whenever there is a planning application for a sex shop or a brothel it is always very contentious in communities. The council in Shepparton approved that application because they knew that if they opposed it and it went to VCAT it would get up anyway and it would only cost the community a lot of money, but approving the application actually cost many of the councillors their positions on council because there was a great deal of opposition to the brothel within the community of Shepparton.

As we know, most people do not really understand the difference between what is a council issue and what is a state government or federal government issue, and they come to our offices on a range of things. We had many approaches about the planning application for the brothel. We had an elderly lady come into the office one afternoon, and she said to the staff that she wanted to talk to me about the brothel. The staff explained to her that that planning application was an issue for council and that really she should be talking to the councillors. She said, ‘I just want to talk to Wendy about it’. So the girls came in and said to me, ‘The lady wants to talk to you’, and I said, ‘Fine. I’m happy to talk to anyone about anything. It’s just not within my jurisdiction’.

When I brought her into my office and she sat down to talk to me, she said, ‘Wendy, you probably think I’m here to lobby you against the planning approval of the brothel, but actually I’m here to ask for you to lobby the council to make sure that they approve the brothel’. She went on to explain to me that she was the mother of an adult disabled son, and because her adult disabled son had the mental capacity of maybe a 12-year-old, she tried to suppress in her mind for many years that he would have any sexual urges. Then she said one day there was a girl walking past their house, and her son grabbed the girl by the hair and was dragging her into the house. She said, ‘I had to come to terms with the fact that my son did have these urges and that I needed to do something to ensure that he did not put anyone in the community at risk’.

So she said, ‘Did you know there’s three mobile brothels that operate in this town?’, and of course, yes, I was aware of that. One of them was not far from our office, and we used to see the girls sitting outside having a cigarette. She said, ‘I have to have those girls in my home’, and she said, ‘They come into our street, into a suburban street where children are playing in the street, and they are totally inappropriately dressed. Not only do the children see them coming and going from the house, my neighbours see them coming and going from my house, which is an embarrassment to me’. She said, ‘I also can’t stay in the house while they are there. I just can’t bear to be there’, and she said, ‘I worry for the security of my home while I’m not there, and I would far rather take my son down to the industrial area where they plan to build this brothel and drop him off and pick him up later than have the sex workers coming into our suburban environment, have my neighbours seeing them coming and going from my house, have that feeling of being insecure about somebody I don’t really know being in my home when I’m not there’.

I thought this was a very, very good argument for why the council should approve the brothel. I totally agreed with her. The sex work was happening in our town, people were going into environments where there were children and it made perfect sense to me that she would rather drop her son off at the brothel than have to have a sex worker in her home. She was not being discriminatory about those girls at all, but she was concerned about what her neighbours thought and concerned about children being exposed to sex work activity—which, as we have just heard, Ms Watt was exposed to as a child as well.

So it does concern me, the removal of this section from the Equal Opportunity Act, because it does mean that once again we could have sex work operating in an environment where people who do not want to be exposed to it are now going to be exposed to it. Take the apartment building that I have an apartment in, which I use when I come down here for Parliament. On our floor there are many retired people who have chosen to buy apartments in the city and retire into the inner-city area. We often have a drink on a Sunday afternoon—if I am down, I join them, and they always talk about how lovely our floor is and how lovely the neighbours are and how lucky we are to have such a nice environment that we have our apartments in. It worries me; these people have bought into apartment buildings that have high security: they have fobs to get in and out; there are security officers roaming around in the car parks and stuff. And they have bought into areas with security for a reason. The removal of this section from the Equal Opportunity Act would allow for somebody to rent an apartment on that floor, to be conducting sex work on that floor and to be allowing entry to their clients, which would not only mean that the security of the building was lesser but also that the physical enjoyment and the amenity for the people who actually owned those apartments and who have retired there—for a reason, because it is a secure spot and because they enjoy that location and they own those apartments—was lesser. They could possibly have a lesser enjoyment of their environment.

So I am really concerned about those two sections of the bill, amongst other things in the bill that a lot of my colleagues have already set out very clearly. The Liberal Party do have a reasoned amendment. I recommend to other members in the chamber that they support the Liberal Party’s reasoned amendment and that we go back and look at this bill more holistically. All of us should have the opportunity to see that report before we pass legislation that has been based on a report that we have not been allowed to see. I would say to other members of the Parliament, please consider the reasoned amendment that will be put forward by Mr Ondarchie and support that. Let us start again and let us come up with legislation that we can all support.

Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (14:46): I am pleased to speak to the Sex Work Decriminalisation Bill 2021—2021. We first started fighting for the decriminalisation of sex work in Victoria in the 1980s, so it has been nearly 40 years in the making. We have gone through many iterations. We have had two steps forward, a couple of steps back—forward, back—but I hope today we will finally see a bill that decriminalises sex work in Victoria passed.

I have been around since the 1980s in this debate, and I have seen a lot of this debate from a lot of areas, so it is interesting to see this culmination in this chamber. Certainly when I was sitting in the Prostitutes Collective of Victoria in Grey Street, in a ridiculously smoke-filled room, talking about decriminalisation, talking about how we were going to get changes, I do not think I ever expected to be in this place talking about the legislation from this side of the chamber. So I am proud to be part of this campaign.

This bill is for everyone. It is for everyone who has been working under these draconian laws that have not protected us. They have not protected sex workers; they have not protected the community. They have not protected the people in the industry—the sex workers, the brothel owners, the managers, the receptionists. Fundamentally the current legislation is not fit for purpose. I will talk later about this, but I do want to acknowledge that Victoria has actually made progressive steps in the past, and this is another progressive step for Victoria in this area. But I really want to acknowledge all of the people who have probably knocked on your doors, who have probably written submissions to you all, who have been fighting for this for decades. I acknowledge the sex worker organisations, the sex workers, the advocates and our allies—so many countless individuals, hundreds of people, since, as I say, the early 1980s. Actually I think the Australian Prostitutes Collective started in 1975, so we have had a sex worker voice since the 1970s in Australia, and that is actually quite unique around the world. There are so many giants of this industry, so many passionate people in this industry. I am not going to name people because there are too many to name and some of them are no longer with us, sadly, but right now this is a very proud moment for all of us and it is a very momentous occasion for all of us.

The other reason I cannot mention everyone’s names is that still we live double lives. Still sex workers act under pseudonyms. Still sex workers cannot tell their family what they do and cannot tell their lecturer what they do. Still we turn up at Parliament in wigs, we turn up with masks—we turn up in disguise because we are still fearful of being outed. We are still fearful of speaking about being a sex worker.

I remember the time I was outed. It was a fairly spectacular outing; it was on the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald. It was before the internet, thankfully, but my parents did have a fax machine, so my parents’ friends in Sydney were delighted to send them the article that made the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald. It was a conversation that probably should have happened long before, but we were able to have that conversation. I had a very supportive family and we worked through it. There may have been some tears at times, but we worked through it. But for many people it is not as easy, and coming out as a sex worker is not easy, And for many it is still impossible. This legislation will help change that because it decriminalises sex work. It decriminalises consenting sex acts between consenting adults. It is pretty simple. It is just that.

But it is more than that, because that sex, as we have heard today—and I know some of it is joking. I know when Mr Finn gets up and tells us a couple of jokes and writes down for the speakers list that it is the hookers and knocking shop bill, it is done in humour. I understand that, but it still hurts, it still has an impact and it still stigmatises people who work in this industry. Right now we have legislation that has created two tiers. We have legislation that has created illegal brothels and has meant that sex workers have had to work illegally, which has put them at risk. It has made it very difficult for them when a crime might be committed and they want to report a crime to report that as someone who is committing a crime at the same time. That law has made our sex workers vulnerable to violence and vulnerable to coercion, so decriminalising it will do just the opposite. It will help prevent coercion, it will help prevent violence against sex workers.

And I hope it changes the stigma, changes the view. Mr Finn was saying: what is wrong with having sex? Well, there is nothing wrong with it, but for some reason if you get paid for it, you are somehow a victim. You somehow never wanted to do that. You somehow would only do that because you were absolutely desperate and had no other way of supporting your family and had no other way of putting yourself through school. This is not the case, but this is the stigma and this is the rhetoric that sits around sex workers. I hope that this bill when it passes will change some of that rhetoric. And I do not think I am alone in that—I know I am not alone in that. I have listened to some great people speaking about that today, but even those that have not spoken in favour of this bill have also pointed out the failings of the existing legislation, so I think if there is one thing we can all agree on in this chamber it is that what we have got now is not working. What we got now is not fit for purpose.

Much has been made about things like sex workers possibly having alcohol at work and having a drink with sex. This bill is not about me, but I have to say I may have been guilty of having a drink and possibly getting cosy with my partner afterwards. It reminds me I have been reading this great book, The Women of Little Lon. It was written by Barbara Minchinton, and I really commend it to the house. It is a terrific read. It is a book written by a historian and an archaeologist, and they looked at this precinct and the history of sex work in this precinct, which pretty much started with this precinct. When Melbourne was first settled sex workers came. It is a romp of a read and it is brilliant.

But it reminded me of John Pascoe Fawkner, who we all know was one of the founding fathers of Melbourne. Much of Melbourne is named after John Fawkner. Interestingly, he was a teetotaller, but he was also the publisher of the Port Phillip Patriot and Melbourne Advertiser. He was scathing of brothels—they set people off dancing in the streets, they were a disgrace, they were disgusting. When you dig a little deeper, the other thing that we know about Mr Fawkner is that he was also a publican, and what he did not like about the brothels was that they sold alcohol. That was what he really did not like about them. And what he also did not like about them was that they sold good alcohol—they sold absinthe, they sold champagne. He was quite often stuck with just colonial wine—I think ‘wine’ is probably a big stretch for what you would call that drink.

So we have had sex work and we have had brothels around this area. I think Mr Limbrick mentioned the missing mace from Parliament. There was a very brilliant building on Little Lonsdale Street called the Boccaccio, and that is apparently where it found its home. The Duke of Edinburgh, when he came to Parliament, did not stay at the Governor-General’s house—I do not think the Governor-General’s house was there then. He stayed at Mrs Fraser’s on Stephen Street, which was a brothel. He had a woman he was very keen on there, so he stayed there. In fact some wag actually put up the Duke’s coat of arms outside the front of the brothel. It is also reported, as I mentioned, that there were lots of debates about criminalising sex work and lots of debates about, ‘We must close this industry down; it’s terrible, it’s terrible, it’s terrible’. However, we never did, and in fact what was found and what has been discovered is that many of the landlords of those actual brothels that many of the women rented were elected representatives of this house. While I know I quite cheekily in my inaugural speech said I may have been the first sex worker to stand in this place, many clients had come before me, and it would appear landlords of brothels have also had a seat in this place.

There is this concern about what will happen if sex workers have alcohol and what will happen if we change the mandatory sexual health requirements—it will mean that somehow sex workers will become vectors of disease and will go out there and infect the hapless clients. It is just not true, and it further perpetuates this idea that sex work is immoral, that it cannot be trusted, that sex workers are untrustworthy. You could not possibly think that a sex worker could have alcohol and still look after themselves—that they could offer a client a glass of wine and that they could look after their own health without being told by the government to do so. I would just like to remind everyone that in the 1980s, when HIV landed on our shores, sex workers were the first to start acting on it, the first to be buying condoms in bulk, the first to be insisting on condom use. And may I also note that that was long before any form of sexual health was mandated. It was long before many of those brothels and places where they worked were legal. They were working illegally, and surprise, surprise—no, not a surprise at all—they were looking after their own health.

A lot of people have been concerned that there are going to be sex workers on every corner of the street, that their lovely neighbourhood is going to have sex workers in it, that in some of the apartment buildings around the city there may be sex workers. I am sorry to break it to you: they are there now. While back in the 1800s there was a lot of dancing in the street, there was a lot of live music and there were a lot of folk whooping up a good time, the industry is a lot more discreet these days. I have not met a client or heard of a client wanting to make a big song and dance about going in to pay for sex; it is not something that necessarily they want to share with the world.

So it is a discreet industry, which is why you are already living next door to a sex worker. You are already living next door to a client. You may be living with a client for all you know. Like Ms Lovell’s story: there was her constituent’s son, who was a client of a sex worker. She was happy for her son to be a client of a sex worker; she was not happy for the sex worker to be there. This is what I hope this legislation changes, this attitude around sex work.

Just to, I guess, allay the fears of everyone, sex work has been decriminalised in a number of other jurisdictions and nothing happened. It was really boring. We expected some explosion on the streets. We expected something monumental in Mosman and up in Palm Beach. We were expecting something quite extraordinary when they decriminalised sex work in New South Wales. It was a real let-down. Not much happened. Sex worked continued.

I go back to the 1980s. There was not a single case of HIV transmission between a sex worker and a client ever—not in Victoria, not anywhere in Australia—because sex workers look after their health whether it is legal or illegal. Decriminalisation will not change that and has not changed that. It did not change it in New Zealand, it did not change it in New South Wales, it did not change it in the ACT, it did not change it in the Northern Territory and it will not change it here. So I hope that I can allay some of those fears. Full decriminalisation of this business will do nothing more than regulate this business in the same way as other businesses are regulated—in the same way.

In New South Wales I used to speak to Sydney city council a lot about sex work matters, and more recently while preparing for today I got an update. I said, ‘Look, how many complaints are you getting about the brothels or sex on premises or people working?’. They said, ‘None. We actually don’t get complaints about sex workers’. In one particular building they were telling me that there was a sex worker in the building, but the complaint was not about the sex worker, it was about the music teacher teaching piano and, sadly, trombone. Now, that did cause a complaint, but again we have body corporate rules and we have all of these rules that mandate and act around these types of planning policies. This will continue in this piece of legislation. There will still be planning controls, there will still be health and safety controls, and there will be greater WorkCover care controls. I envisage a much better industry, a much safer industry, an industry where people do not have to be scared of saying what they do.

This decriminalisation is supported by Amnesty International. It is supported by the World Health Organization. It is supported by Human Rights Watch. It is supported by Anti-slavery International because decriminalising sex work does not make it legal to traffic people. It does not make it legal to stealth someone. That still remains illegal—absolutely illegal—and it is in the Crimes Act 1958, where it should be. So we are not talking about somehow allowing people to be exploited or trafficked or harmed in any way. We are just saying that sex workers will be treated equally under the law and sex work businesses will be treated equally under the law.

As you know, I could probably talk for a long time about all of this; however, I think just the part I really am pleased about is the changes to the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities. This is really important, and I hope that one day we do not need it. I hope that one day the stigma and discrimination that sex workers experience disappears, because I hope actually that we are having a conversation about what consenting adults do and that somehow this actually might change some of our attitudes around sex and sexuality. I hope that this actually helps. I think of Ms Lovell’s constituent talking about her son with disability, and I think about talking to a sex worker just the other day who has a masters in sex therapy. She would love to offer her services through the NDIS, but she does not want to tell the NDIS that she is a sex worker. I hope that this legislation will change that. I hope that what we pass today—and I hope we pass it today—will change that. I hope that sex workers can talk to their mothers group about the trials and tribulations of their work. I hope that sex work businesses are not ostracised and kicked out of Rotary clubs, as we have seen in the past, because of the moral judgement on this industry. I hope that changes.

I do not think we will use the charter’s new protected attributes of trade, calling or occupation often, but when it was introduced in the ACT in 1992 or 1993—around then—there was a claim. The first claim that came out was directly to the Canberra Times, because the Canberra Times used to charge sex workers $15 a line in the classifieds and plumbers $3 a line in the classifieds. It was completely discriminatory, it was completely unfair and it has changed. The most recent case—and I think it goes to Mr Rich-Phillips’s contribution—that has been heard in the ACT under this protected attribute of occupation, trade or calling is by a crypto trader who has had his bank accounts closed. He is challenging that closure on the grounds that it was discrimination on the grounds of his occupation, trade and calling, and it looks like he will be successful. So yes, this legislation and this new protected attribute may actually protect other people. It may actually protect other businesses, and I see no harm in that.

What I do know is that this will reduce harm to sex workers. It will reduce harm to the families of sex workers. I know this will change people’s lives. I do not know whether people are going to say, ‘When I grow up I want to be a sex worker’. Who knows? I did not say, ‘When I grow up I want to be a waitress’. Actually I did not grow up saying I wanted to be a politician either, but here I am. This will enable us to have those conversations. This will enable us to ensure that there are good work practices at all levels, that the industry is protected, that sex workers are protected and that their families are protected.

I did not want to mention this, but this idea that somehow I did a deal to get this legislation up is not only insulting to me, it is insulting to every single person who has fought for decades for this legislation. We fought for this. In 2019 the government said, ‘Let’s look at ways to decriminalise sex work’—in 2019. Now, I am not even sure COVID was a twinkle in anyone’s eye then. It was in 2019 that I was asked to look at how we would decriminalise sex work. So to say that I sold myself on pandemic legislation for this—and let us just make a point. The government did not want pandemic legislation, actually. We pushed them into pandemic legislation. So I do not know how they would say, ‘We’ll give you this if you support pandemic legislation’, when the government did not support pandemic legislation until we really pushed the point that we would not support continued states of emergency and we wanted to see specific legislation. So I just make that point.

I look forward to the committee process, and I will speak about the amendments, of which there are many, during the committee process. But I am so proud, and I am grateful, and on behalf of all the sex workers and all of the people who have worked so hard to get this bill to where it is, I commend this bill to the house.

Mr QUILTY (Northern Victoria) (15:09): I will be brief, and I apologise to Fiona for—

Ms Patten: I heard the joke; don’t!

Mr QUILTY: jumping in at the end of her. I did not intend it; it was not a deliberate thing. I was not going to speak and then I got inspired by the debate, and I was trying to finish it before Fiona started, but I did not quite get there.

Anyway, the Liberal Democrats did not have a hard moral decision to make when we decided to support this bill. Our position is very clear: a belief in freedom means believing that adults are able to make decisions for themselves, and if people are free, they own their own bodies and they can choose to consent to what they do with their bodies. In the same way that adults should be free to decide what medical treatments they are subject to, they should be free to decide who they have sex with. Just as they should be able to freely choose their employer and their working conditions, they should be free to charge money for services supplied. The Liberal Democrats will always stand for individual choice. It is why we fight against vaccine mandates, it is why we fight for drug law reform and it is why we support sex law reform. We will always be consistent. Freedom, choice and consent should be the drivers of all human activity, and if that consistency makes MPs from the major parties uncomfortable, good. You should be uncomfortable, pushing your morality onto others.

I do not have to approve of something to support it. It is not my place to sit in judgement on other people’s choices. I just have to know that adults are freely making choices to engage in an activity. Governments should be empowering individuals, not repressing them. Let me say that I do not have a problem with the sex industry at all. I am happy it exists. I could talk about consequentialist arguments about why sex work should be liberalised, why prohibition does not work and why these industries are better off out of the black market, but I will not, because individual rights matter and that is enough argument to support this.

Very often I criticise the government—I attack the things they do—so let me take this opportunity to praise them for bringing this forward. This is a step for human freedom—

Ms Patten: This is a red-letter day.

Mr QUILTY: it should be acknowledged—and also to Ms Patten and the Reason Party for steering it through. It is good. The Liberal Democrats support this bill.

Mr LEANE (Eastern Metropolitan—Minister for Local Government, Minister for Suburban Development, Minister for Veterans) (15:12): I will just take the opportunity to attempt to briefly sum up and put on the record up-front the government’s position around some of the flagged amendments. I thank all the speakers in the second-reading debate for their contributions. In advance of the committee and for interested people—I know there is a lot of interest in this bill—can I apologise in advance if the committee stage we go through is a bit clunky. Up until Monday night/Tuesday morning my excellent colleague Minister Stitt had carriage of this bill and was to take it through the committee stage, and through no fault of her own she has to isolate this week—so I have been called in without, I suppose, the opportunity that Minister Stitt has had. She has done a lot of work, a lot of study, on this bill. But we will not adjourn the bill. I just want to let the committee know that it might be a bit clunky, but as I have said before in this chamber, if we all stay calm, we can get through anything, and I am sure we will.

This bill repeals the Sex Work Act 1994 to decriminalise consensual sex work between adults, abolish the sex work licensing system, legalise street-based sex work in most locations and regulate sex work businesses through mainstream regulators. Sex work is legal in Victoria, and the bill will ensure sex workers have access to the same rights as any other Victorian employee regardless of the work they do themselves for a small employer or a large company. The legislation will be complemented by non-legislative reforms to the public health framework and planning controls.

I would just like to touch briefly on some of the amendments flagged during the second-reading contributions. I thank members for flagging their amendments. The opposition has proposed an amendment to release Ms Patten’s report to the Victorian government, which made recommendations on the decriminalising of sex work. Participants engaged in Ms Patten’s review on the basis that it was and would remain confidential. Participants have expressed to the government their privacy concerns about the report, even a redacted version, being released in public. That is a commitment we will keep. We will keep Ms Patten’s commitment to those people that it will not be released. I know Mr Ondarchie flagged that the opposition will not support this bill unless that report is released via his amendment. I have got to say that a lot of opposition members said that they were not going to support this bill whatsoever, so I think there were some conflicting contributions about which way the opposition are going to go on this bill.

Mr Meddick has proposed a number of amendments covering six main themes. We understand his concern about the bill’s limitation on street-based work and have sought to balance the strong and diverse stakeholder and public views on this issue. On sex work advertising regulations, the bill implements significant repeals to industry-specific regulations. The government has committed to a stakeholder review of the regulations and will ensure the voices of those with lived experience are closely engaged. In relation to the destruction of the small owner-operator register, I can confirm this will be destroyed in accordance with the Public Records Act 1973. Can I add on behalf of the government that I can assure Mr Meddick the government will destroy the register in accordance with the Public Records Act. The department can brief interested stakeholders on the process and keep them updated as the register is destroyed.

We do not agree with specific sex work as a protected attribute against discrimination. By introducing protection against discrimination based on profession, trade and occupation, sex workers will be protected now and into the future as the industry evolves. The definition of ‘sex work’: the bill draws on existing definitions in Victorian legislation, importantly ensuring that those who are forced or coerced into sex have access to justice. In stipulating drugs as a form of reward for sex work, the bill ensures that workers in those types of arrangements are not excluded in seeking justice under the Crimes Act 1958.

Mr Grimley proposed a number of amendments covering two main issues related to the statutory review of legislation and the introduction of an industry certification system, including a criminal penalty for non-compliance. The introduction of an industry-specific certification system essentially maintains the current licensing and regulation system and is fundamentally at odds with what this bill is doing, which is decriminalisation. There is significant evidence that the current system is not working to protect sex workers. In fact it undermines sex worker rights and erodes working conditions. Establishing a similar licensing system, albeit with slightly different criteria or procedural requirements, would result in a continuation of the current harms. Further evidence demonstrates that the certification of brothel managers is not effective, and for practical reasons a certification process is not able to consider what makes a person a good brothel owner. There are no examples of certification systems that effectively guarantee a person will provide a safe workplace or promote staff wellbeing.

In relation to the statutory review, under the bill it must be undertaken within three to five years after the commencement of stage 2, and importantly it must be tabled in the Parliament. The proposed amendment is inconsistent with the Victorian Law Reform Commission Act 2000 and sets out the limited circumstances in which the VLRC can undertake a review. As such, the proposed amendment cannot be adhered to by the VLRC. Mr Grimley, can I, on behalf of the government, put on record in regard to this particular issue—which I understand you have a concern with, and I understand that you have your very valid reasons—that I can commit that if our government is in government when this review takes place within the legislated framework, it will be conducted by relevant government departments. Given the wide scope of governing legislation once the Sex Work Act is abolished in tranche 2 of the amendments, these governing bodies will include: WorkSafe, Victoria Police, the Business Licensing Authority and other relevant government and non-government agencies.

Dr Cumming’s amendment seeks to essentially maintain the health settings under the current regulatory model. There is significant evidence that the bill’s current provisions will not negatively impact workers’ behaviour or health. The bill will be complemented by non-legislative support to promote safe sex practices and access to health care and testing to ensure sex workers have the tools they need to make safe choices. Feedback from the workforce has been that sex workers have a vested interest to maintain their sexual health and they are highly capable of doing so. Current evidence indicates that mandatory testing does not improve rates of sexual health testing among sex workers.

With respect to preventing sex workers from creating a risk to the public, there are existing powers under the Public Health and Wellbeing Act 2008 in addition to the brothel and escort agency provisions being retained until stage 2. They are available to manage any serious risks to public health related to transmission of notifiable STIs during the transition to decriminalisation after 2023. They include public health orders, which could be used if there is a serious risk to public health constituted by an infectious disease or the combination of an infectious disease and the likely behaviour of a person.

In summary, the contributions of members have shown there are a diverse range of views on the issue of decriminalisation. The bill will deliver strong protection for Victorian sex workers under the decriminalised model. It is a result of a thorough review by a member of this Council, Fiona Patten, and extensive public stakeholder consultation. I am confident we have found a balance of community concerns while delivering, most importantly, decriminalisation for Victoria’s sex workers. So in closing, the government believes that sex workers should be treated, regulated and protected the same as any other worker, and I think that is a simple message that I will be giving during the committee stage. I look forward to all questions and once again ask everyone for their patience, but we will get through it.

House divided on amendment:

Amendment negatived.

House divided on motion:

Motion agreed to.

Read second time.

Committed.

Committee

Clause 1 (15:35)

Mr ONDARCHIE: With your permission, Chair—and I seek the Minister for Local Government’s agreement—I have a lot of questions to ask through the whole of this bill, from clause 1 through to clause 83, but with the consent of the minister I am happy to deal with all of those in clause 1 should the minister consent.

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: The minister is happy with that, so we might deal with the questions on clause 1 before we move any of the amendments to clause 1.

Mr ONDARCHIE: Minister, in my second-reading speech I related the fact that the government had indicated on a number of occasions and certainly through their second-reading speeches that the strength behind this bill was the result of an inquiry that had been undertaken by Fiona Patten of the Reason Party. Minister, have you seen that report?

Mr LEANE: The report was used as the basis for a submission by the minister responsible, the Minister for Consumer Affairs, Gaming and Liquor Regulation, Minister Horne, for the cabinet to go through the recommendations, and the outcome was that the majority of the recommendations were accepted in principle or accepted fully. The previous consumer affairs minister to the one now appointed Ms Patten to do this work, and there was a commitment that the people that had given submissions to this particular report would have anonymity. So that was always the basis of the work being done by Ms Patten. I really want to acknowledge and thank everyone that contributed to Ms Patten’s work and of course Ms Patten, and the result is the bill that was created out of that work, which we are debating now.

Mr ONDARCHIE: Minister, whilst not directly answering my question, are you confirming that cabinet have seen that report?

Mr LEANE: Mr Ondarchie, I think my answer stands for itself that cabinet did have the recommendations, which were reported in a submission by the minister responsible, to have a discussion, and the discussion led to accepting some recommendations—and there were a lot of recommendations as well—completely and some in principle, which helped perform the drafting of this bill to enact what we believe is an important reform.

Mr ONDARCHIE: That is probably the closest to the political answer I have ever seen. Minister, are there any members of the government party that are not in cabinet that have seen this report?

Mr LEANE: Mr Ondarchie, as far as the report goes we kept a commitment—to not make this report public—to the people that actually contributed to this important piece of work. We keep discussions around the recommendations cabinet in confidence, but I can only reiterate that this particular report is obviously a great piece of work, because it has resulted in the drafting of the bill which we are debating here today.

Mr ONDARCHIE: Minister, I did not ask you in any of my three questions why this has not been released to the public. I have not asked that at all. I am simply asking which sworn members of Parliament on the government side—indeed I can change the nature of this question so I am not repeating myself. Minister, which sworn members of Parliament who reside in this chamber have seen the report?

Mr LEANE: It kind of feels like that text message thing that was debated in the federal Parliament recently, and who did that? Mr Ondarchie, the appropriate cabinet processes were gone through as far as this report goes, being a cabinet-in-confidence document, given there was a commitment to the people that contributed to it that it would not be made public. Mr Ondarchie, you can ask me about numbers and people all day, and I will give you the same response: that this report was used—partly—as a basis to form the legislation on the decriminalisation of sex work which we hope to get through today.

Mr ONDARCHIE: I will take that as a confirmation, then, that some but not all of the members of this house have seen this report, which makes it interesting that the government is asking us to pass legislation based on a report that not all the people who are making a decision about this have seen. One wonders why a government that often—maliciously, I think—talks about transparency will not be transparent about this. In fact my reasoned amendment would have given them the protection they were looking for—to redact and de-identify any elements of that report so that you could then deliver on the commitment you made to those people who were part of the inquiry. One wonders if there is an actual evidence base for that, but I will come back to that.

Minister, there are a number of recommendations that have been put forward as part of this legislation—I have not seen the recommendations, but in the legislation—that the minister’s own ministerial advisory committee have disagreed with. Why has this legislation gone in contrast to what the ministerial advisory committee had recommended?

Mr LEANE: Mr Ondarchie, this was a comprehensive process which we asked one of the members of this chamber to head, and there were a number of submissions and a number of conversations. There were 528 stakeholders alerted as far as consultation goes. There were 101 face-to-face meetings with important stakeholders. There were surveys which were responded to and received through the Engage Victoria platform. There were 156 written submissions that were received through the Engage Victoria platform and through emails to the Department of Justice and Community Safety. So there was a comprehensive process.

I appreciate that there are certain individuals and bodies that may not agree completely with all the provisions that have come out of this work that are part of the bill, but the government stands by this process and it stands by this bill. I take previous comments around transparency and so forth, but there are points where government and a committee have to give an assurance, and they gave an assurance to people giving submissions to this particular report that this report would not be publicly released, whether it be redacted or not, because there were individuals that were concerned that it could not be redacted so that they could not be identified from their contribution. We stand by the work that has been done on this report and we stand by the end result, which is this bill.

Mr ONDARCHIE: Minister, apart from Ms Patten, what other elected representatives of the people of Victoria sat on that review and gave recommendations?

Mr LEANE: It was just Ms Patten.

Mr ONDARCHIE: Minister, let me then take you to some specific items in this bill, given that the responses thus far have been opaque at best. In summing up the last little bit before I get to those clauses, given Ms Patten was the only elected representative in the whole of this Parliament, 128 people, is the message of the government that Ms Patten’s view of what needed to be done was more important than the minister’s own ministerial advisory committee?

Mr LEANE: I think I will just take that as a comment. I am not going to be drawn into who thought what and so forth. I will just take that as a comment.

Mr ONDARCHIE: Minister, who else did the government consider—other MPs—to be a part of this review?

Mr LEANE: I suppose that in consideration to be part of or to lead this review Ms Patten has never not been open about her life experience and never not been open about the views that she has gained through life experience. I think if the opposition are saying that from time to time the government should not draw on expertise—

Mr ONDARCHIE: I did not say that.

Mr LEANE: No, well, I am answering the question. I think you are trying to infer that the government should not from time to time call on expertise of other members of this chamber or the other chamber because of their actual life experience.

Mr ONDARCHIE: Do not verbal me, Minister. I did not say that.

Mr LEANE: I think you have had a go at verballing me a few times.

Mr ONDARCHIE: It is blatantly obvious that they did not consider anybody else, and we cannot get to the grounds of why there were no other elected representatives, of the 127 other people across both houses, that were considered. One can draw their own conclusion from that.

Minister, I take you to—as I said, we are going to do all of this in clause 1 as you agreed—an element in clause 4 that talks about a review somewhere in the period of three to five years. But in the briefing the department would not confirm whether it would be after three years or four years or five years or if stakeholder groups would be involved. When is it going to occur, and will it involve stakeholder groups?

Mr LEANE: Yes, Mr Ondarchie. This review will be undertaken after the second stage has been enacted. I am sorry, Mr Grimley, I may be stealing a bit of your thunder in answering one of your amendments, but as the representative of the government in this committee stage I can confirm and put on the record that the review will include a number of stakeholders, which include WorkSafe, Victoria Police, the Business Licensing Authority and other relevant government and non-government agencies.

Mr ONDARCHIE: Minister, clause 8 looks to repeal section 18A of the Sex Work Act 1994, which talks about the determination for sexually transmitted infection and tests being removed, if I could paraphrase. Why is that? Why do they have to be removed? If the government have been talking about, as they do often, the protection, safety and health of workers, why are they taking this element out?

Mr LEANE: Mr Ondarchie, the general tenet of this amendment is that sex workers get treated the same as any other workers and come under the same regulations, come under the same responsibilities and also, importantly, come under the same protections as any other worker. So this part of this amendment affords the reality that sex workers, as far as their sexual health is concerned, could be the healthiest people in our community, given that it is very important to them in the line of work they are in to be cautious about their health. If you look at other jurisdictions—and I know some changes like this people think are outrageous—as Ms Patten said in her contribution, this change has been in place in New South Wales for over 20 years, and as far as other jurisdictions go which were looked into when developing this bill, there has been no adverse effect whatsoever. There has not been any great or even further transmission of STIs because of those changes. Hopefully that answers your question.

Mr ONDARCHIE: I have just one more question before I have a pause and then hand over to my learned colleagues to ask some questions on clause 1. Just on that, I did not ever suggest that this was outrageous, Minister. I was just trying to seek an explanation, because we could not get one at the bill briefing. Minister, clause 28 creates a section 38A in the Summary Offences Act 1966 that talks about a law that will come into place where:

… a person must not intentionally solicit or invite any person to engage in sex work in a public place that is at or near the following premises—

(a) school premises;

(b) education or care service premises;

(c) children’s services premises.

Could you define what ‘near’ means to us, please?

Mr LEANE: Thank you, Mr Ondarchie. The term ‘near’ does not have a fixed legal definition. It is currently used in similar street-based sex work offences under the Sex Work Act 1994. If an offence is disputed on the basis that the conduct did not occur near one of the specified locations, then this will be a matter to be determined by the courts. Recent case law indicates that the courts may consider more than just the physical proximity in determining the nearness of a person or a loitering offence. For example, consideration may be given to how busy the area is, as well as the objective facts around the person’s premises. As outlined in section 32 of the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities, all statutory provisions must be interpreted in a way that is compatible with human rights insofar as is possible to do so consistently with the purpose of this bill. The bill’s purpose is to decriminalise sex work and provide for the reduction of harm to and decriminalisation of sex workers, and this will be considered in any interpretation of the word ‘near’.

Mr ONDARCHIE: Thanks, Minister. The Police Association Victoria, as do the Australian Sex Workers Association, want an objective definition of the word ‘near’, and we do not have that yet. So what is your response to them?

Mr LEANE: I stand by the answer that I gave to your previous question, Mr Ondarchie. As I said before, there may be some different bodies that have some issues with this particular bill, but we think it strikes the correct balance for the community and the objective of decriminalising sex work.

Mr ONDARCHIE: Minister, still on this same clause—I will hand over to my colleague shortly—as outlined in clause 28, the bill defines this as school premises, education premises or children’s services premises. Why is it just those three?

Mr LEANE: Mr Ondarchie, I explained before some of the extensive consultation that was had in developing this bill, taking into account concerns from some of the community, which identified these particular locations.

Mr ONDARCHIE: Thank you very much, Minister. Then why doesn’t it apply to other precincts, like a children’s playground, like an elderly citizens facility, like a church, like a convent, like a retail precinct, like Parliament? Why aren’t they included in considerations associated with this clause?

Mr LEANE: Look, it is the balance that was identified in this particular part of the bill. I think the aspirations are to decriminalise sex work and have sex workers actually treated the same as any other worker. We found that this was one of the balances that we could strike that was identified through the consultation on these particular three locations. Those other locations were not necessarily indicated, so we think that we have struck the right balance.

Mr ONDARCHIE: It is interesting then that the government seemingly are okay with this element of the bill and with these activities being within the area of a playground, within the area of an elderly citizens home or within the area of a retail precinct or a church or a convent or somewhere else that is not specifically these three. Could it be at a sporting ground while the kids are playing cricket, for example? Could it be alongside an A-League game at AAMI Park? Could it happen there? I think there is a danger for the government, if this is your true intention, to just limit it to those three and not think about other areas as well.

I have a further question, Deputy President, but I am conscious of the fact that you are about to suspend the chamber for a small period of time to allow for a COVID clean. May I suggest to you that I hold this question and you suspend now, because this question is going to go beyond the time that—

Mr LEANE: Can I respond? I know that was a comment, but I am just going to respond to the comment with a comment that I think the concern around those particular areas is weighted towards it being about societal expectations around the three locations identified. But to suggest that there is a danger assumes that sex workers are dangerous. That is not what we are indicating.

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Minister, I do not think it is helpful to put words in anybody’s mouth or to misrepresent what they say, so we will allow people to speak for themselves and to be interpreted by the written record.

Sitting suspended 3.59 pm until 4.17 pm.

Mr BOURMAN: Minister, I want to drill down around locations and things like that a little bit. It is set out relatively straightforwardly in the bill, but there are a whole lot of things that I do not know are covered. They may be, but they may not be. We have covered things like religious events and things like that, but what is going to happen if you want to do the thing around youth groups—nippers, Auskick—where there are children, basically school events that are away from school? We will get into the prescribing of those sorts of things later, but I am not entirely sure how things that are not in a regular educational setting are going to be affected by this, so if you could explain that.

Mr LEANE: Mr Bourman, some of the response I gave to Mr Ondarchie before we had a break. There has been consultation around these particular locations where there are not to be sex workers near during a number of hours. We mentioned before basing the legislation on different jurisdictions. What has been prescribed is not dissimilar to what has been in New South Wales for 20 years, and there have not been any great concerns about what you may or may not be concerned with, Mr Bourman—I am not putting anything into your mouth or into your thoughts.

Can I just confirm that there will be an offence for sex workers and their clients to loiter, solicit or invite for the purpose of sex work at or near, given the definition we had before, a place of worship, a school, an education and care services premises or a children’s services centre. The offence will apply between 6.00 am and 7.00 pm daily. The offence will also apply at or near places of worship for the entire day on the prescribed religious dates.

Mr BOURMAN: Thank you, Minister. I do not think I actually got an answer that I can work out from there about things that are not in the normal childcare setting. When you think of a school camping trip, you go to Port Campbell or whatever it might be and you do your thing there. I think these are reasonable concerns. I might put on record my concerns with this whole thing are not the prostitutes themselves—the sex workers, whatever you want to call them. I dealt with a lot of them in the force back in the day, and I would say that the vast majority of them were people just making their way in life the way they needed to. But I think the way we are doing this here, there is enough wriggle room for—how shall I put it?—bad actors to create issues. I do not think the world is going to fall in, but I think about things like weddings and funerals and things like that and whether people are going to be allowed to solicit out the front of them. Funerals happen during the day. Weddings happen at all sorts of times. Then we get to the point of the hours when they are not allowed to solicit around prescribed areas. It is, I think, 6.00 am to 7.00 pm. What about synagogues? They generally work on a Friday sundown to Saturday sun-up arrangement, which particularly in summer is well and truly after 7.00 pm.

Mr LEANE: I will go to the box for further clarification around synagogues, Mr Bourman. Getting back to that, these sorts of provisions have been in place in other jurisdictions and in particular in the state of New South Wales for a couple of decades now. There was no concern brought about sex workers soliciting around some of the events that you describe, and it has not come up in any of the consultations—or concerns around that. I do not know if they are the sorts of events that would be a good place for these particular workers to solicit work, so I think it is sort of counterintuitive. But let me double-check the response around the synagogues.

Mr Bourman, the holy days around different religions will be set in regulations, and there will be a whole lot of consultation with religious groups and others, so they can put their views in that consultation. It is envisaged that the holy days will include a 24-hour process on those particular prescribed days, given your concern around after 7.00 pm.

Mr BOURMAN: Thank you, Minister. Going down the Jewish faith, which I have a little bit of knowledge about, you have Pesach, you have Yom Kippur, you have these other holidays and things like that, which I can see are easy enough to prescribe. But notwithstanding that it is a good business model, this idea I have heard, a lot of churches will also hold services after those hours, not necessarily as part of a high holy day.

I was doing some research, and it is not common but also not unheard of for some churches to run night services for whatever reason on nights that are not a holiday. I will make it a statement more than a question, because I could just ask you about every single one. I think this was an opportunity missed in this bill to just tighten that up a little bit so that there are no real concerns about the whole thing.

And just on the subject of prescribing places, how is it envisaged that is going to work? Who is going to let the police know? Who is going to let the sex workers know? Who is going to let the council know? Is there a mechanism envisaged to let people know what is and what is not okay, and what is that mechanism?

Mr LEANE: Mr Bourman, I appreciate that was a comment. On your comment around development, and as far as different holy days of different religions go, that will be fleshed out in the consultation and eventually worked through in the regulations, but I will get an answer from the box in terms of the nuts and bolts of the implementation.

Mr Bourman, it is based on, I think, a bit of common sense. The visibility of these particular facilities is clear—with the schools there are school signs. I think it is not going to be hard for any authority to determine where these particular facilities are. And that also goes for the practitioners. I think it is pretty clear what these locations are.

Mr BOURMAN: Thank you, Minister. You can take this as kind of a statement too. I think it is not fair to the sex workers, because in most instances you will be right, but in some instances some childcare centres are in private houses, and it may not be easy for them to tell. In the interests of making it fair for all I think that the prescribing of an address must be easily available for all involved.

Mr LIMBRICK: I would just like to follow on with this question about prescribed locations. If the intent of the bill is to treat sex work the same as other work, why is it necessary to prescribe times and locations in this bill? If I can think of an example, if I was going to stand out the front of a school with a table and set up a shop selling things out the front of the school, I imagine someone would come and tell me to move on, and I imagine that would be the same with sex work or any other type of business that I wanted to do on the street out the front of a school. So why was it necessary to come up with something specific for sex work in this case?

Mr LEANE: That is a very fair question, Mr Limbrick. I think that we had to take into account a wide range of views. I agree with you to the extent the aspiration is to treat sex workers as other workers as far as the rights they have are concerned—the rights to criminal justice, the rights and the responsibilities around the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004—but this is about a community consultation, and this is where the balance landed.

Mr BOURMAN: Minister, I am going to move on to another subject at the moment, and it gets down to payment. I want to be corrected. I have read—and I have forgotten what the section is—that as payment for services rendered a drug of dependence is okay. Is that correct?

Mr LEANE: I think it goes to making sure that all sex workers have the rights to criminal justice, and that comes under how some sex workers may be—and this is the terminology—given a reward rather than money or a cash transfer. So it is really about forms of reward that determine that that person, despite not getting cash, is a legitimate sex worker and deserves protection in terms of the right to criminal justice if anything happens to them in their role as a sex worker.

Mr BOURMAN: Thank you, Minister. I do not want to put words in your mouth, but is that a yes?

Mr LEANE: Mr Bourman, I suppose we are working through the reality of what is happening in our society without putting our head in the sand. This is from part of the consultation that we had—that these instances may occur. Our goal through this bill is to afford sex workers the same rights, particularly to criminal justice, as any other worker, and this reward system is deemed a form of payment to make sure that they get criminal justice as deemed as a sex worker.

Mr BOURMAN: Thank you, Minister. I am going to take that as a yes, because my next question is—assuming that is okay and that I have got it right in this bill—about how the definition of ‘trafficking a drug of dependence’ would fall under it. What I can see as a problem is that what will be legal in this instance will actually be caught under another statute. I mean, if the government wants to do this, it is going to get through, but it puts a large amount of doubt onto whether that can work, because if someone is paying for something with a drug, they are transferring that drug for money, for services or whatever, which is trafficking for want of a better term. I mean, you can traffic drugs for free if you want; the payment is not necessary. But that transfer of the drug from one person to another would be deemed trafficking. So it might be okay in this, and it is a reality—I am not disputing that—but I can see a problem down the track. If I am not completely mistaken, they will be caught up under—I cannot remember which—the Drugs, Poisons and Controlled Substances Act 1981 or the Crimes Act 1958. Again, you can take it as a statement or a question, but I think there is quite a large problem there.

Mr LEANE: Before I take it as a statement I will just check with the box.

Mr Bourman, none of the crimes of drug trafficking are amended in this bill. We just wanted to make sure we caught what may be, as I said, payment that we deem as a reward to make sure that sex workers who get this form of payment are deemed as sex workers as far as the criminal justice system goes.

Mr BOURMAN: Thank you, Minister. I hope you are right. Time will tell. Moving on from that—I am not going to flog that forever—clause 27, on page 9 of the bill under ‘Amendment of Summary Offences Act 1966’, is headed ‘Section 18 repealed’. I had a look at section 18, and it is to do with offensive behaviour of people in a motor vehicle. Now, on first glance I do not actually understand why this is part of the bill.

A person is guilty of an offence if—

(a) the person uses words, or makes a gesture, while in a motor vehicle; and

(b) the person does so within the view or hearing …

and it goes on with the penalty units and that. But it is about words or a gesture whilst in a motor vehicle. I have got the act here if it helps. But I am kind of a little bit lost as to the relevance, and then, if it is relevant, I am kind of completely lost as to how it is relevant. So if I could get an explanation of that, thanks.

Mr LEANE: Mr Bourman, do you mind if we come back to you later in the committee stage with our response?

Mr LIMBRICK: As I indicated earlier, with the consent of the minister, I will acquit all my questions in clause 1. My first questions relate to clause 3, which is around potential conflicts with local laws made under the Local Government Act 2020. Would it be possible for the minister to provide some examples of the types of local laws that might conflict with this legislation?

Mr LEANE: Thank you, Mr Limbrick. The feedback received during the consultation was that clarification was needed about the role of local governments following the decriminalisation, given the broader powers available and potential community expectations. This clause provides clarification in that area. The explanatory memorandum provides further background. The intent is to provide that local laws are required to be consistent and not in conflict with or undermine the purpose of the policy intent of the bill. For example, a local law could not re-enact a provision that is repealed by this bill or provide for sex worker businesses to be treated differently to other businesses. Examples of provisions that are repealed by the bill include those requiring businesses to be licensed or registered, those relating to street-based sex work and those relating to mandatory distancing between sex work businesses and other land use groups.

Mr LIMBRICK: I thank the minister for his response. If a local government were to enact some law, what would be the effect of them breaching that? What would happen in that case?

Mr LEANE: Thank you, Mr Limbrick. The intended effect is that such a proposed local law would be found not to meet the local law requirements under section 74 of the Local Government Act 2020 and thus would not become a local law. If an error is made, a non-compliant law may be revoked by the local government themselves or by the Governor on the recommendation of the Minister for Local Government. Furthermore, a person can contest the validity of a local law at a court.

Mr LIMBRICK: I thank the minister for his answer. During this consultation was it found that there are existing local laws that would conflict with this bill and therefore would have to be repealed immediately?

Mr LEANE: That is a very good question, Mr Limbrick, and potentially there may be. So there is going to be a process that will be led by the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning, DELWP, as far as consultation with local governments about how those local laws need to be amended goes. There will be a process, and part of it is during the process around the planning laws, which, as far as your question goes, could mean that potentially some existing by-laws could be in conflict with this legislation during that process.

Mr LIMBRICK: I thank the minister for his response on that. What body or regulator would be responsible for ensuring compatibility between local government laws? The minister mentioned that someone could challenge it in court or that the local government minister, who is the responsible minister, could recommend that something be removed, but I imagine that this is quite complex with a large number of councils, so someone would have to coordinate this to make sure that this is compatible. How would that work?

Mr LEANE: Thank you, Mr Limbrick. Through the process with DELWP, as cases are identified there will be consultation with local governments about any by-laws or any local government laws that will be in conflict with this bill. We envisage the consultation process to involve peak bodies, Local Government Victoria, the department and a number of other stakeholders in that area to ensure that we support local governments in getting this right.

Mr LIMBRICK: I thank the minister for his answer. I will move on to a different topic, as I have covered everything about local laws that I would like to cover.

Clause 7 talks about altering advertising restrictions. One of the concerns that we had here was around ensuring that, like with any business when they advertise something, they can advertise what the product or service is that they are advertising, the price, conditions and this sort of thing. How will it be managed so that people who are offering these services can advertise those things that would be required for any other type of business that was offering those services so that consumers are able to properly transact and consent to that service?

Mr LEANE: The bill makes significant changes to the advertising controls in the current act. These changes will come into effect in stage 1 and mean that many of the sex industry specific advertising regulations will be repealed, and therefore providing sex workers with more safety and freedom in how they provide their services. In addition, as publicly committed to by the government, further advertising regulations contained in the Sex Work Regulations 2016 have been reviewed, and they will be amended to align with the objectives of decriminalisation. The amendments will ensure that the sex work industry is not subject to explicitly discriminatory advertising controls and instead is regulated in a manner consistent with similar industries, as you have mentioned, Mr Limbrick, in your question. Amendments to the Sex Work Regulations are still under development and will progress upon, hopefully, the passage of this bill. These amendments are expected to take effect at the same time as the commencement of stage 1 of the reforms of the bill.

Mr LIMBRICK: I thank the minister for his answer. Could I summarise that by saying that, similar to any other business where it is required to show the conditions of the transaction that you are about to perform, it would be the same for sex work as well?

Mr LEANE: Yes, that would be the case.

Mr LIMBRICK: I thank the minister for that clarification. I would like to move on to clause 15 and to clarify something about this, where it is talking about warrantless searches of unlicensed premises. Could the minister please explain the intent and effect of clause 15?

Mr LEANE: Because of the framework being removed as part of this bill and because the police will treat it as any other private premises around that, it will not be a licensed premises anymore because the licence will be removed.

Mr LIMBRICK: I thank the minister for his answer. So would I be correct in saying that this is basically a clean-up for something that is now redundant?

Mr LEANE: That is correct.

Mr LIMBRICK: Okay. That makes total sense. I would like to move on to clause 34. It has been put to me in consultation—and this is referring to the new protected attribute in the Equal Opportunity Act 2010 of profession, trade or occupation—that ‘sex worker’ is not the only occupational title that would potentially be discriminated against. I would just like to get clarification around other job titles, such as—the examples given to me are—escort agency driver, brothel manager, escort agency receptionist, stripper, exotic dancer and adult product bookshop retailer. Is the intent of the government that these are all included?

Mr LEANE: Thank you, Mr Limbrick. That is a very good question. The intent of the clause is to protect all persons from discrimination based on their profession, trade or occupation, regardless of what their profession, trade or occupation is. So that would encompass those examples. It is not intended to apply solely to sex workers or professions, trades or occupations within the sex worker industry. For the avoidance of doubt, the explanatory memorandum of this bill clarifies that the new attribute is intended to address discrimination against sex workers and other persons based on their participation in sex work as a profession, trade or occupation.

Mr LIMBRICK: I thank the minister for that clarification. I would like to touch on something that was brought up by me and I think Mr Rich-Phillips during debate, being the potentially unintended consequence of this protected attribute: that it would protect other business types as well. Now, this is actually something that I have had a lot to do with, in industries such as were mentioned in the second-reading debate, such as cryptocurrency traders, vape shops, firearm retailers and gold dealers. These are all industries that, along with sex workers, have been suffering discrimination from financial services providers. Is the intent of the government that not only sex workers would be covered by this new protected attribute but that all of these types of professions would be covered by this attribute?

Mr LEANE: Thank you, Mr Limbrick. If it is legal, yes.

Mr LIMBRICK: I thank the minister for that answer. I am sure many people will be happy to hear that. Now, one thing that has been brought to my attention is in the ACT they have a similar definition of ‘profession, trade or occupation’, and it has been interpreted very, very narrowly, it is my understanding, as the job descriptor. So it protects the job description but does not actually protect the activities undertaken in that job. Is it the intent of Parliament that it would capture not just someone’s professional title but also the activities that they may undertake?

Mr LEANE: The new protected attribute is intended to operate to protect persons against both direct and indirect discrimination on the basis of their profession, trade or occupation. So section 6 of the Equal Opportunity Act prohibits discrimination on the basis of a listed attribute in a specified area of activity. Part 4 of the Equal Opportunity Act lists the specified areas of activity. This includes division 4, ‘Discrimination in the provision of goods and services and disposal of land’. Guidance on the application of the new protected attribute will be provided by the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission (VEOHRC).

Mr LIMBRICK: I thank the minister for that clarification. I have no more questions for the moment.

Dr CUMMING: I guess I would like to start by just saying that I am a big fan of our current act, which is the Sex Work Act 1994. I am really happy with this act, so I actually struggle a lot with this current bill, because I feel that there are a lot of things that are missed in repealing our current Sex Work Act 1994. I think it is very well written. If only there were others in this place that wanted just to amend our current Sex Work Act 1994, because I think there are a lot of things with merit from the bill that we have before us, which is the Sex Work Decriminalisation Bill 2021. One of them is around, in the current act, causing or inducing a child to take part in sex work. In the current act it is a level 5 penalty, imprisonment of 10 years, but in this new bill it is actually a level 4 and it is 15 years. The improvement of having a more lengthy penalty within this bill I 100 per cent agree with. But I do struggle; I feel that we could have amended the current act, we did not need to repeal it. That is just me from the onset.

I guess my first question to the minister is this: one of the things that I picked up on is a change from the current act, which is the Sex Work Act 1994, and what I can see is a difference in this new bill. I will read them both so that you can see the difference. Under ‘Causing or inducing child to take part in sex work’ the current act says:

(3) In a proceeding for an offence against subsection (1)—

(a) it is not necessary for the prosecution to prove that the accused knew that the person concerned was a child; but

(b) it is a defence to the charge for the accused to prove that, having taken all reasonable steps to find out the age of the person concerned, the accused believed on reasonable grounds, at the time the offence is alleged to have been committed, that the person concerned was aged 18 years or more.

In this current bill, which is a big change for me, it says:

(2) In a proceeding for an offence against subsection (1)—

(a) it is not necessary for the prosecution to prove that A knew that B was a child; and

(b) if B was aged 16 years or more at the time the offence is alleged to have been committed, it is a defence to the charge for A to prove that, having taken all reasonable steps to find out the age of B, A believed on reasonable grounds, at the time the offence is alleged to have been committed, that B was aged 18 years or more.

Minister, is it actually saying within this bill that you believe that sex workers will be 16 years and above?

Mr LEANE: Dr Cumming, the answer is no. The legislation is based on people being an adult, and the definition of ‘adult’ is 18 years and over.

Dr CUMMING: Minister, just to go on with this clause, then, this is obviously talking about an offence. Under the new bill it says, ‘Agreement for provision of commercial sexual services by a child’ and in the current act it is in the same vein but is ‘Causing or inducing child to take part in sex work’ or ‘Obtaining payment for sexual services provided by a child’. They are the headings within the Sex Work Act 1994. Why is there a difference, Minister, for the purposes of an offence being committed, if they find out the child was aged 16 years or over? Under the offence of causing or inducing a child—which I would consider as being under 18, for sex work especially—to take part in sex work or commercial sexual services or allowing a child to take payment for sexual services provided by a child, why is it okay here that if it would seem that the person who is a child is 16 they can create that defence?

Mr LEANE: Thank you, Dr Cumming. I am sure I can alleviate your concerns that the crimes in relation to children in the Sex Work Act are replicated in the Crimes Act through this bill. So your concern around that age and insofar as you are wedded to the old act—actually what we are doing through this bill is replicating it in the Crimes Act.

Dr CUMMING: Minister, I believe the Crimes Act would probably talk about sexual offences with a person under the age of 18 and being 16, and I am seeing little nods from your box. But to me it would seem that there is a differentiation—between a child being possibly induced into sex work, so there is a commercial arrangement—in the current act, which is talking about you having to be over 18, but a sexual offence, as in, you know, under 16. I struggle to understand why you did not keep the stronger Sex Work Act 1994, where you had to be 18 years and over. I understand what you are saying, but this is talking about a sex worker or inducing a child and being paid, rather than just a normal act of having sex with a minor—or someone between 16 and 18. Do you know what I am getting at?

Mr LEANE: Dr Cumming, I think I will take that as a comment. I am not too sure if there was a question around that, but I am happy to flesh it out further if you like.

Dr CUMMING: Thank you, but I am feeling reassured that you believe a sex worker is—and I guess this is a question—somebody 18 years and above. Is that correct, Minister?

Mr LEANE: Yes.

Dr CUMMING: Minister, the bill, under ‘Sex work at or near certain places’, talks about school premises, children’s services and educational premises. This bill actually says that it is an offence to be near those places or engage in sex work in public places between the hours of 6.00 am and 7.00 pm. What is the definition of ‘near’, seeing that, say, in the Electoral Act 2002—

A member interjected.

Dr CUMMING: That is okay; thanks, echo. I guess, to make the point, I find that the Electoral Act, when we talk about a polling booth and where you can hand out a how-to-vote card, is extremely prescriptive about how many metres you are meant to be away, how far from the door. But here it just says ‘near’. I wish the Electoral Act just said ‘anywhere near’ you can hand out a how-to-vote card.

Mr LEANE: I read this in before, but it is a fair question from Dr Cumming. The term ‘near’ does not—

Members interjecting.

Mr LEANE: I thought I did. I was going to give the same answer. The term ‘near’ does not have a fixed legal definition as currently used in a similar street-based sex work offence in the Sex Work Act 1994. If an offence is disputed on the basis that that conduct did not occur near one of the specified locations, then this will be a matter for the determination of the courts. Recent case law indicates that the courts may consider more than just physical proximity in determining nearness of a person for a loitering offence. For example, consideration may be given to how busy an area is as well as the objective facts surrounding the person’s presence. In these examples a person may be on the other side of the street of a school, but if the street has several busy lanes—for example, a highway—or there is no direct line of sight with, for example, trees or a park in between lanes obstructing the view, then it may not be appropriate to consider the other side of the street near the school. As outlined in section 32 of the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities, all statutory provisions must be interpreted in a way that is compatible with human rights insofar as it is possible to do so consistently with the purposes of the bill. The bill’s purpose is to decriminalise sex work and provide for the reduction of discrimination against and harm to sex workers, and this would be considered an interpretation of the word ‘near’.

Dr CUMMING: Thank you, Minister. I can understand half of that answer, but the other half I really struggle with. Minister, as someone who understands the Planning and Environment Act 1987 very well, the Local Government Act very well and the Electoral Act very well, I can name a whole heap of acts that are very prescriptive in the way of metreage. The current planning act would say that you cannot put a brothel 500 metres away from a place of worship or a school, or, say, currently if you were to go and get yourself an intervention order, the courts would be quite prescriptive and say, ‘You can’t be within 5 metres of whoever has the order’ or ‘You can’t be within 200 metres of that person’s home’ or ‘500 metres of that person’s home or their place of work’.

In law there is a lot of prescription in metreage and as the crow flies for varied reasons. It does not normally say with an intervention order, ‘Well, there was a tree between there and that or across the road’ or ‘They weren’t in plain sight, so they were following you around but they were sneaking behind a tree. So therefore the 5-metre rule doesn’t apply; you couldn’t really see them’. So I struggle with removing all the prescriptive nature of where a sex worker can actually work, seeing that it flies in the face of current planning controls and other very prescriptive acts that talk about metreage. They do not use words like ‘near’.

Mr LEANE: Thank you for the question. Can I just confirm that the Sex Work Act currently uses the word ‘near’, as does the Crimes Act.

Dr CUMMING: Minister, I guess that I have just said that I am not happy with the word ‘near’. I would like a prescription in the way of ‘200 metres from a school or a place of worship’—in that manner.

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: The minister has indicated he will just take that as a comment.

Dr CUMMING: Yes, 100 per cent. I just wanted to execute that argument.

Mr ONDARCHIE: Minister, just a couple of things before I hand over to my learned colleague Mr Grimley: following on from Mr Limbrick’s line of questioning, particularly around the concerns of local government and their relationship to the planning matters associated with this, firstly, local government have said to me the two-week consultation process on such a sensitive topic was hardly long enough. The comment I would make is there is opportunity for government to go back to local council now and to have more extensive consultation with them about how this is going to work. One of the things that local government said to me, and they have asked me to bring this forward to you in the committee stage, is that businesses that operate along a footpath need to obtain appropriate footpath trading approvals and also have public liability insurance to manage any litigation claims that come as a result of them operating on a footpath. Would that same set of circumstances apply to street sex workers?

Mr LEANE: As far as the answer to your second question goes, yes, they do have to have public liability insurance. As for your explanation about putting in placards, what I will mention is that on a footpath—

Mr ONDARCHIE: No, just trading approvals to trade on the footpath.

Mr LEANE: Well, to put placards upon a footpath there has to be a permit, so that permit would apply.

Dr CUMMING: Just in the same vein, the current Sex Work Act talks about advertising regulations, and this would be not dissimilar to how in planning controls there are a lot of specific permits around advertising and placing advertising on your place of business—the same as with an A-frame sign. The current act actually talks about how a sex worker service cannot advertise using certain words. Among the words that they cannot use are the words ‘massage’ or ‘remedial’ and combinations so as not to confuse anyone out there about the work that they are doing, which is sex work. They cannot advertise—or they have to advertise appropriately—because in the past there was confusion. So currently there are places that say they are massage places or say ‘Young Asian massages’, but they are brothels or—I have used the term before, Mr Leane—rub and tugs.

A member: Excuse me!

Dr CUMMING: That is what they are called. So they are massage places, but they provide extra services rather than just a remedial massage—extra sexual services.

Mr LEANE: If I can touch on the advertising first, I think the second part of your concerns is one of the reasons why we are introducing the bill—to make sex work and sex worker enterprises legal and come under the same frameworks and same protections. But as far as the advertising goes, I will put this on the record again. The bill makes significant changes to the advertising controls in the current act. These changes will come into effect in stage 1 and will mean that many of the sex industry specific advertising regulations will be repealed, therefore providing sex workers with more safety and freedom in how they promote their services.

In addition, as publicly committed to by the government, further advertising regulations contained in the Sex Work Regulations have been reviewed and will be amended to align with the objectives of decriminalisation. The amendment will ensure that the sex work industry is not subject to explicitly discriminatory advertising controls and instead is regulated in a manner consistent with similar industries, and you can probably imagine the similar industries that advertise different services now. Amendments to the Sex Work Regulations are still under development and will progress upon the passage of the bill. These amendments are expected to take effect at the same time as the commencement of the stage 1 reforms in this bill.

Dr CUMMING: Mr Leane, the current act very explicitly says that a sex worker cannot, when they are advertising their services, use the words ‘massage’ or ‘masseur’ or ‘remedial’ or imply that their business provides massage services. The reason why it is explicit in the current act is so that they cannot falsely advertise. So they cannot say that they are a practitioner of massage or remedial massage or that they provide massage services to actually protect people who are masseuses. In other words it is false advertising. Minister, how is this bill making sure that sex workers cannot falsely advertise their services so that other industries are protected?

Mr LEANE: False advertising will still be illegal under the Australian Consumer Law and Fair Trading Act 2012, so we are not changing anything there. I suppose your concern is that there may be premises that are advertising massages that go further. With this decriminalisation I think you would probably find that those premises may actually not have any artifice around what they are, because the licensing system has been removed. I think that is part of the barrier.

Dr CUMMING: So with what currently is in the Sex Work Act 1994, regarding massage and remedial massage will the government make a commitment that in the new sex worker regulations when they talk about advertising there could possibly be a commitment around false or ambiguous advertising? Because, for me, otherwise it creates those problems. That is why it is there.

Mr LEANE: The protection against—

Dr CUMMING: It’s not about discrimination.

Mr LEANE: No, it is not about discrimination at all. I think, on the commitment you are looking for, those provisions already exist under the Australian consumer law act. False advertising is illegal under that particular act. So, yes, I do not think there is any need from our end to go over and above that particular act, which still exists. Some of the concerns around some illegal activities outside the legitimate sex workers and sex worker enterprises are covered in a number of different acts other than in this bill.

Dr CUMMING: Minister, I understand the intent of the government currently to make sure that sex workers feel free to advertise their business. I hope they advertise their business loud and proud. It would not necessarily be discreet. I do not want a sex worker to feel that they have to advertise their business discreetly. I would want them to be loud and proud in the way they want to advertise, but I do not want the false advertising, which is the problem currently. Obviously there are certain sex workers that are using certain words, such as ‘massage parlour’, ‘massage services’, ‘remedial massage’ or whatever the service is, rather than saying that they provide sex work at that premises.

Mr LEANE: I think we are probably in furious agreement about what we can see as the outcome of this bill. It may be that some enterprises are acting in a certain way because they have not actually been licensed, and this way, with our removing the license framework, why wouldn’t those enterprises act freely in the way they are acting now but without any false pretence?

Mr LIMBRICK: I apologise for coming late in the game with another question, but I would like to ask a question about clause 31, which I have got some concerns about. This is to do with the Summary Offences Act clause. I accept that the intended effect of this power is to prescribe holy days and make offences. I have got some concerns, though, about the actual wording of it and that it might give far broader powers far outside the intended application in sex work. Can the minister please confirm that the summary offences will be limited to prescribing holy days, or are there far broader summary offences that may be enabled under this clause 31?

Mr LEANE: Yes, Mr Limbrick, I can confirm that.

Mr LIMBRICK: I am sorry. Minister, can you confirm that it will be limited?

Mr LEANE: Yes. Sorry, when I answered that I was halfway through your question—but yes.

Mr ONDARCHIE: Minister, I am sure you will be pleased this is my final question to you. In Ms Taylor’s contribution, in response to some of the commentary by my colleagues on this side of the chamber, Ms Taylor said that a number of government departments were consulted who would be impacted by this bill. Which were those government departments?

Mr LEANE: I am getting you a number. I will get it in 2 seconds. I will come back to it when we are concluding the committee stage. Sorry about that.

Mr GRIMLEY: Minister, in the review that was held was it ever recognised or acknowledged that any exploitation or trafficking exists within the sex work industry?

Mr LEANE: The short answer, Mr Grimley, is yes.

Mr GRIMLEY: Thank you, Minister. Continuing on from that one, under this bill what tests or thresholds will a brothel owner need to undergo or meet in order to become a brothel owner?

Mr LEANE: The short answer is there will not be any, but the long answer is that the reason for that is that research has shown that certification of brothel managers was not effective, and for practical reasons the certification process was not able to consider what makes a person a good brothel owner. The criteria proposed by the amendments to prohibit a person from working in the sex work industry are broad and perpetuate the stigma associated with the sex work industry, creating further barriers for sex workers and operators. The amendments in essence would introduce a harmful regulatory system at odds with the decriminalisation model. Sorry, I have already jumped to your amendments, but that is what I think you are getting at.

Mr GRIMLEY: Thanks, Minister. So would I be correct in saying that if, for instance, I was a member of an organised crime gang or a member of an outlaw motorcycle gang or a person who is on the sex offender register then I would be eligible or able to own or manage a brothel?

Mr LEANE: The answer is yes, but I think some of the descriptions that you gave there are of people that are committing crimes anyway, despite that. I respect where you are coming from, Mr Grimley, but probably the possibility of those sorts of people being in charge of these sorts of enterprises is less and less once they are decriminalised, because the criminal nature at the moment is in the non-licensed areas, which, as we know, are prevalent. There is no point in us pretending otherwise.

Mr GRIMLEY: Thank you, Minister. Just on that, on 3AW this morning Charlie Bezzina raised concerns just on that point. He was very concerned. This is a person with many, many years of experience within Victoria Police; he knows a few things. He was very concerned that organised crime gangs would take this opportunity and begin to look at getting into the industry. Just a question on that: did the Patten review include any prohibitions at all on certain persons being able to run brothels outside of the licensing or certification system? And if not, was that ever considered by the government?

Mr LEANE: With the review and its recommendations around decriminalising sex work and also the treatment of sex workers, the theme or the goal that came out of that review and the eventual development of this bill was the tenet to treat sex workers the same as other workers when it comes to their OH&S, what regulates them and what protections they have as far as the Crimes Act goes. The tenet of the bill is also to treat sex worker enterprises the same way as other enterprises are treated currently. So as far as what was discussed in the report is concerned, I think the end result is what we have got to today in this bill, which the government is passionate about getting through this house if possible.

Mr GRIMLEY: Thanks, Minister. I do understand your response, but I will speak, obviously, to my amendments later on. It is interesting that the New South Wales police, despite the decriminalisation a couple of decades ago, state that criminal gangs and drug trafficking are rife in brothels. That is something I will talk about later.

Just on that point, the victims of crime commissioner also echoed similar statements about the consultation that we spoke about before, but she also made it very clear that in no explicit way has the bill addressed the inherent criminal involvement in some sex work, including coercion, exploitation, debt bondage and slavery. I have seen criminal activity in brothels firsthand myself, but after speaking with specialist officers within Victoria Police I know it can be much worse than what I have seen. Apart from transferring a few offences to different acts, how will this bill prevent the continuing commission of these offences, especially in the absence of any checks or oversight?

Mr LEANE: Mr Grimley, the crimes you have described are crimes under other acts, and they were crimes under other acts before the introduction of this bill. I take from your comment that New South Wales police have concerns about the way that certain entities may be introduced into this particular sector, but there is other conflicting evidence around that less organised crime has been involved since the decriminalisation, which would intuitively make sense. Those particular crimes that you mentioned are also moved across to the Crimes Act and the Summary Offences Act with respect to any concerns you have around the amendment that we are discussing today. To improve the safety and wellbeing of sex workers, including to reduce the risk of violence, coercion and exploitation, the bill will enact a number of criminal offences from the Sex Work Act to the Crimes Act, including section 8, ‘Forcing person into or to remain in sex work’, section 9, ‘Forcing person to provide financial support out of sex work’, and section 10, ‘Living on earnings of sex worker’. In addition, it is anticipated that the decriminalisation will result in higher reporting of crime due to increased access to justice, reduced barriers to reporting and reduced stigmas and decriminalisation.

Mr GRIMLEY: Thank you, Minister. The sex industry coordination unit, otherwise known as SICU, are a specialist unit within Victoria Police. They investigate crimes associated with sex work premises and also human trafficking and often women on visas. They also work with victims of crime in this space, and they disrupt the involvement of criminals in brothels. Minister, will the government be retaining the SICU once part 2 of the bill passes, the repeal of the Sex Work Act, and if not, where will they go?

Mr LEANE: Thank you, Mr Grimley. Any changes particularly to that unit or any unit that report to the Chief Commissioner of Police will be a matter for the police commissioner.

Mr GRIMLEY: Thank you, Minister. This is in relation to WorkSafe compliance checks, Minister. Are you able to elaborate to the chamber—and you will probably have to take this one on notice, I would imagine—how many WorkSafe compliance checks have been undertaken in the last financial year in relation to licensed brothels?

Mr LEANE: Thank you for the offer to have that on notice, Mr Grimley. I imagine that we will try and get that number and get it to you before the end of the committee stage.

Mr GRIMLEY: Just in relation to WorkSafe, continuing on that theme, according to the minister’s office the intention is that the review be conducted by WorkSafe. This is not made clear in the legislation, although it was elaborated upon earlier, which I acknowledge. But this gives a way for any individual to conduct the review solely. If the intention of the bill is to have it reviewed via WorkSafe, then why are we not specifying this?

Mr LEANE: Thank you, Mr Grimley, for the question. If I can on behalf of the government alleviate your concern about one agency taking a lead and not involving other agencies, I can give the commitment. There is going to be a review in a number of years time, Mr Grimley. I am not going to be so arrogant as to say that this government will be the government at the time, but if this government is the government at the time when the review takes place within the legislative framework, it will be conducted by the relevant government departments.

It may be led by WorkSafe, but it will be given a wide scope of governing legislation once the Sex Work Act is abolished through tranche 2 of the amendments. These governing bodies will include WorkSafe, as you mentioned, Victoria Police, the Business Licensing Authority and other relevant government and non-government agencies.

Mr GRIMLEY: Thanks, Minister. Moving on to consultation, the Municipal Association of Victoria (MAV) have made a statement in relation to expressing I suppose their exasperation at the meetings being held two days before the consultation closed and there being only a short consultation period of a little more than a week prior. Can the minister elaborate or respond to this comment and explain perhaps to the chamber why the short time frame was there and the overall consultation process with the councils? You may have crossed it off earlier on, I am not too sure.

Mr LEANE: I was asked a similar question but not to that extent. Mr Grimley, as you know, I think the main concern around local councils for the MAV—without putting words in their mouth—is the change to the planning act, and there will be a lot of consultation. That is why the eventual changes to the planning act are designed for stage 2, which is for completion in 2023.

As far as the consultation previous to that goes, individual councils aired their concerns to me a while ago in my role as Minister for Local Government. My department arranged those two sessions with the department responsible for this legislative change and for them to be available and give a briefing and answer questions from all the CEOs, including in a forum that the MAV sits in on with the CEOs. There was also one with all the mayors that made themselves available. It was indicated to me personally that they wanted more eyeline and more discussion and more consultation and a briefing around these potential changes to the act, and we made sure that was available to them. Any time that the sector says to me that they are concerned about a legislative change by the state government I always endeavour to get the right people in front of them, particularly at these CEO meetings, which occur every two or three weeks.

Mr GRIMLEY: Thanks, Minister. I appreciate that response. I have just got two final questions, and they are in relation to transitioning from sex work. The Sex Work Regulation Fund is a fund where the money from brothel licensing and fines goes. Can the minister elaborate? What is the Sex Work Regulation Fund currently spent on year to year?

Mr LEANE: Thank you, Mr Grimley. The Sex Work Regulation Fund is a trust fund established under section 66 of the Sex Work Act 1994 and is administered by Consumer Affairs Victoria. Under the act income for the fund comes from fees, fines and penalties paid under the act. Costs and expenses incurred by Consumer Affairs Victoria and the Business Licensing Authority in the administration of the act are paid from the fund. The Sex Work Regulation Fund will continue to operate until it is repealed with the Sex Work Act. The fund will remain available for transitional matters and will be wound up and ultimately closed in accordance with the Financial Management Act 1994. So the answer is it is available for transitional matters.

Mr GRIMLEY: Thanks, Minister. I struggled to hear that last bit; you had your mask on. I just could not understand that last bit.

Mr LEANE: I will get you a further answer, if that is what you want.

I think this is a more succinct answer. I apologise, Mr Grimley. It is for licensing and educational funds and industry initiatives like Resourcing Health and Education.

Mr GRIMLEY: Thanks, Minister. That makes a bit more sense. I am sure that the government would acknowledge that there are a few sex workers that wish to transition out of the job and into something else. I am just curious to know what assistance there is for these sex workers who wish to transition out into another sector. It is my understanding that the last publicly funded outreach service for sex workers was called Pathways to Exit, and it was axed under the former Liberal government. Will the government commit to funding this program or anything similar for that matter that will assist women who want to transition out of sex work?

Mr LEANE: Thank you, Mr Grimley. We are aware of this issue, and we are exploring options about how we may facilitate assistance in this area.

Dr CUMMING: This vein of questions is around sex workers and clients. Under the current Sex Work Act of 1994, sex workers and clients must adopt safer sex practices, and in the current act it actually says:

A person must not provide or receive sex work services unless he or she has taken all reasonable steps to ensure a condom or other appropriate barrier is used if that sex work involves vaginal, anal, or oral penetration or another activity with a similar or greater risk of acquiring or transmitting sexually transmissible infections.

Mr FINN: Will they have to wear a mask?

Dr CUMMING: No. So, Minister, from what I can understand of the current bill that this government is proposing, am I correct in saying that for a sex worker and his or her or their client, if they consent to not having protected sex, that is no longer going to be seen as an offence?

Mr LEANE: The answer is yes.

Dr CUMMING: So, Minister, I guess back in the day of this actual act, the Sex Work Act of 1994 and the 1980s of course, when HIV was a new virus, one of the reasons why this act for sex workers, the Sex Work Act, came into play was to stop transmission of STIs.

At that time, back in the day, they were called STDs. Minister, have viruses changed somewhat in 2022, or how is this going to be picked up? I understand it is said that there is potential under the Public Health and Wellbeing Act 2008 for something dissimilar, or not similar—that transmissible diseases that are currently prescribed in the health and wellbeing act will be dealt with. Infectious diseases, I should say, are currently dealt with under the health and wellbeing act, so is there going to be a special section to look at STIs, STDs and sex workers specifically as a higher risk, seeing that the government is pretty prescriptive in suggesting that nurses and aged-care workers sit in professions that we wish to make sure there are extra protections around, around infectious diseases? Therefore will this government still consider that sex workers are in a high-risk occupation for infectious diseases but specifically STIs and STDs?

Mr LEANE: Could I sort of paraphrase that and answer with how the government will manage public health risks of STI transmission in the sex work industry and in the broader community. The review found that the STI public health risk in the sex work industry has steadily decreased over recent decades. A low rate of STI in Victorian sex workers is supported by academic literature, including evidence provided by the Melbourne Sexual Health Centre during the consultation. Sex workers have a vested interest in maintaining their sexual health and are highly capable of doing so, based on the experiences of other jurisdictions that have decriminalised. It is anticipated that decriminalisation will not lead to an increased rate of STIs in Victoria. The introduction of voluntary testing during decriminalisation in New South Wales and New Zealand in 1995 and 2003 respectively has not led to significant increases in STIs among sex workers or the broader community. The bill will be complemented with sexual health resources and education for sex workers to promote safe sex practices and to access health care and testing.

It will be still illegal under the Crimes Act to cause injury intentionally or recklessly to another person, which includes knowingly infecting someone with a disease. There are existing powers under the Public Health and Wellbeing Act 2008, in addition to brothel and escort agency provisions, that are available to manage any serious risk to public health related to the transmission of notifiable STIs during the decriminalisation and post 2023. These include public health orders, which may be used to prevent a person from recklessly continuing to engage in sex work if other less restrictive mechanisms are not appropriate. These decisions would be made in accordance with the decision-making framework in the act. These provisions of general application are sufficient to manage any risk to public health and would apply equally to both sex workers and clients.

Dr CUMMING: Just currently there are suggestions that there may be a vaccine for HIV, and there may be vaccines in the future for STIs. Would the government be considering mandating vaccines?

Mr LEANE: That is not part of this bill.

Dr CUMMING: So, Minister, when it comes to infectious diseases, are you suggesting that this government would not consider the possibility of mandating any STI vaccines that are possibly available and currently available, not just for sex workers but for their clients as well?

Mr LEANE: There is no reference to what you are describing as part of this bill.

Mr MEDDICK: I move:

1. Clause 1, page 2, lines 7 to 9, omit all words and expressions on these lines.

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: The question is that Mr Meddick’s amendment 1, which is a test for his amendments 5 to 8 and 31 to 33, be agreed to.

Amendment negatived; clause agreed to.

Clause 2 (17:57)

Mr LEANE: I move:

Clause 2, line 26, omit “1 March” and insert “10 May”.

This is just to align and change the date from 1 March to 10 May given the time of the carriage of the bill and also to give us a bit more time for the consultation, particularly around some issues that have been raised by Mr Grimley and others.

Ms PATTEN: First off, I just would like to say thank you, Minister. I think you are doing a very good job in a fairly foreign land that you are working in here.

Mr LEANE: You are being too kind.

Ms PATTEN: I think this has been a very good committee of the whole so far. I think the community and I think many of the people who have been advocating for this bill for so many decades are disappointed to see yet another delay. However, I respect that it has taken time to get things in place and that the consultation process does take longer than sometimes we all would like.

Mr LEANE: I will just take that as a comment. I understand that for a number of people it has been a long time coming. We do apologise that we did have to push this back. As I said, it is the carriage to this house and the legislative program and also just that couple of months more that gives us that consultation period. But it is enshrined on 10 May if we pass the amendment.

Amendment agreed to; amended clause agreed to; clauses 3 and 4 agreed to.

Clause 5 (17:59)

Dr CUMMING: My amendment 1 is to omit this clause.

Ms PATTEN: I would just like to say that I will be opposing this amendment. This bill is actually about decriminalising sex work, and you cannot decriminalise sex work while maintaining attempts to continue to criminalise sex workers. You cannot have it both ways. This is a decriminalisation bill. It is about removing the criminal sanctions that have weighed down on sex workers for so many decades. There is absolutely no evidence that sex workers do not look after their health. In fact all of the evidence is absolutely to the opposite, that sex workers take great importance in their own health and they do not require the government to criminalise them for not doing so. Frankly for many of us it is actually offensive to think that we are so immoral that we need to be told what to do and how to look after our own health, the health of our loved ones, the health of our business and the health of our clients.

Mr LIMBRICK: The Liberal Democrats will be opposing this amendment on the grounds that the intent of the bill is to make sex workers the same as all other workers. If there are specific occupational risks, then they would be handled in the normal way like other workplace safety issues, so we do not feel it is necessary to have these requirements.

Mr LEANE: The government will be opposing the amendment as well, and I think Ms Patten and Mr Limbrick pretty much outlined our position.

Dr CUMMING: On hearing the contributions to my amendment, I just wish to say that it would be great if others had the same vigour when it comes to allowing everyone in the community to have a say in their own health outcomes. Because currently we mandate for a vaccine, so it would seem that we are happily discriminating at the moment with people’s health choices. When it actually comes to what is within the current act, what I am suggesting is not to omit it until the work is actually done on the Public Health and Wellbeing Act. I am not saying or suggesting at all that sex workers do not understand their own bodies and cannot look after their own bodies or that it is not in their own interest to look after their bodies. I reject that assertion.

Ms SHING: I just want to add to a couple of the comments that Ms Patten has made in relation to this idea of personal responsibility, which is being bandied around a lot lately, particularly in relation to some of the subject matter that Dr Cumming has just gone to. Again it comes back to the idea of stigma and the idea and the perception of the longstanding pall that is cast over sex workers about being dirty and therefore somehow being neglectful of their own health and safety. To that end I think it is really, really important to note that given the occupational vulnerabilities that exist for people working in the sex industry it almost defies belief that it could not be reasonably concluded that people will take extra steps to ensure their own health and safety. But nonetheless they deserve the protection and the regulation and the oversight of the occupational health and safety framework and the workers health and safety system as it operates within other sectors and industries.

Dr CUMMING: On that, I totally agree with Ms Shing’s intent that we should not stigmatise—100 per cent. We should not stigmatise anyone when it comes to their health and their health choices, as well as if they have a disease or do not have a disease or if they are vaccinated or not vaccinated. There is a lot of stigmatisation at the moment. This government loves to throw that around, stigmatising the unvaccinated and considering them dirty or to be possibly giving out diseases. But yes, I totally agree with the sentiment of this.

Mr Meddick: On a point of order, Deputy President, I was going to ask you to bring Dr Cumming back to relevance. What she is prosecuting is a completely different concept in terms of what this bill is trying to achieve, exactly what Ms Patten and Ms Shing are talking about.

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Okay. I think she was responding to Ms Shing’s comments, but she has finished now anyway so let us just move on. If that concludes the debate on Dr Cumming’s amendment, we might just go back and tidy up the new clause insertion that we overlooked before. We just need to jump back. After clause 2 Mr Meddick has an amendment to insert a new clause. Mr Meddick, would you like to move that now, please?

Mr MEDDICK: I move:

2. Insert the following New Clause to follow clause 2—

“2A Definitions

In this Act—

sex work means the provision by a person of services that involve the person participating in sexual activity with another person in return for payment or reward;

sex worker means a person who performs sex work.”.

Just by way of explanation here, just a very short one, the reason I am bringing these amendments is that sex workers experience high levels of discrimination in every facet of their lives and must have access to robust anti-discrimination protections. ‘Profession’, ‘trade’ and ‘occupation’ are important protections; however, they are insufficient in providing necessary protections for sex workers who face widespread systemic and personal discrimination. The attributes ‘sex work’ and ‘sex worker’ are advocated for by the sex worker community because they represent sex workers regardless of the form of sex work they engage in. Whether or not the complainant identifies as a sex worker, whether their industry is regulated or unregulated and regardless of the regulatory, political and judicial environment in which the complaint was made, the proposed amendments address the barrier sex workers will continue to face in making successful anti-discrimination complaints if sex work and sex worker are not listed particularly as protected attributes.

Mr LIMBRICK: The Liberal Democrats will be opposing this amendment. Our view is that with the intent of this bill to treat sex work the same as any other industry we think it is inappropriate to separate out this particular definition. I think in my questioning of the minister earlier he satisfied me that under the existing bill it would be covered fairly completely, so we do not have concerns with the current bill and will not be supporting this amendment.

Mr LEANE: Thanks, Mr Limbrick. And thank you, Mr Meddick, for your amendment. The bill includes a new protected attribute which will apply broadly to protect all persons, including sex workers, from discrimination based on their profession, trade and occupation. The specific inclusion of the reference ‘sex work’ or ‘sex worker’ as a part of the protected attribute is unnecessary to achieve the policy intention of protecting sex workers from discrimination. This is in line with the policy intent of decriminalisation. Treating sex work equally to all other legal professions in Victoria and not singling it out ensures the protections in the Equal Opportunity Act are not at risk of becoming out of date with the emergence of new types of sex work. If ‘sex worker’ or ‘sex work business’ were defined in defined terms, they would be required to be prescriptive definitions that may inadvertently exclude some workers or businesses who may experience decriminalisation as a result of sex work.

New clause negatived.

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Okay, so now we go back to clause 5. We will just put the clause, so anyone who is supporting Dr Cumming’s amendment should vote against the clause.

Clause agreed to; clauses 6 and 7 agreed to.

Clause 8 (18:11)

Dr CUMMING: My amendment 2 is to omit clause 8.

Mr LEANE: The government will be opposing this amendment.

Clause agreed to.

Clause 9 (18:12)

Dr CUMMING: My amendment 3 is to omit clause 9.

Mr LEANE: The government will be opposing this.

Clause agreed to.

Clause 10 (18:13)

Dr CUMMING: Amendment 4 in my name is to omit clause 10.

Mr LEANE: The government will be opposing that amendment.

Ms PATTEN: Look, just for those playing at home, clause 10 repeals section 20 of the act, which provides for the Minister for Health to determine the time period for swab tests to be taken by sex workers. Just to be clear, this is actually about a minister deciding when a sex worker should have a swab test. This is a decriminalisation bill, and obviously I will oppose this amendment.

Clause agreed to; clauses 11 and 12 agreed to.

Clause 13 (18:14)

Dr CUMMING: Amendment 5 in my name is to omit clause 13.

Mr LEANE: The government will be opposing this amendment.

Clause agreed to; clauses 14 to 21 agreed to.

Clause 22 (18:15)

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Mr Meddick, I invite you to move your amendment 8, which the sheet says is a test for your amendments 9 to 13 and 34 and 35.

Mr MEDDICK: I move:

8. Clause 22, lines 6 to 10, omit all words and expressions on these lines and insert—

‘The register maintained under section 24, as in force immediately before its repeal, must be destroyed as soon as practicable after that repeal.”.’.

I will just make a short statement and then I will ask a question of the minister if that is fine. This is an extremely important amendment. It requires the sex work service provider register to be destroyed as soon as practicable after the repeal of section 24 of the Sex Work Act. I just want to make a brief explanation as to why this is being moved before I ask the minister a question.

Maintaining the register as a historical register allows the sensitive personal information of Victorian sex workers to remain intact. The bill recognises the harms of the registration of sex workers, so there can be no justification for retaining these records as a historical register. I understand that in the minister’s contribution prior to us going into the committee of the whole there were some comments made around that. Unfortunately I was actively engaged in trying to garner support for this amendment so I did not hear what it was that the minister was saying. My question to the minister is: would he care to please repeat what it was that he said?

Mr LEANE: Thank you, Mr Meddick. Look, I can assure Mr Meddick that the government will destroy the register in accordance with the public records. The department can brief interested stakeholders as far as this process goes and keep them updated as the register is destroyed. I can assure you, as the minister at the table, that that is what will happen.

Mr MEDDICK: Thank you, Minister. I know that for many in the gallery this evening and for those watching on at home that is a very, very important commitment, and I am pleased to hear that it is now on the record in Hansard so this can then be referred back to. My only other question then is: what will be the time frame surrounding that for that consultation?

Mr LEANE: The short answer, Mr Meddick, is by 10 May.

Mr MEDDICK: Fantastic.

Ms PATTEN: Thank you, Minister. This is terrific news. It is a long-held belief by sex workers in Victoria that this needs to be destroyed. We were concerned, and I know the public servants were saying that there were difficulties with this. My question might be: can we attend the destruction?

Mr LEANE: I will stick to the lines: the department can brief interested stakeholders as far as the process goes and keep them updated with the register being destroyed.

Mr LIMBRICK: The Liberal Democrats are supportive of Mr Meddick’s intent to destroy the register as soon as possible. We are concerned about supporting an amendment that may be unnecessary. One other question relating to the time frame: how will confirmation of destruction be provided in a way that would satisfy stakeholders?

Ms PATTEN: Three puffs of grey smoke out the chimney.

Mr LEANE: Look, we can commit as part of the consultation and keeping stakeholders up to date with the process to having a conversation on how they would like to see that confirmed. So Ms Patten’s idea might actually be a reality.

Mr LIMBRICK: I thank the minister for providing that information. I would just like to put on the record that my concern is not around destroying the records but that in any computer system there are backups and all these sorts of things floating around. I know it is quite difficult to make sure it is all gone, and that is why I asked for some sort of method of confirmation.

Mr LEANE: Yes, and that is why we have taken the opportunity to give us until the 10 May date, because we do have to make sure that other agencies that may have access to that data have also removed that data in terms of destroying the register.

Amendment negatived; clause agreed to; clauses 23 to 27 agreed to.

Clause 28 (18:22)

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Mr Meddick, I invite you to speak to your amendment 14, which tests your amendments 15, 17 and 26 to 30.

Mr MEDDICK: My amendment is to omit this clause. I just want to make a couple of very short statements and then ask a question to the minister again on this. For everyone who might be watching and might be unsure of the processes—about what we are talking about with testing and groups of amendments here—often where an amendment that you are making to a particular bill or a particular clause falls under a particular act, you have got several under the same act. If you have got several other amendments under the same act, then they all fall under the amendment, which is a test. And so it falls for this one, which is actually falling in clause 28—covered in this—and is a test of 26 to 30.

What this one pertains to is street-based sex work. It was covered off several times in members’ contributions during the second-reading debate. The concern that we have—why I am bringing this amendment—is in relation to the retaining of the criminalisation of street-based sex workers during certain hours in certain places, which was prosecuted quite definitely here. Essentially, retaining an offence, even for a shortened period of hours or in certain places, means it is still an offence, which by definition means that the intent of the bill—to decriminalise—is thwarted. So I have enormous concerns around that.

My question arises out of that and pertains to the role of police in this regard because of the concerns that the sector have, and the government has acknowledged that the current approach of relying on police enforcement around street sex work, including entrapment, does not work. My question is: will police be able to continue to conduct entrapment operations in these circumstances—during those prohibited times and at particular places?

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Are there any further questions or comments on Mr Meddick’s amendment?

Ms PATTEN: It is a comment while I am waiting for the minister’s answer, I suppose. I will be supporting this amendment. I think Mr Meddick quite articulately put this. This goes to the crux of decriminalisation. You cannot have decriminalisation when you still criminalise certain activities.

In this case these activities are so strange. I know during clause 1 we heard a number of questions around this clause: whether a sex worker could stand outside a synagogue during Yom Kippur or whether a sex worker could stand outside a church during a wedding. It seems like it is a solution looking for a problem. I do not think we have got any experience of people being concerned about people soliciting or working outside religious institutions, churches or childcare centres. I am not aware of a single complaint about this, and so again I think this clause is a solution looking for a problem.

Mr LEANE: The answer to Mr Meddick’s question is that the way the police police is a matter for the police. I will say, getting back to some of the early commentary—it seems like we have been at this for a while—that there has been similar legislation in other jurisdictions, including in New South Wales for over 20 years, in the decriminalisation of sex work that has taken similar positions about operating near similar types of institutions, so it is not a unique thing that we are embracing here in our jurisdiction. It is around the balance. I have had a number of members of the committee that thought there should be more types of institutions added to this list; it could have been endless. Our role in government is to try to find a balance and reassure society. Getting to Ms Patten’s comment, maybe it is not something to be concerned about at all, because it is not going to happen, but in this bill we are just giving some people some sort of comfort that it is here anyway.

Mr LIMBRICK: The Liberal Democrats will be supporting this amendment. We believe that this part of the bill goes against the intent of treating sex work the same as every other type of commercial activity, and therefore having special limitations on where and when this activity can take place for this particular type of business we feel is inappropriate. Therefore we will support removing it.

Committee divided on clause:

Clause agreed to.

Ms TAYLOR: I move:

That the dinner break be shortened to 45 minutes.

Motion agreed to.

Sitting suspended 6.36 pm until 7.29 pm.

Clauses 29 to 33 agreed to.

New clause (19:31)

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Mr Meddick, I call you to move your amendment 18, which inserts a new clause and is a test for your amendments 19 and 20.

Mr MEDDICK: I move:

18. Insert the following New Clause before clause 34—

‘33A Definitions

Insert the following definitions in section 4(1) of the Equal Opportunity Act 2010—

“sex work means the provision by a person of services that involve the person participating in sexual activity with another person in return for payment or reward;

sex worker means a person who performs sex work;”.’.

New clause negatived.

Clause 34 (19:32)

Mr RICH-PHILLIPS: Minister, I spoke about this clause in the second reading. The government has indicated its intention with this clause, which is the amendment to the Equal Opportunity Act, is to create a new protected attribute of profession, trade or occupation in order to remove discrimination from sex workers in relation to accessing services. Can you clarify, though, that this new protected attribute will not apply only to sex workers; it will in fact apply to any person?

Mr LEANE: It applies to any person.

Mr RICH-PHILLIPS: Thank you, Minister. Given the way ‘person’ is defined in the Equal Opportunity Act, it does not just mean ‘natural person’. It is defined as including incorporated associations and would also include bodies corporate.

Mr LEANE: The definition of ‘person’ is a trade, profession and occupation—so trade, profession and occupation.

Mr RICH-PHILLIPS: But Minister, as that would apply to a person in its broadest definition—so a person in relation to a trade or profession—it could be a business, not just a natural person.

Mr LEANE: If it is okay, Mr Rich-Phillips, can we just take that on notice and get you an answer before the committee stage ends? We will confirm that with you.

Mr RICH-PHILLIPS: Thank you, Minister. I am happy to receive that on notice. The reason I asked the question is that ‘person’ is defined in the Equal Opportunity Act more broadly than just ‘natural person’. Obviously the existing protected attributes in the list largely are personal things—for example, their age, if they are breastfeeding, their gender identity, disability. Currently they are things that can relate only to a natural person, but this new one can relate to a business—for example, a business in a particular trade or profession. So it is just to clarify that this will apply not only to individuals but also to businesses—and I used the example earlier in the second reading where businesses had been discriminated against because they were in a particular industry, they had been denied banking services et cetera—and to clarify that this provision would apply not only to an individual but also to a business in a particular trade, profession or occupation.

Mr LEANE: Thanks, Mr Rich-Phillips. I did hear your contribution and did not understand where you were coming from. Let us do some more research before the end of the committee stage and give you the answer around that.

Mr RICH-PHILLIPS: Thank you, Minister. On the other element of related questions: the bill seeks to insert an exception, being a ‘genuine occupational requirement’. Obviously that would only apply in circumstances of a person being employed. The example I would like to raise with you is not necessarily an employment relationship but a service provision relationship, and again it goes to the issue of banking. One of the arguments that has been put forward by banks as to why they have refused service to particular professions or occupations is that they do not fit their risk profile. So they are arguing it is not necessarily because a person is working in the sex industry or the firearms industry, it is because the riskiness of that particular profession or occupation does not fit the risk profile of a particular bank. Given the exemption is only for a genuine occupational requirement, how would the argument of a particular occupation not fitting the risk profile fit within this discrimination provision?

Mr LEANE: Thank you, Mr Rich-Phillips. I think there is a position around what you are rightly concerned about, and the advice I am getting is that if there is a case where it is believed that someone’s equal opportunity rights are being impinged on because of, as you said, the risk profile of that particular nature of the business, then there is a dispute resolution process where an individual or a business can go to VEOHRC over that dispute. Then if it is not settled by that, there is the opportunity to go to VCAT. I completely understand your concerns, and they are actually good ones. We are kind of going a little bit outside of the scope, but they actually are good concerns. So I think that there may be tests in the future around this risk profile.

Mr RICH-PHILLIPS: Thank you, Minister. I would argue whether it is going outside the scope. It may be broader than the sex work industry, but the provision you are putting in the bill is broader than the sex work sector. However, thank you for that answer, and I look forward to receiving your other answer, before we conclude committee, as to the scope.

Mr LIMBRICK: Further to this conversation that Mr Rich-Phillips was having, one of the issues with people who have been potentially discriminated against is that, for example, when they have an interaction with a financial institution, the financial institution does not give reasons for terminating their accounts. How might someone who has had their account terminated understand whether or not they were being discriminated against under this new attribute, because I have spoken with many people who have been de-banked, not just in sex work, in other industries as well? And Mr Rich-Phillips has spoken about other industries. How would they actually know, because the bank does not tell them, normally? They just say, ‘Your account has been terminated. We have the commercial right to determine who we deal with’—and goodbye, basically, is what the banks say. I have seen copies of these letters. How would someone even know?

Mr LEANE: Look, it is a very good question, Mr Limbrick. How they would know is a very good question, and it is one that is very difficult to answer for anyone in terms of how they would know the reasons. I think we fall back on that someone who feels like they have been discriminated against in this way has got the provision through VEOHRC and VEOHRC’s dispute resolution procedure, and if they are not happy with that then they have got the same provision that I mentioned to Mr Rich-Phillips around VCAT. How they know is a very good question. If we can get any further information to you, we will.

Clause agreed to; clauses 35 to 38 agreed to.

Clause 39 (19:41)

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Mr Meddick, would you like to move your amendment 21 to clause 39, which is a test for your amendments 22 to 25?

Mr MEDDICK: Again, I will keep my comments brief on this, but I think it does need some clarification about the reasons behind it. It would be easy because of the subject matter to get caught up in rhetoric and not really understand what this amendment is actually about. It is very easy to go down a path, when drugs are mentioned, to just think that there is criminal activity happening there and there is coercion happening and violence et cetera. So it does need clarification, and that is that the bill classifies the supply or offer of supply of a drug of dependence wholly and solely as an indicator of force. This implies that supplying or offering to supply a reward in and of itself is considered an indicator of forcing someone to engage or continue to engage in sex work. This will have unintended harmful consequences for sex workers choosing to do sex work who use drugs, such as criminalisation, oppositional contact with police and resulting barriers to accessing essential services, including health promotion and peer education, housing, health and even legal services. In a situation where someone is forced to engage in or continue to engage in commercial sexual services for payment or reward—

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Sorry, Mr Meddick. I need to interrupt you. There appears to be some filming going on from the gallery. I just remind you once again that you cannot take pictures or videos of proceedings, thank you.

Mr MEDDICK: So for payment or reward—and drugs of dependence would already be captured under ‘reward’—it is therefore not necessary to specify it. The amendments that I am bringing address those harmful impacts on sex workers while retaining protections in the bill for sex workers in the instance of force. I move:

21. Clause 39, lines 14 to 17, omit “(including the supply of a drug of dependence within the meaning of the Drugs, Poisons and Controlled Substances Act 1981)”.

Mr LIMBRICK: The Liberal Democrats will be supporting this amendment. We agree with the context here. Really, this is sort of one of these ‘double illegal’ things. It is already illegal to traffic drugs. Making it an indicator of force I do not think is sensible, because these can be consensual relationships, and therefore we agree with this amendment.

Ms PATTEN: I certainly do support this amendment as well. I would be curious as to why it became necessary to be part of the bill, and I am sure the minister is about to tell us that, because really it seems to further send a message that sex work is other. We would not add this ‘for payment or reward’ in other activities or other occupations. This does seem to be quite unique to sex workers, and so we will support the amendment.

Mr LEANE: I suppose my response to Mr Meddick, Ms Patten and Mr Limbrick is I think we are probably in furious agreement in some way, wherein the intent of this description around drugs being exchanged, maybe for monetary reward, is that we would deem it as a reward so that the person who is receiving that reward for those services can be deemed as a sex worker, and therefore as a sex worker, under the description in this bill, they are afforded criminal justice if need be. So I kind of feel like we are in furious agreement, but I do take into account the concerns. But from the consultation, one of a lot of things that were fleshed out was that we do not think it needs to be concentrated and misinterpreted; it is purely to make sure that particular individual is deemed as a sex worker via that reward.

Amendment negatived; clause agreed to; clauses 40 to 43 agreed to.

New clause (19:47)

Mr GRIMLEY: I move:

Insert the following new clause after clause 43—

‘43A Amendment of Crimes Act 1958

After Division 11A of Part I of the Crimes Act 1958 insert—

“Division 11B—Owning or operating a sex work service provider

321LE Definitions

In this Division—

sex work service provider means a business offering or providing sex work services at a premises.

sex work services means the provision by one person to or for another person (whether or not of a different sex) of sexual services in return for payment or reward.

321LF Prohibition on certain persons owning or operating a sex work service provider

(1) A person must not own or operate a sex work service provider, either individually or with another, if the person—

(a) has been convicted a disqualifying offence specified in subsection (2); or

(b) is or has been a member of a declared organisation for the purposes of the Criminal Organisations Control Act 2012; or

(c) is or has been a declared individual for the purposes of the Criminal Organisations Control Act 2012; or

(d) is a member of an organisation identified in a corresponding declaration that has been registered under section 86 of the Criminal Organisations Control Act 2012; or

(e) has been named in a corresponding declaration that has been registered under section 86 of the Criminal Organisations Control Act 2012.

Penalty: 240 penalty units or 2 years imprisonment or both.

(2) The disqualifying offences referred to in subsection (1) are the following—

(a) an offence against Divisions 1, 2 or 2A that is punishable by 2 years imprisonment or more;

(b) an offence against the Firearms Act 1996 that is punishable by 4 years imprisonment or more;

(c) an offence against Part V of the Drugs, Poisons and Controlled Substances Act 1981 that is punishable by 2 years imprisonment or more;

(d) attempting or conspiring to commit, or being an accessory after the fact to, an offence specified in paragraph (a), (b) or (c);

(e) an offence equivalent to an offence specified in paragraph (a), (b), (c) or (d) that was committed in another state or a territory or in New Zealand.”.’.

This amendment proposes a standalone criminal offence for prohibited persons who are found to own or manage a brothel. I will just speak briefly on this. We have used the current ‘prohibited persons’ definitions that exist in the New Zealand act as well as Victoria’s current act as a basis for this amendment, which refers to offences punishable by two or more years imprisonment, of which a list was provided to members previously by email. I will not go through it now.

To be very clear, this will not provide a barrier for former sex workers who wish to run their own sex worker premises, even if they have been convicted of street-based sex working offences in the past. This amendment is aimed at only the most serious criminals. We have used common sense and existing legislation in other jurisdictions to include offences that have a known history of having negative effects on the sex industry, such as drug and sexual offending. The penalty for contravening this is 240 penalty units, two years in prison or both. We also know that offenders rarely receive the maximum sentence, and therefore this will be reserved for the most serious circumstances.

What we hope is that through this amendment police will be able to protect more workers but also disrupt businesses that are run by people who should not be involved in the sex work industry. When we spoke to New South Wales police, it was clear that despite decriminalisation around 25 years ago criminal gangs and drug trafficking are rife in brothels. New South Wales police—through speaking to my office and also in the 2015 parliamentary inquiry into the regulation of brothels—cannot enter or disrupt illegal behaviour in illegal brothels without proof of drug trafficking, human trafficking or other illegal behaviour.

We need a way to disrupt this involvement and the business practices of criminal organisations. A criminal offence for involvement in such businesses like we are proposing would be a deterrent to criminals, including gang affiliates. As I said in my earlier amendment, what is being considered through this bill is no longer best practice. We need additional protections for women by having the ability to outlaw the criminal element from running brothels.

The question you need to consider in deciding whether or not to support this amendment is: do you think it should be completely legal to run a brothel if you are convicted of a serious crime or, worse, a violent crime against a person? For those opposed to a certificate or permit process, which is my next amendment, this amendment is a step down from that.

Ms PATTEN: I certainly cannot support Mr Grimley’s amendment, and I am not saying that it comes from a bad place. However, this is a bill about decriminalisation, so to add further criminal penalties into a bill that is about decriminalisation goes against the actual spirit of the bill at hand. I would also note that in 2015 the New South Wales Parliament did an inquiry looking into just this, because New South Wales decriminalised it in 1994, so it was kind of a 20-year review in some ways. Now, they looked at this exact issue and decided against it, and in fact what they found was that the existing system was working quite well. Then in New Zealand there is something like this, but actually it is not upheld, and certainly the industry in New Zealand is not in favour of it. It is not proved to be best practice by any means, and in fact it is rarely practised. So I do not think this is good practice.

Certainly if you were looking at doing this and singling out the sex industry, why wouldn’t you single out fruit wholesalers or vegetable markets and things like that, where we have also seen involvement in crime? We have some very good organised crime legislation in this state, and that would apply to anyone in the sex industry, the same as it applies to anyone in the fruit and vegetable industry.

Mr LIMBRICK: The Liberal Democrats will also be opposing this amendment on similar grounds. The principle of equality under law means that if we are going to decriminalise this industry, having specific prohibitions on people who can participate in that industry does not make sense. If people are conducting criminal activity within the industry, they should be prosecuted in the same way as any other industry, and therefore we do not think it makes sense to add a specific prohibition for this type of industry. Therefore we will oppose the amendment.

Mr ONDARCHIE: This is consistent, Mr Grimley’s amendment, with a lot of the contributions that the Liberal-Nationals coalition have made in this debate. We in fact raised some of the issues that Mr Grimley raised today in his second-reading speech, and I note the minister was asked earlier if crime gangs or outlaw motorcycle gangs can operate these things, and reluctantly he said yes. So the Liberal-Nationals coalition will be supporting Mr Grimley’s amendment.

Mr LEANE: I thank Mr Grimley for his amendment. We will be opposing the amendment. The amendment prohibits certain persons from owning or operating sex work service businesses, such that their intent is similar to the suitability assessment in the current regime, which we are decriminalising. Research has shown that certification of brothel managers is not effective, and for practical reasons a certification process is not able to consider what makes a person a good brothel manager. The criteria proposed by the amendment to prohibit a person from working in the sex work industry are broad and perpetuate the stigma associated with the sex work industry, creating further barriers to sex workers and operators. The amendment in essence will introduce a harmful regulatory system at odds with a decriminalised model.

Committee divided on new clause:

New clause negatived.

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: The minister has a response for Mr Rich-Phillips from earlier on.

Mr LEANE: Thanks for your patience. I am unsure whether this acquits Mr Rich-Phillips’s concern, but the bill does not displace any parts of the Equal Opportunity Act, including the definition of ‘person’. Under the Equal Opportunity Act section 4 states:

person includes an unincorporated association and, in relation to a natural person, means a person of any age …

Mr RICH-PHILLIPS: Thank you, Minister. I take from that the scope is as broad as we discussed, including other incorporated entities and bodies corporate, and therefore this protection would extend to those in respect of a trade, profession or occupation.

Mr LEANE: Yes.

Clauses 44 to 56 agreed to.

Clause 57 (20:02)

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Mr Grimley, I invite you to move your amendment 1 on your sheet SG23C, which is a test for all remaining amendments on that sheet.

Mr GRIMLEY: I move the amendment standing my name, which seeks to introduce a brothel owner certificate:

1. Clause 57, after line 9 insert—

‘(2) After section 6(a) of the Business Licensing Authority Act 1998 insert—

“(ab) to administer the sex service operator certification provisions in Part 2A; and”.’.

We have done extensive consultation and redrafts of this to try to strike a nice balance between decriminalisation and destigmatisation and also keeping tabs on the ownership of brothels. This certification system is similar to that in New Zealand, but in some ways our proposal is less strict. Some detail of this certification system is that it will only be required for brothels where there are four or more workers. This ensures that sex workers who want to work in a partnership do not need to take part in the certification process. Scarlet Alliance and Sex Work Law Reform Victoria have made it clear that sex work premises are owner-operated or in partnership, so this will remove the requirement for most sex work premises to gain certification. To be clear, it is only the operator, including those who might gain financial benefit from the business—not the workers—who need to gain certification.

On the recommendation of the sex work lobby, it will be the Business Licensing Authority that will conduct the certification, with Victoria Police able to provide information pertaining to the disqualifying offences. This has been unavoidable, because the Business Licensing Authority clearly does not have access to criminal records. This amendment includes a fit and proper person test to be submitted through the BLA as well as an offence for those knowingly providing false information. The fit and proper person test currently exists in other legislation and could also be known as a suitable person test or an honesty and integrity test, which all hold different thresholds depending on the industry. VicPol do it for liquor licensing. In all instances the overarching agency uses its subjectivity in determining the suitability of a person in managing or owning a business.

Whilst the narrative conveyed to MPs by certain groups that sex work business should be treated like any other business is well intentioned, it neglects that sex work service providers are inherently a high-risk workplace. I spoke on this at length in my contribution earlier. Like any other business that is high risk for employees, there are restrictions or tests applied to regulate who can and cannot operate in such an environment. For example, fit and proper person tests exist in many industries where there are vulnerable people or animals concerned or where corruption might be likely, including but not limited to real estate, law, labour hire companies, child care, horse and greyhound racing and even environmental licences, plus many more.

I think in Mr Leane’s remarks earlier he stated that certification does not prevent criminals from entering any industry or ensure the safety and wellbeing of any employees, but if that is the case, then why do we have the fit and proper person test at all in any industry? As you can see, this test is not specific to the sex work industry and should not be seen as stigmatising. We believe this strikes the balance of regulation on the industry without stigmatising or creating a criminalised environment for sex workers, given this amendment does not criminalise sex workers. Through this amendment we are seeking to criminalise the criminals who seek to exploit sex workers.

Mr LIMBRICK: The Liberal Democrats will be opposing this amendment. To be frank, we see this as one of the best free market reforms that Labor has done in this term of government. Normally I stand here and complain about new licensing and new certification regimes. This time they are getting rid of one and there is no way I want this certification to come back. I congratulate the Labor Party on getting rid of this certification regime, and I oppose this amendment.

Ms PATTEN: At risk of getting the government to change their mind, which I hope Mr Limbrick has not encouraged, the body of this amendment is about suggesting that the sex industry is inherently high risk, and I reject that the industry is inherently high risk. The criminalisation of the industry has created criminals. By decriminalising the industry we will change that.

Mr ONDARCHIE: I have just watched Mr Limbrick and Ms Patten in lockstep tonight. There is something in the water here. For sure, there is something in the water. The Liberal-Nationals will be supporting Mr Grimley’s amendment tonight.

Mr LEANE: The government will be opposing Mr Grimley’s amendment. I think I actually outlined our reasons in my answer on his previous amendment. I thank him for giving me the heads-up around that. I will not repeat what is on the record but just say that introducing a new regulatory system is at odds with what we are trying to do with this bill in decriminalising sex work.

Committee divided on amendment:

Amendment negatived.

Clause agreed to; clauses 58 to 83 agreed to.

Reported to house with amendment.

Mr LEANE (Eastern Metropolitan—Minister for Local Government, Minister for Suburban Development, Minister for Veterans) (20:15): I move:

That the report be now adopted.

In saying that can I acknowledge the Deputy President’s work and the contributions in the committee stage from Ms Patten, Mr Meddick, Mr Ondarchie, Mr Grimley, Dr Cumming, Mr Rich-Phillips and Ms Shing. It has been a robust but very successful committee stage.

Motion agreed to.

Report adopted.

Third reading

Mr LEANE (Eastern Metropolitan—Minister for Local Government, Minister for Suburban Development, Minister for Veterans) (20:16): I move:

That the bill be now read a third time.

The PRESIDENT: The question is:

That the bill be now read a third time and do pass.

House divided on question:

Question agreed to.

Read third time.

The PRESIDENT: Pursuant to standing order 14.27, the bill will be returned to the Assembly with a message informing them that the Council have agreed to the bill with amendments.