Thursday, 11 September 2025

Sex workers

Anasina GRAY-BARBERIO (Northern Metropolitan) (17:20): (1960) My adjournment matter this evening is for the Attorney-General. Sex worker advocates, including Vixen, have reported that although Commonwealth Operation Inglenook has formally ended, border force raids on massage parlours and brothels are continuing here in Victoria. These raids overwhelmingly target Asian migrant women. These raids reinforce stigma and discrimination against Asian sex workers that assumes these women have no autonomy over their choice to participate in sex work. Our office has heard harrowing accounts of sex workers being detained while naked, unable to put on clothes, or being questioned by border force for hours without access to a lawyer or interpreter and of visas being cancelled on the spot. One trans woman was even placed in a male detention facility, where she was sexually assaulted.

This is racialised targeting. It is traumatising workers, driving them underground and directly undermining the purpose of Victoria’s decriminalisation reforms, which were designed to protect dignity, safety and equality. These practices have left sex workers terrified, with some suffering PTSD and others relocating to regional areas out of fear. Advocates warn that this climate of fear isolates migrant workers and makes them more vulnerable to exploitation, not less. These ongoing raids, when conducted with the cooperation of Victoria Police, raise serious questions about whether our Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities is being upheld. The action I seek from the Attorney-General is that she investigate whether Victoria Police have assisted or cooperated with border force in these raids and explain to me how the government assesses any such cooperation for compliance with the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities.