Wednesday, 23 September 2026

 Moira DEEMING (Western Metropolitan) (16:01): I move:

That this house:

(1)   notes that:

(a) a child cannot consent to commercial sexual exploitation;

(b) the Crimes Act 1958 describes a child as a ‘provider’ or ‘client’ of commercial sexual services;

(c) Victoria no longer has a clear rule that a child must not be present where those services are taking place;

(2)   calls on the government to amend legislation so that:

(a) a child is described as a victim of commercial sexual exploitation, not as a participant in the sex industry;

(b) any purported consent or willingness of the child is irrelevant; and

(c) it is an offence to conduct in-person commercial sexual services where a child is present, including in a private home.

It is with pleasure that I rise to move this motion in the house about the most basic of child safeguards. I want to begin with a simple question, one that every member in this chamber can answer without having to ask an adviser and without having to wait for a review: should a child be allowed to be at a premises while strangers are coming through the door to pay for sex? Not in the room, just on the premises – in the next bedroom, in the kitchen, in the hallway – all as clients walk in and out. Every parent in Victoria knows that the answer to that question, without hesitation, is no. Most of them would be horrified to learn that Victoria’s laws do not agree with them, and that is why I have brought this motion.

In my very first speech to Parliament I called on the government to make sure that no child could be taken inside a brothel of any kind in Victoria, and today I am asking the house to back me on that call. The request is very simple: in-person commercial sexual services should never take place while a child is present on the premises, including when that premises is a private home. We all know that Victorians vote for MPs to represent them and their interests in Parliament.

Members interjecting.

Moira DEEMING: Excuse me, Acting President, I cannot hear myself. Could you please ask for a bit of quiet?

The ACTING PRESIDENT (John Berger): Could I ask members in the chamber to keep their conversations down, please. If you are having them, could you have them outside.

Moira DEEMING: We know that Victorians ask us to write laws that protect them and, above all, protect those who cannot protect themselves. Most parents and grandparents that I have spoken to – everywhere, not just in Western Metro – do not vote just on self-interest. They vote for the future version of Victoria that their children and grandchildren will inherit. The trust that voters give to us is the whole point of democracy. We know that childhood is not just the waiting room before you grow up into adulthood. There is a clear boundary. Being a child is different to being an adult. A child depends on adults to draw boundaries that they cannot, to recognise dangers that they cannot and to carry responsibilities that they just cannot. That is what adults are for. That is our whole entire job.

Most people in this chamber are parents, as I understand it, so most of us know what it is like. Even if you are not a parent, I think we all understand that as a parent we sacrifice everything for our children. We do not mind changing our shifts and cancelling plans and losing sleep and bearing any cost at all for our children. And in Parliament that is what many strive to do for their constituents – for other families, for other children and for other parents. Most parents would crawl over broken glass or run into a burning building for their kids. Asking adults not to run a paid sex booking while a child is on the premises is not actually a big ask. It is not a big sacrifice; it is the bare minimum in fact.

A child cannot consent to sex. A child cannot consent to commercial sexual exploitation. A child cannot be a sex worker. A child cannot be the client of a sex worker. A child cannot be a party to a commercial sexual agreement. Our Crimes Act 1958 describes a child taking part in commercial sexual services as:

… the person providing the services, as the client …

Provider, client – that is the language of a voluntary transaction. It places the child inside the deal instead of just naming what the adult has done to that child. A child in that situation is never providing a service. A child in that situation is never a participant. That child is being exploited, that child is being raped, that child is being pimped out, and only people of the lowest character on earth would make excuses for that. Only institutions of the very worst kind would make excuses for them. I am only asking that, out of respect for the victims of child rape and being pimped out and being exploited for commercial sexual purposes, that is what the law should say. Those are the words the law should use, not ‘client’, not ‘participant’.

The law should make clear that no money in a child’s hand, no request and no purported willingness or agreement can ever turn exploitation into a commercial transaction. Payments cannot purchase away a child’s protection, even if they purchased away and stole that child’s childhood. This leads me to the gap in the law as it stands. Victorian law does accept in principle that children and commercial home-based brothels should be kept apart. It is already an offence for someone running or managing a commercial brothel to allow children above 18 months of age to enter or remain on the premises. But what line does that really draw? It does not protect a baby aged 18 months or younger – the type of child whose age means they are least able to leave, to defend themselves, to speak or to ever tell anybody what happened. But that does not mean that there is no trauma, and it does not apply at all to a child of any age in home-based brothels. The most defenceless children in Victoria are left completely unprotected, especially in the one place where every child should be the safest, their own home. That is the one place that this law does not even try to reach.

Victoria’s planning rules highlight just how dangerous this is. They allow sex work to be run from home while children are there. The home owner can be a prostitute and run a business, and they can hire up to two other prostitutes who do not live there but can work out of that home as prostitutes. You can get three or more if you want to get a permit, but there is no express cap on the number of prostitutes if they also live there. It just sounds like a commercial brothel, but in a home. Picture it. Just say you have got five sex workers, several rooms in an average house, a steady succession of paying clients coming and going, and down the hall, perhaps sharing the use of a bathroom or a toilet with these clients, is a child, maybe more than one. It gets worse. The regulations do not even stop a sex offender from working as a prostitute in the homes where those children live. The offender does not have to tell the owner of the home that they are a sex offender. Did you hear that? They do not have to tell the owner of the home, who is running a home-based brothel, that they are a sex offender. They do have to tell the police what work they are doing, but when they use multiple locations like hotels, clients’ homes or home-based brothels with children inside, they do not have to provide the address that they are working from, only the suburb – no specifics. I mean, that is a catastrophic failure of safeguarding. But let us compare that sex worker’s home to a shopfront with the same sex workers, even the same sex offender providing the same service. When that same operation is running from a shopfront, a child over 18 months cannot lawfully be there. But if you run it from a home, suddenly the law says it is okay, that you can have a child in the next room over the age of 18 months, or under – it does not matter, it is a free for all. All I am asking for is a rule that says a child cannot be there while sex work is actually being provided.

I have left all of the other controversial issues out. This is such an easy, easy thing to support. It is a massive child safeguarding gap, and this government left it there. Those who voted for the 2022 reforms left it there. But today this chamber can do the right thing and commit, no matter who gets into government, to closing that gap. People have tried to argue that I am being hysterical. Why does this matter so much? It is because if you know about child predators, you know that really the two things they need most are some kind of access or relationship or scenario where they can get access to a child and a place – a place in which to do what they want to that child. Ironically, the government themselves have produced material which affirms this, and I will go into that more near the end of my contribution. They themselves have provided sensible, simple steps to avoid increasing the dangers to children. But this motion does exactly what the government’s own guide tells practitioners to do.

I have also heard from people with long experience in and around this industry some things that should chill every member of this chamber. They have told me – not that we needed to be told, because it is just logical – that paedophiles deliberately seek out female sex workers who have children, not for access to the woman, obviously, but for access to her children, so that they can groom those children, so that they can rape those children, so that they can coerce those children into sex work or into what can only be called, rightly, rape. Think about what home-based bookings give a man like that – or a woman like that. I honestly do not care – if you are a paedophile, I do not want you near children. Home-based sex work without any safeguards regarding children being on the premises provides child predators with a legitimate reason to be at the address; a reason to come back; and a chance to see the child, learn the child’s name, learn the routine, learn when the mum is busy and think about who is there to stop them.

A commercial brothel will often have CCTV, a panic button, a receptionist, security, other staff that are there not for providing sexual services but to look after the people and the women doing it. But a woman working from her own home very frequently has none of those safeguards for herself or her children. If a client turns violent towards her or towards her child, she is not in a position to do anything about it in time to stop the harm from happening – at least to her child. We also know that calling an industry ‘adult only’ is not any kind of safeguard at all. If you need a case study, recently in DPP v Li it was found that a vulnerable 16-year-old girl in state care worked in a licensed Melbourne brothel. The court found that the manager had turned a blind eye to signs that she was a child. I am shocked. So if a licensed, regulated brothel could fail a child that badly, what protection is there behind a suburban front door, where no effective rules apply at all to block a child from being there?

There is more. Registered sex offenders report their employment and their contact with children to police, but there is no general duty requiring someone working in the sex industry to disclose their sex offender status to co-workers, to clients or to the other adults in a home-based brothel simply because children live there. You do not need a review to know that that is a terrible, terrible idea. My colleague Mr Limbrick recently brought forward an amendment to a bill so that registered sex offenders would not be permitted to take part in sex industry work. More than half of the people in this chamber voted against Mr Limbrick’s amendment. If this Parliament is not going to keep sex offenders out of the sex industry, the very least that it should do is keep children out while that sex work is happening. To leave it as it is now is a disgrace. You do not need a review. You do not need a briefing. You do not need to ask anyone. You do not need to do a poll. You need to do your job and protect children.

Let me be clear about who this motion is not aimed at. It is not aimed at the mothers, it is aimed at you people, very clearly. From my time as a councillor and from conversations with community groups and survivors, I know that some mothers have had children on site while doing sex work. It is something that they do not want to do, but it does happen. Council officers told us in our capacity as council how incredibly difficult it would be to identify situations like this and investigate them under the new laws that allowed children inside home-based brothels. The point is not to condemn the women. The point is to protect their children and to give those women a clear line that supports them, rather than leaving them to carry the whole burden of safeguarding alone, to have to make a judgement, to have to negotiate maybe with a hostile client, who knows. If we draw the boundary for her, it is going to be easier for her to protect her children. We all know that is very difficult for these women. They often face financial pressure, insecure housing and violence, and I know that mothers in this industry do not even want their children exposed to it most of the time.

Linda Watson spent 18 years as a sex worker and brothel madam and then more than 20 years running Linda’s House of Hope for women who wanted to leave the industry. She has given me permission to quote her:

No madam I have known has ever wanted their daughters to do what their mothers did.

We need to stand with those mothers. We need to stand for child safeguards, because the obligation does not belong to children, as I have said many, many times in this chamber; it belongs to the adults, every single one of them – the person running it, the person managing it, the person paying for it and the people who make the laws regulating it. The Parliament that allows a gap in the law is the Parliament that carries the responsibility, full stop. There is no good reason for children to be inside brothels or on premises where sex work is taking place. I am going to say that again to make sure you heard me: there is no good reason at all – not one – for children to be inside a brothel, let alone when that brothel is operating and sex work is happening. Not breastfeeding, not a lack of babysitters and not any kind of assurance that they are in another room or being babysat in another room in some creche. They are not good enough reasons. We all know this.

Child care is expensive and shift work is hard and babies need their mothers. These pressures are real. But we have other options, don’t we? Nobody has the right to choose to leave children inside brothels rather than a better option for those children and for those mothers struggling. Nobody here has the right to negate child safeguards in this way. Obviously the answer is support, different timing or a different location. Adult work must be arranged around the child for the benefit of the child, not the child around the work. The government already accepts this. In his recent answer to my question on notice the current Premier Ben Carroll, who was at the time Minister for Education, said:

The Sex Industry, (and therefore Sex Work) is specifically listed as a prohibited industry across the department’s Work Based Learning policies, expressly prohibiting the promotion of work in the industry.

If this industry is too hazardous for a school to even promote to students on career days – because that is what I asked him: if he would come along to a school with me now that sex work is work and promote it on careers day to the students. I was delighted to find that that cannot even happen; that that is not even allowed to happen. I have respect for that, so well done for that. Of course the question is: if it is too hazardous to promote to children at school, then why is it not too hazardous to protect children from people who actually live in the home and who are just up the hallway while it is actually happening? It is not some radical conservative outrage or pearl-clutching reform that I am asking for, it is basic common sense and child safeguards.

Guess what, Tasmania already does it. Under Tasmania’s Sex Industry Offences Act 2005, a self-employed sex worker must not without reasonable excuse – there is not one – permit a child or anyone under 18 to be on any premises used while sexual services are being provided. Clients carry a parallel obligation. Victoria does not need Tasmania’s whole model or a review or any other time apart from today – we can commit today. We just need that one sensible rule: no children on any and all premises while sex work services are happening, and the responsibility is on the adults. I know what we will hear in response. First we will be told that there are already provisions and protections. I will read this in my closing.

 Sonja TERPSTRA (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (16:21): I rise to make a contribution on this motion in Mrs Deeming’s name in regard to exploitation of children. Every child in Victoria deserves to be safe from sexual abuse, exploitation and coercion, and no child can consent to commercial sexual exploitation. On those fundamental principles there should be no disagreement in this house, but protecting children requires more than strong language in a political motion. It requires clear offences, serious penalties, effective enforcement and proper support for victim-survivors. Victoria already has all of those things.

This motion proceeds from a false premise that decriminalising consensual sex work between adults therefore somehow weakens protection for children. It does not and did not. Conduct involving the commercial sexual exploitation of a child remains a serious crime in Victoria. The Carroll Labor government will not tolerate false claims about the law to be dressed up as a concern for child safety. Children must be protected from commercial sexual exploitation. Every member of this chamber, I am sure, agrees on that, but the motion by Mrs Deeming is constructed entirely to mislead and to cause unnecessary worry in the Victorian community, and for that Mrs Deeming should strongly reflect on her own internal motivations for doing so. How can that be when her first action under her new brand of Family First is to mislead Victorian families about what the law actually does and says?

The motion identifies no failed Victorian prosecutions caused by the wording it attacks. It identifies no judicial decision finding that a child’s consent excuses commercial exploitation. It identifies no case in which an offender escaped liability because a child was described by a technical term. It identifies no recommendation from Victoria Police, the Director of Public Prosecutions, child protection, the Victorian Law Reform Commission or victim-survivor organisations – none. It identifies no evidence that a blanket residential offence would make children safer. It offers assertion in place of evidence. If there is an allegation to be made, Mrs Deeming should direct it to the appropriate authorities, such as Victoria Police. Child protection legislation should be informed by police, prosecutors, experts and victim-survivors. It should not be designed around whichever produces the most provocative social media posts.

Labor’s record on decriminalising sex work is very clear. The Labor government are proud of the work we have done to decriminalise sex work between consenting adults, and sex workers also deserve to be safe at work. They deserve to be able to report violence, seek support and exercise their rights without fearing that they themselves will be punished. Decriminalisation recognises that sex workers are people with agency, rights and lives beyond their work. Decriminalisation recognises that sex work is legitimate work and is regulated through standard business laws like all other industries in Victoria. It recognises the basic reality that driving an industry underground makes it harder for workers to speak up when something goes wrong. It also makes it harder for authorities to step in when they need to.

Destigmatising the sex work industry and reducing discrimination is essential for protecting people, and entrenched negative perceptions of the sex work industry, like those held by some in this chamber, impact sex workers’ mental health, reinforce attitudes that drive violence against sex workers and only increase risk for those people that are working in those sectors. It is now regulated, just like any other industry, by agencies such as WorkSafe Victoria and the Department of Health. This ensures every worker in the industry is entitled to the same treatment and protections under the law, with rights that call out discrimination and unsafe work practices. It was this Labor government who listened to sex workers, health experts, community organisations and local government and acted following an independent review and extensive consultation.

Decriminalisation applies to consensual sex work between adults. Criminal laws protecting children and prohibiting coercion, trafficking, violence and exploitation remain firmly in place. Labor did not accept the false choice between respecting sex workers and protecting vulnerable people, and a fair system can and must do both. This reform reflects fundamental Labor values: safety at work, equality before the law, freedom from discrimination and stigma, and dignity for every worker. The government will be opposing this motion.

 Evan MULHOLLAND (Northern Metropolitan) (16:26): I rise to speak to the motion moved by Mrs Deeming and inform the chamber that the Liberals and Nationals will not be opposing this motion.

 Georgie PURCELL (Northern Victoria) (16:27): I too rise to speak to the motion moved by Mrs Deeming. I want to start by stating the obvious, as Ms Terpstra has also done. Children cannot consent to commercial sexual exploitation. Children must be protected from sexual exploitation, from coercion and of course from sexual abuse. There should be no ambiguity about that. That is why I have been so proud to support child safety reforms brought to this Parliament and have even been the first MP to champion some of them myself alongside survivors and advocates, including by calling for reforms to the working with children check before a crisis actually forced us to act and listen to those recommendations that were written by survivors. But I will be opposing this motion because it is misleading and it is stigmatising. Some of the language used in this motion risks conflating two very different things: protecting children from exploitation and regulating where an adult sex worker can work. These are not the same issues, and it is dangerous to suggest otherwise.

A few years ago Victoria made the historic decision to decriminalise sex work. It was meaningful to so many people in this state, more people than this chamber will ever know, including me. Someone you know and someone you love has probably engaged in sex work. It is the stigma and the discrimination that exists behind it that makes it difficult for people to share that experience. As someone who has worked in a form of sex work, although not one that was criminalised, I know the stigma, I know that discrimination and I know the harmful attitudes expressed to workers across the industry. I know because I have experienced it myself, and I know because I continue to experience it. That reform that was so historic did so many things. It made sex workers safer, it reduced stigma, it reduced the fear of criminal repercussions and it improved sex workers’ access to health and justice services so they are just like every other worker in this state.

That reform did not decriminalise sexual exploitation of children or remove offences or protections relating to children. It was actually pretty simple: when Victoria’s sex work laws were reformed, offences relating to children and coercion were specifically re-enacted in other legislation so that they would continue to operate after the Sex Work Act 1994, which made sex work a crime, was repealed. The Victorian government itself described this as an explicit part of the decriminalisation reforms. That is why it is so important that we do not allow the debate around this motion to create the impression that decriminalisation somehow put children at risk. It did not, and this topic was actually canvassed extensively throughout the inquiry.

Laws concerning and preventing children being present on premises used specifically for commercial sexual services already exist. It is already a crime to have a child in a brothel. These laws are also not a new protection created by decriminalisation. It has always been a crime, and it was carried across from the repealed legislation and placed in the appropriate criminal legislation. In Victoria a person carrying on a business providing commercial sexual services or assisting in its management must not allow a child over 18 months to enter or remain on premises where that business is carried on unless those premises are primarily used as residential premises. That provision was deliberately re-enacted from the previous Sex Work Act, as I touched on, and the Victorian Parliament’s Scrutiny of Acts and Regulations Committee described the provision as being re-enacted with ‘the same terms, with the same scope and effect’, subject only to minor drafting changes. Any suggestion that Victoria somehow lost a clear rule protecting children when sex work was decriminalised is just wrong. The law continues to distinguish between premises that are specifically being used as commercial sexual services businesses and premises that are primarily residential. This distinction is really important, and it was sufficiently explored throughout the decriminalisation process.

Creating a blanket offence that applies whenever an adult provides a commercial sexual service while a child happens to be somewhere on the premises could have significant consequences. Just one example is a sex worker who visits a client at a hotel. This is a very common arrangement for sex workers. There may be families staying in that hotel, and those families may have children in rooms elsewhere in the building. Under the approach proposed by this motion we would potentially be creating an offence based simply on the presence of a child at a premises like a hotel, creating an enormous expansion of criminal liability that would be impossible to enforce, while there is no existing harm. It would instead make the physical presence of a child somewhere in a building not used specifically for sexual services, which as stated is already a crime, the basis for criminalising an otherwise lawful adult transaction. The same applies to private homes, and this is the part that is so important: being a sex worker does not make someone an irresponsible or unsafe parent. Even if this motion is well intentioned, the risk is that it creates that impression.

In preparing my notes for speaking today, I spoke to my friend Brea Dorsett. Brea is an incredible advocate for many different causes, and she is also the founder of Pink Leopard, an organisation committed to breaking down stigma and tackling systemic issues in the sex work industry by educating the public and fostering inclusivity. I want to share the words that she wrote to me, as she articulated the basis of all that is wrong with the proposal that is before us, and she said it far better than I ever could. She said:

From my perspective, being a sex worker does not make someone an irresponsible or unsafe parent. Sex workers are parents like anyone else, and the assumption that simply being involved in sex work somehow makes someone a bad mother is incredibly stigmatising.

I also personally believe there should be a distinction between someone doing sex work from their home and a child actually being present while the work is taking place.

Children should not be exposed to adult sexual activity or the work itself – but that is very different from saying a sex worker shouldn’t be allowed to work from home, or that their profession makes their home inherently unsafe.

Working from home can also be a safer option for workers. It may allow someone to avoid unsafe workplaces, reduce reliance on third parties, and maintain greater control over who enters their private space and how the work is carried out.

For some parents, working from home may also provide more flexibility and financial stability …

for their children.

Of course, appropriate boundaries and arrangements still need to be in place so that children are not present –

when work is happening –

or exposed to the work.

It’s also important to recognise that framing the issue this way can shift blame away from the perpetrator of violence and onto the sex worker or parent. Victim-blaming shifts the narrative away from the actual problem: the person who chose to perpetrate the violence.

A person’s occupation or the fact that they work from home does not cause someone else to harm them, and it shouldn’t be used to imply that they are responsible for the violence committed against them.

For me, the concern with approaches like this is when “child safety” becomes a justification for policing or punishing sex workers simply for being parents. It can disproportionately hurt people already doing survival sex work or experiencing financial hardship.

It feels comparable to punishing someone for going to work because they couldn’t afford the systems that make going to work easier. If someone is already struggling financially, further criminalisation, fines or barriers don’t necessarily make a child safer – they can make that family more financially insecure …

or potentially actually unsafe.

Pink Leopard’s position is that sex workers deserve the same assumption afforded to other parents: that they are capable of making responsible decisions about their children’s safety, rather than being automatically viewed as irresponsible –

or unsafe –

because of the work they do.

Brea makes some really important points there. With decriminalisation came an increased assurance of sex worker safety. Something that I have not touched on until this point is that there were a lot of concerns within brothels, particularly for migrant workers, and having the ability to work from home, to work for yourself and to set the security, the standards and the clearance checks for whom enters your home is something that has protected sex workers from harm, from violence, from discrimination and from increased stigma.

I have looked into this issue extensively because of course I took it very seriously when it was put before me today as an advocate for the sex worker community and as someone who has stood alongside them to address the many different hardships that they continue to face. This is not an issue that has ever been raised as a concern to me. I looked for examples of sex workers who were operating with children within their home; I could not find any. I looked into investigations; I could not find any. This seems to be something that has been pulled out as a potential possibility, and that is harmful. We were just at the National Survivors’ Day event, where we heard that this can happen anywhere. This is stigmatising of sex workers. It is dangerous to assume that sex work makes someone an incapable parent, and that is why I will be opposing the motion today.

 David LIMBRICK (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (16:37): I will also say a few words on this motion put forward by Mrs Deeming. I will start by saying, as Ms Terpstra and others pointed out, that of course I do not think that anyone in this chamber wants children to be involved in sex work or anything like that, and currently that is the law in Victoria. I will take the points in this motion one by one. Point (2)(a) says:

a child is described as a victim of commercial sexual exploitation, not as a participant in the sex industry …

and (2)(b) says:

any purported consent or willingness of the child is irrelevant …

I think that these are actually style issues in the law. It is my understanding that these do not affect the effect of the law and have not been a problem with the effect of the law, but nonetheless they are a style issue. I agree that maybe we should be looking at changing the style of language in this, as we have done for many other things in this place – we have updated the style, the way that things are expressed in the law. So I do not see that as substantive, but it is nevertheless symbolic.

For point (c), though, there actually is an issue. As has been pointed out, it is actually illegal for children to be in places, such as brothels, where the primary purpose of the place is to conduct these activities. But when these activities are carried out in a person’s private residential home, there is quite a different situation. It is legal, since decriminalisation, for people to conduct sex work in their home. As was pointed out by Ms Purcell, the majority of the people that do this would actually make arrangements to make sure that the children were not in the home when this was occurring. Nevertheless, there is a gap in that there could be a situation where a child is in the home, and that is the gap that point (c) is seeking to address, I believe.

I am glad that this is not a prescriptive motion, because I do actually think that it would be quite difficult to craft in law. I think Mrs Deeming herself said that with the offence, she does not want to criminalise people – the parents – through this, but I think it would be remiss of Parliament to ignore this particular gap in the law. I think it should be clearly stated in the law that if sex work is going to be conducted in private residences, children should not be in the house. This is a pretty simple thing, and I think that all that (c) is really asking for is for that to be described in the law. I think that this is a reasonable thing despite the fact that, as has been pointed out by others, I am not sure that this is a common thing. I am not aware of any cases where this has been the case. If a child was in danger and was reported, that could be handled by existing child protection mechanisms. Nevertheless, I do not see any harm in the law saying clearly that at the time when you are conducting this type of business within your home children should not be in the home. I do not want to put words in Ms Purcell’s mouth, but she even alluded to the fact that people who conduct this sort of work make arrangements to make sure that kids are not there and this sort of thing. I think that putting that in the law and making it clear is a sensible thing to do. Therefore I will not be opposing this motion.

 Jacinta ERMACORA (Western Victoria) (16:41): I am a bit blown away by this motion because it is a complete and utter misrepresentation of the Crimes Act 1958. For any of the scenarios referred to there are criminal responses. In fact if anybody in this chamber knows of any situation where any of the scenarios mentioned are happening, there are criminal remedies already, including some 10 years in prison. I am appalled that it twists around and misinterprets a piece of legislation that governs this state.

I have just two short points. The central suggestion in this motion is that Victoria’s laws fail to recognise sexual exploitation of a child as a crime – absolutely wrong. That is not true. Mrs Deeming has also claimed that when Labor repealed the Sex Work Act 1994 we removed the rule about children being present and put nothing in its place. That claim is absolutely wrong. The former act was repealed, but child protection offences were placed in other –

Moira Deeming: On a point of order, Acting President, Ms Ermacora claimed that I said that Labor withdrew that part of the original act and put nothing in its place. I did not say that.

The ACTING PRESIDENT (John Berger): That is not a point of order.

Jacinta ERMACORA: This is a motion from Mrs Deeming. Mrs Deeming has also claimed that when Labor repealed the Sex Work Act we removed the rule about children being present and put nothing in its place. That claim is not true; it is wrong. The former act was repealed, but the child protection offences were placed in other legislation. I have nothing further to add other than what has already been said in this chamber, and it does not deserve further comment.

 Rikkie-Lee TYRRELL (Northern Victoria) (16:44): I rise to support Mrs Deeming’s motion. At its heart this motion is about one simple principle: a child cannot consent to commercial sexual exploitation. Children must be protected from exploitation regardless of the circumstances in which that exploitation occurs. It is deeply concerning that our legislation can describe a child as a provider or client of commercial sexual services. The language we use matters. A child who is being commercially sexually exploited should be recognised in law as a victim, not as a participant in an adult industry. There should be no ambiguity about consent. A child’s apparent willingness, cooperation or lack of resistance must never be used to suggest that they have consented to commercial sexual exploitation.

This motion also addresses a very practical gap, ensuring that commercial sexual services cannot lawfully be conducted in person while a child is present, including in a private home. This is not about judging adults or regulating consenting adult behaviour. It is about drawing a clear line around children. Our laws should send an unequivocal message: children are not commodities, children are not participants in the sex industry and children cannot consent to their own commercial sexual exploitation. I therefore support this motion and call on the government to make these protections clear in Victorian law.

 Moira DEEMING (Western Metropolitan) (16:46): That was a lot of straw manning. I did not argue about whether sex work was criminal or not. I did not argue for the repeal of anything like that. The Crimes Act 1958 asks: ‘Has harm been done and can we prove it?’ My suggestion asks a very different question: why are we allowing such an easy opportunity at all? Safeguarding is different to a criminal act in the sense of attacking a child. Safeguarding is about prevention. It has never required certainty that harm will or has occurred. We put fences around swimming pools not because every child is going to drown but because some will, and the fence costs almost nothing, and the inconvenience of a fence is worth it to save even just one child. In my opinion, I should have the right to call the police if I see any child being taken into an open and operating brothel. What kind of lunacy is it that you are not having the same reaction?

Also, I heard everybody that argued against my motion whingeing about the stigma against adults in the industry. I mean, toughen up. Children could be raped and pimped more easily because of this gap. Toughen up. Adulting is hard. We put children and their safeguarding before ourselves. And when have I ever spoken disrespectfully about sex workers? Never. That is when. Never. Not once – never. So don’t you blame any stigma on me when advocating for child safeguards. Don’t you tell me to reflect on National Survivors’ Day, as I am a survivor. I was a victim of these crimes as a child. I do have your so precious and beloved lived experience – which you disregard whenever it is politically convenient. How could you vote against this basic child-safeguarding measure. There is absolutely no excuse. And yes, because I am a survivor, I have PTSD from it, and I have endured ridiculous smearing and stigma for having PTSD from my experiences. And on that note, may I thank the opposition for putting in so much effort to support my advocacy for child safeguards – astounding!

I do not want sex workers – prostitutes – to be treated badly. I do not want them to be looked down upon. In fact I am so grateful for the sex workers who have actually stood with me and my motion and put child safeguards above this whiny whingeing about some people who are probably going to be bigots anyway against sex workers. If you cannot convince them, just who cares about them. It is already illegal to discriminate. It is already illegal to harass. This is about a basic child safeguarding boundary. Also, it is ridiculous to say that I am asking for a whole hotel complex to be the premises. Clearly hotel rooms would require the child to be in the room. Yes, that is already a crime; I stated that. I am glad all these things are crimes – it is wonderful – so call them crimes everywhere. Do not call the child a client. Do not call the child a participant. I will tell you from my lived experience how traumatic and retraumatising and offensive that is. You should fix that.

To finish my contribution, I will just leave you all with the government’s Department of Families, Fairness and Housing’s child protection guide. First, they tell us what increases the danger to a child, and first is access. They define it as ‘access to a child’. It is one of the three necessary elements of exploitation, yet these laws allow a succession of unrelated, unscreened adults to enter a home where a child lives and, as mentioned, also allow registered sex offenders to work in the same house where those children are. It is a disgrace. I will put the rest on my video. I commend it to the house.

Council divided on motion: