Prostitution (Regulation) Bill

Extract from Hansard

Legislative Council
8 November 2000

Mike Elliott
Leader Australian Democrats
Member of the Legislative Council

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The Hon. M.J. ELLIOTT: I support the second reading of this bill. I do not as a matter of course seek to impose my will on the actions of others, so long as those actions are those of competent, informed and consenting adults. I would support legislation that does not seek to encourage prostitution, which some people would seek to misrepresent the legislation before us as doing; some people almost suggest that it is being made compulsory.

I do support legislation that seeks to regulate an activity that is with us, has been with us forever and will be with us forever, no matter whether people like that or approve of that. In my view, that regulation should seek to ensure that prostitution is not encouraged and that issues of coercion be addressed; that children not be involved; that, indeed, when I talk about competent, informed, consenting adults, that is what is being allowed under regulation and not anything else. Consistent with those sorts of views I can give other examples.

Those people who have been in this place for some years will remember that I joined with Bernice Pfitzner and Carolyn Pickles in getting legislation and changes in relation to magazine covers and advertising displays for magazines, etc. My view was not that consenting adults should not be allowed to appear within those magazines or that consenting adults could not see those magazines, but I had a very strong view that those should not be forced onto other people. So, it was the issue of consent.

I did not want to go into a service station with my children and have those magazine covers and displays inflicted on either me or my children. I was not consenting to it and certainly was not consenting on behalf of my children. I found it offensive personally, and I very strongly supported the moves to ensure that those sorts of displays, those magazine covers, etc, were removed.

I can take something like the consumption of tobacco, which is again something that I personally have nothing to do with, but I am prepared to acknowledge that some people, for reasons I do not understand, largely to do with addiction, I suppose, choose to consume tobacco.

The Hon. M.J. ELLIOTT: I hope the minister does not think that I am blowing my argument with her right now. The important thing is that the issue of consent comes in. If a person chooses to smoke in the company of other people who do not want them to smoke there, then there is an issue of consent. I have supported laws about the consumption of tobacco in public places, workplaces, etc, because there are very important issues of consent there.

If non-smokers are not consenting to have smoke inflicted upon them, they have a right to do so. Nor am I prepared to support people encouraging people to do things that I consider likely to be harmful. For that reason, I introduced a private member's bill quite some years ago, which I think was the third Democrat bill along those lines, to ban the advertising of tobacco, because there, as I saw it, a third party (in this case the tobacco companies) was seeking to coerce people actually to use the product.

Again consistent with the line that I take on these sorts of issues, I very vigorously opposed tobacco advertising. I give those by way of examples of where I would seek to intervene and where I do not. I personally do not find prostitution attractive as a client, as a retailer or whatever else. It is just something that I do not find personally appealing, but I am not going to set myself up as a judge of those who choose to participate.

I am not going to sit in judgment of those people. I am, however, prepared to judge those who seek to impose their views about prostitution on others, for example, by having television advertisements coming into my home, telling my children about prostitution. I would find that absolutely and totally unacceptable, because then it is breaching those same sorts of rules that I was noting before.

I find ads generally offensive enough, without having those sorts of ads beamed into my home. So, I am prepared to sit in judgment of those or sit in judgment in relation to brothels that have signs out the front sitting on a main street proclaiming for everyone to see.

The Hon. R.D. Lawson: Out of sight, out of mind; is that what you're saying?

The Hon. M.J. ELLIOTT: I am not saying that at all. What I am saying is that for those adults whom it offends, it should not be in their face and it should not be in the face of their children, either. They are not consenting to it being done to them, and I understand those sensibilities and support them.

I am prepared to judge those who engage children in prostitution. I am prepared to judge those who take people into prostitution against their will. The legislation that we pass should indeed seek to ensure that those things are tackled. What I find interesting is that many of those who seek to tell people how to live their lives I am sure would not want others to tell them how to live theirs. They would not want others to inflict their morality on them and yet they choose to inflict their morality upon others. What a wonderful certainty it must be for some people to know that they are absolutely right and that others are wrong and that they can tell others what they should do. What an incredible certainty they have, and yet how abhorrent they would find it if others chose to pass laws which actually required them to behave in a way that others wanted.

I am sure that some of those, not all, who have been wound up in this issue, if they had the political power would choose to intervene, not just in relation to prostitution but they would get into everybody's lives on a whole lot of things. They would be stoning the adulterers. They would be doing all sorts of things. I suppose what may or may not be interesting is that my personal moral views are probably not that different from theirs, but in terms of the way I live my life and the way I want my children to live theirs there is probably not a great deal of difference. The important difference that I am stressing at this stage concerns where one chooses to start intervening into other people's lives, where it is appropriate and where it is right to do so and where it is not.

I think that perhaps some people need to realise that morality is not just about matters which pertain to sex; that there are an awful lot of other issues in this community which I think are moral issues and which, at the end of the day, probably overlap this issue of prostitution. I find it upsetting personally that many of these people choose not to get involved in these other moral issues, the moral issues of having, within our total community, subsets, small communities, who are bedded and trapped in poverty and trapped in inadequate education, yet we have a political system at this stage which is continuing to keep people in that state, people who have dysfunctional lives.

If people are upset about prostitution and see it as dysfunctional I think they should see it as a final product of things that happened before, and they are getting caught up in trying to tackle the wrong end of the problems, and I wish to goodness that these people who wish to tell other people how to live would actually get out there and help in an active sense, that they would get out there and work in the community actively with people, rather than spending all their time trying to tell other people how to live their lives, which so many of these people do. But they do not help; they just spend their time telling people what they should be doing.

There are some major problems in our community; there is no question about it, and one of the reasons why prostitution is at the level it is at the moment and one of the reasons why we have drug problems and many other things gets back to the reality of the way that the distribution of wealth appears in our community, and a whole range of other things. If people do not see that there is morality involved in that and that, indeed, many of the problems that come later on are actually symptoms of that, then I think they have really missed what is going on. They should be getting out there and mixing with the people who really have it tough and doing everything they can to provide personal support. That is what so many people need. They need personal support. They do not need people to tell them what to do. They need people who are honestly going to be out there working with them and helping them.

The Hon. M.J. ELLIOTT: The honourable member was not listening; he just pipes in. Your own speech was so riddled with inconsistency I decided not even to take it on. I was really disappointed; I thought you were better than that. Anyway, that's an aside.

The Hon. M.J. ELLIOTT: I only said I was disappointed. One can't help but express disappointment from time to time. I think it would have to be admitted that, unfortunately, in our society many marriages end up being not much more than prostitution, too. There are people who are trapped in relationships which are abusive, which involve coerced sex, where the only reason that the woman stays in the relationship is that she desperately needs shelter and food for herself, and particularly for her children. We know that that is going on, and there is a very clearly abusive relationship, which some people want to pretend does not exist, and in fact say that the sanctity of marriage is so important that society should keep its nose out of those sorts of things. Again, that is a blatant and incredible hypocrisy.

I suppose what may be most shocking is that there are many people involved in prostitution who are not unhappy about it, who have gone into it willingly, not just the clients but in fact those people working in the industry. As I said, I do not understand that, that is not my way of thinking, but the fact is that there are many people who, indeed, are quite satisfied with that.

It is also true that there are people engaging in prostitution who would rather not be, but the problem at the end of the day is not prostitution. If they do not want to be there, why are they there, whether it happens to be legal, illegal, regulated or whatever? Again, as I say, one has to get back to the real root causes and stop trying to tackle things after they have gone wrong.

The Hon. M.J. ELLIOTT: Even the fact that there is demand can be a simplistic notion, because there are many reasons for demand. The Hon. Sandra Kanck talked about the fact that there are people with disability, for instance. Some people might choose to tell them, `Well, I'm sorry you should live your whole life as a celibate,' but some people who have tried to live a life as a celibate have in fact ended up being terribly abusive, and that is clearly on the record. So the demand may be, I would argue, a quite legitimate demand, such as that. The demand might involve people who are perhaps socially dysfunctional, and in some sense it may not be helping them, but if indeed at the end of the day it is nothing more nor less than satisfying a sex drive perhaps it is better that they are doing it this way than some of the other alternatives which are far more shocking again.

So I think that there are some things we can do to reduce demand. Some people are saying, `Just increase the penalties,' but they are not living in the real world if they think they can decrease demand by increasing the penalties on those who are using the service. The demand will be met one way or another. That is the way markets tend to work. At the very least there are many enthusiastic amateurs at work on Friday and Saturday nights who will continue to meet demand one way or another. People might not like that, but that is the real world that we live in.

The Hon. M.J. ELLIOTT: Yes, it is not illegal. What I am looking for in legislation is something, if I just go through this in summary, which seeks to regulate the industry, not encourage it, or allow it to be encouraged, legislation which I think protects those people who do not want it in their face in terms of advertising, in terms of soliciting, in terms of buildings with signage all over them proclaiming that here is a brothel and whatever else is going on inside, and legislation which tackles issues of recruitment.

I think the Hon. Sandra Kanck has already debunked the suggestion that people would be forced by way of employment agencies, etc. into it. That is just such an amazing nonsense, but obviously it has been told to people and they have repeated what they have been told. The legislation must tackle any way, any form of public recruitment, or any form of coercion to enter the industry. I am very supportive of moves to keep big business out of it. I am wondering whether perhaps we could not tighten up this area of the bill further, and I am just sort of exploring that at this stage.

It is absolutely imperative that we do all we can to keep minors out of prostitution. Advertising has been mentioned earlier and we will have to watch that there are no loopholes such as sponsorships; the tobacco companies stopped advertising and then sought to sponsor various things. We may need to look at that area of the bill to ensure that advertising cannot be conducted through the backdoor by way of sponsorships. I do no think the bill has tackled that issue at this stage.

In my view, another deficiency throughout the bill is that the penalties imposed are not high enough. If we are trying to put boundaries around prostitution-which I think this bill is endeavouring to do-we must ensure that the penalties for moving outside those boundaries are such that they will have a real effect and I believe that the penalties should and could be higher-

The Hon. M.J. ELLIOTT: I am just floating the areas of concern: there are not a lot of them but this is the final area of major concern. I have been exploring other existing legislation in relation to coercion in order to satisfy myself that it is adequate at this stage. The issue is not covered within the bill itself but it is covered under legislation, and I want to be satisfied that it is made as tight as it could be.

I support the second reading recognising that prostitution will continue to be with us. I do not pretend that there will not be problems with the legislation; anyone who pretends that there are no problems now is kidding themselves. Anyone who says, `All we have to do is get the police to be tougher on the people who use prostitutes' is kidding themselves.

This legislation is significantly different from that in New South Wales and Victoria, which I believe is flawed. At the time that legislation was being debated, the Democrats in South Australia were saying that there were flaws within it and some of the things that have happened since have not come as a surprise.

In summary, I will not impose my morality on others and, as long as we are talking about competent and informed consenting adults-which I think this legislation is directed towards-I will not intervene in other people's moral decisions. Hopefully, other people will see the sense in that, because many people would be offended if someone else's morality was inflicted on them: indeed, that is what some people seek to do.