Colin Barnett snuck into Government in 2008 on the back of reaction against Labor and the slogan “Better Government. Better State.” With his government having resurrected the idea of legalising prostitution, Family campaigner Richard Egan wonders which part of that slogan is meant to apply…
The Barnett government is prepared to allow the State’s daughters to be pimped. The Prostitution Amendment Act 2008 which passed through Parliament in April 2008 under the Carpenter Labor government had not been proclaimed at the time a State election was called for 2 October 2008 and so has never come into effect.
The Liberal Party indicated its opposition to Labor’s prostitution law during the election campaign and promised to repeal it. The Liberal Party also indicated that it would allow licensed brothels in a small number of designated areas while preventing the spread of brothels in the towns and suburbs of Western Australia.
On 25 November 2010, Attorney General Christian Porter made public details of proposed new prostitution laws.
Public comments on the proposals have been invited. No deadline for submissions has been set, however the Attorney General has said, “The Government will consider all comment provided and, following this consultation process, our intention is to finalise and introduce legislation in the first half of 2011.”
No brothels in residential areas
There is no doubt that one of the most objectionable features of the Prostitution Amendment Act 2008 was the provision for one or two-woman “micro-brothels” in residential areas. The proposal to ensure that no prostitution is permitted under any form in residential areas is therefore entirely praiseworthy. That’s the good part of the proposed new laws.
Legalised brothels
However, the proposed laws would allow brothels to function openly and legally, provided the brothel was granted a licence by the Department of Racing, Gaming and Liquor. Operators, managers and prostitutes would each require a licence. The fundamental problem with this scheme is that it involves the State in licensing an activity which is inherently antisocial and harmful.Other activities for which licences are required – racing, gaming and liquor sales, for example – are generally recognised as having at least arguable social utility as a means of entertainment and recreation. A licensing system is justified on the basis that there are also social problems associated with these activities – problem gambling, drunkenness and its consequences – and that regulation by license is an effective means to limit these harms while allowing the socially useful aspects of the activities to take place.
Prostitution involves the purchase and sale of sex. This is a profoundly anti-social activity.
Most men who purchase sex are either married or potential future husbands. Purchasing sex damages their capacity to be good husbands by encouraging them to see women as sexual objects who can be paid to perform as required with little or no regard for their emotions or their dignity as women, as human beings of equal value and worth.
Every prostitute is someone’s daughter. No little girl grows up thinking “I hope to be a prostitute” one day.
Girls and women become prostitutes mostly because they are already damaged through sexual or other abuse, through drug addiction or being exploited by a dominant male who pimps them.
Others may simply see prostitution as an apparently easy way to make large amounts of cash quickly. In either case, prostitution exploits women and profoundly damages them.
The Oxford Dictionary defines the verb ‘exploit’ as meaning to utilise a person to one’s own ends.
In prostitution, the prostitute is exploited both by the man who uses her as a sexual object and by the brothel owner who pimps for her.
Prostitution is more like slavery than like work. In valid, non-exploitative work, the worker exchanges her labour and her talents for reasonable remuneration.
In slavery, the very person of the slave is at the disposal of the master. Slavery – even voluntary slavery – is banned. It is not lawful for a person to freely sell themselves into slavery. This is considered to be against human dignity. It threatens the liberty of all and leaves the poor and weak vulnerable to exploitation.
Similarly, in prostitution, the ‘client’ ‘buys’ the woman’s body for a fixed period of time. The brothel owner or pimp profits from this sale. This necessarily involves demeaning and degrading the woman who must suppress her natural human feelings to allow a man she has no affection for or interest in to use her body as he pleases.
Legalising prostitution necessarily legalises the exploitation of women by pimps and buyers of sex.
Crime and Prostitution
The proposal includes provisions that:
Operators and managers must ordinarily be resident in Western Australia; and should not have been guilty of, or have charges pending in connection with, a range of specified offences. Applicants for all licences will require a probity check by WA police, which will include taking fingerprints and palm prints for criminal record checks, and checks for criminal associations.
These provisions cannot ensure that organised crime does not still operate brothels using front men with no criminal records or known criminal associations. Prostitution is very lucrative business.
It is also an anti-social business. Organised crime is the natural sector to run brothels.
The proposal would also allow existing brothels to be licensed despite the fact that their owners have shown a complete disregard for the law by operating illegal brothels.
Location and number of brothels
The Attorney General claims that the proposed laws would “limit brothels to a small number of appropriate locations”. It is not at all clear how limited these locations will be. Apart from ruling out residential areas and proximity to certain “protected places” such as “places of worship, hospitals, and schools and other educational establishments,” location is to be governed by the usual planning processes.
It seems that this could easily result in brothels being established throughout Western Australia in very visible locations, such as shopping centres and shopping strips, in close proximity to places visited by families in the ordinary course of their business.
The proposal states:
An application to a local government for planning approval to operate a brothel in a permitted discretionary use area will allow the local community a say through their council in what they will and will not tolerate and where they may tolerate it. The State government will take the outcome of the local government applications process into strong account but, in accordance with our election promise, the State government, via the Minister for Planning, will hold the final decision to approve a specific planning application.
This falls well short of giving local communities and their councils an effective power to ensure that there are no brothels established in their local government area. The Minister for Planning may impose brothels on communities that do not want them.
Nothing in the proposal indicates that there will be any limit on the number of brothels or prostitutes that could be licensed.
Despite the rhetoric used, this is not a proposal for a small number of brothels in a small number of appropriate areas. It is a proposal for the potentially unlimited expansion of brothels across the towns and suburbs of Western Australia, with most residential areas excepted.
Exceptions to location in a residential area include the provisions for existing brothels and the peculiar proposal to treat the City of Perth differently as if residents in that local government area might not mind having a brothel within 50 metres or even next door.
Other approaches
If legalising prostitution is not the answer – because it cannot even deliver the hoped for benefits in public health, protection of prostitutes from exploitation and protection of children from involvement in prostitution while it also deeply offends the community’s goals of respecting women, supporting marriage and family life, directing male sexuality to socially fruitful ends and protecting people from exploitation – what is?
Legislation banning
advertising
The amount of prostitution advertising presently carried by The West Australian and The Sunday Times is appalling. It must easily amount to more than $10 million annually.
The prostitution business would only be spending this sort of money on advertising if it got a good return for this expenditure. Advertising must serve to recruit new clients, as well as to keep pushing their ‘product’ to existing clients.
If all prostitution advertising was prohibited then the amount of prostitution must fall. Many men would never go actively looking for a brothel. However, if the advertisements in the daily paper catch their eye they may become curious enough to check it out. The community does not need prostitution advertising.
The proposal includes restrictions on advertising. There is no reason not to ban all advertising of prostitution, other than fear of a backlash from those who make revenue from this source. That is a cowardly reason for a government to continue to allow such an exploitative business to promote its trade in human flesh.
Police enforcement powers
The proposal includes some excellent provisions for increased police powers, including a powers of entry and powers to issue closure notices on premises reasonably suspected of being used for prostitution.
There is no reason these powers could not be used in conjunction with laws that continue to prohibit anyone from operating a brothel or living off the earnings of prostitution.
The goal of the police should be the closing of all known brothels.
Government and police commitment to this goal should be expressed by the adequate resourcing of a dedicated vice squad, with regular rotation of personnel to prevent the suspicion of corruption.
Helping women and girls escape
Recognising the double trap of prostitution and drug addiction in which many prostitutes are caught, any suppression policy must be accompanied by a determined effort to assist women to get out of prostitution. Church and community groups will be most likely to have the motivation and appeal to help such women find a new life. However, the government has a role in funding retraining programmes and other schemes to assist such groups in the work of rehabilitation.
The proposal indicates support for such assistance but does not give any details.
Criminalising purchasers
Traditionally, laws in Western Australia against prostitution have penalised living off the earnings of prostitution; operating premises for the purposes of prostitution and procuring women for prostitution.
However, section 5 of the Prostitution Act 2000 penalises the “buyer” who “in or in the view or within hearing of a public place … seeks another person to act as a prostitute”.
The proposal includes a new provision making it an offence for a person to pay for sex with someone who is coerced by another person for that person’s financial gain if the buyer did not know this.
On 1 January 1999, the Swedish Law that Prohibits the Purchase of Sexual Services entered into force. Within three years it led to a 40% reduction in the number of women in prostitution and has had a dampening effect on the trafficking of human beings into Sweden for sexual purposes. On 1 January 2009, a new law came into effect in Norway making it an offence to purchase a sexual act. Observers already noted a visible decrease in the number of street prostitutes.
Further consideration should be given to introducing a penalty for all acts of purchasing or attempting to purchase sex in Western Australia.
Legalisation in any form – including a licence system for brothels and prostitutes – is not an appropriate model for prostitution law reform. It is the counsel of despair – for society and for those trapped in prostitution as “workers” or as “clients”.
A suppression policy, while realistic in its expectation that there will always be those who seek to exploit human weakness through selling sex, supports significant community values by seeking to reduce this exploitation to a minimum.
- edited version of Mr Egan’s submission to the State Government
Suggestions on how to make a submission on the proposed new laws and how to contact your MLA about this matter are available from FamilyVoice Australia 1300 365 965 or email: office@fava.org.au