Australia, NSW in particular, has been internationally praised for sex industry reform and maintaining one of the lowest HIV rates of any sex industry in the world. However, Erica Red and Saul Isbister, winners of the NSW World Aids Day 2002 partnership award and founding members of the Private Worker Alliance, argue that decriminalisation in NSW has been consciously and inadvertently undermined, driving small-scale business underground.
In 1995, minimal sex industry regulation was introduced in NSW. The Disorderly Houses Amendment (DHA) Act aimed to improve the health and safety of sex workers, optimise public health, encourage brothels to maintain a low profile and reduce corruption by public officials.
Under the act, local councils could only take court action to close a brothel if they had received sufficient nuisance complaints from neighbours. Complaints based on moral objections were not considered.
Education programs were discussed. Providing guidelines (developed in consultation with various stakeholders including the sex industry) to local councils was considered vital.
What went wrong?
The community education never occurred. Councils and residents remained ignorant of the important role of NSW sex workers in HIV prevention strategies. They were also unaware of the law's intention to allow discreet brothels to function.
Worse still, only six months after the DHA Act 1995 came into force, the NSW planning minister contravened the spirit of the act. He simultaneously buried the almost completed guidelines and declared that local councils could now restrict brothels to industrial zones.
This encouraged councils to make discriminatory zoning rules in an attempt to prohibit the sector. Generally, councils have allowed brothels only where these businesses were likely to, or did, challenge the council in the Land and Environment Court. Most owners of larger "authorised" brothels have won their development application through the court, with costs between $15,000 and $100,000.
The NSW-based Sex Workers Outreach Project (SWOP) estimates that less than 10% of the sex industry can currently comply with the regulations.
One outcome of the flawed implementation of the DHA Act — which decriminalised brothel-keeping and pimping, and favours large businesses — is that authorised brothel ownership is now concentrated in a few, predominantly male and often ex-criminal, hands. Working conditions in large brothel monopolies are often below average.
A 1995 NSW parliamentary briefing paper prepared by V. Mullen "Another disadvantage of large brothels is that it is harder for the workers to maintain full autonomy over their bodies, which is vital if HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases are to be kept at bay."
In "The failure of prostitution law reform", published in 1995 in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology, M. Neave wrote, "Women who work in a co-operative situation with another woman, or in small brothels, have a greater ability to control the conditions under which they provide sexual services. They are more likely to refuse drunken or diseased clients, refuse particular kinds of services, or insist on the use of condoms, than working women in very large brothels, controlled by businessmen seeking to maximise their profits".
'Invisible', small, women-operated businesses comprise 40-60% of all NSW sex industry businesses.
Driven underground
Prohibitive and restrictive council demands have driven approximately 4000 workers in unauthorised NSW small/home based sex industry businesses underground. This development contravenes the objectives of the reform. The public health is compromised and corruption has shifted from police officials to council officials.
Unauthorised businesses relocate once detected. Constant movement results in the disruption of existing extensive HIV/AIDS peer education networks, which are central to HIV prevention.
During the past two years, sexually transmitted infection and HIV rates in NSW have risen significantly. State-wide sex industry reform is urgently required now, before sex workers in NSW become part of the problem of increasing STI transmission, instead of being part of the solution.
Since the 1995 decriminalisation, ex-criminals have been free to run businesses in NSW. The Private Worker Alliance cannot see how we can prohibit them now. However, we believe that if small scale, worker-run businesses would be allowed to operate discreetly and anonymously throughout NSW, the number of workers wanting to work in big bad businesses will drop.
Large businesses would have to offer a safe and healthy environment, good working conditions and good pay to attract staff. If large businesses did not, they would face staff shortages that will result in their demise.
[This is an abridged version of an article published in the December 2003 edition of Research on Sex Work, available at <http://www.med.vu.nl/hcc>.]
From Green Left Weekly, March 17, 2004.
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