The Greens have quietly withdrawn a South Australian bill to legalise prostitution and allow babies in brothels that critics called “radical, dangerous, pro-exploitation and anti-women”.
Green Legislative Council leader Tammy Franks introduced the “Decriminalisation of Sex Work” bill on April 2, and said the provisions allowing infants of up to 18 months to be within brothels were designed to “protect” mothers who were selling themselves for sex, which is currently illegal in the state.
The bill would also have allowed children of any age to be within brothels if the location was the child’s residence, permitted prostitutes to solicit for clients near childcare centres, kindergartens or schools, made it illegal to discriminate against prostitutes, and wiped convictions for previous prostitution-related offences.
But the bill was withdrawn on Wednesday following a campaign led by the Australian Christian Lobby, which called the abandonment of the legislation a “major win for women, children, and families”.
“Ms Franks withdrew the Bill yesterday acknowledging it would not gain sufficient support in the SA Parliament to pass. This Bill had no place in South Australia and we’re thankful for every supporter who took a stand,” the ACL said.
South Australia Director for the ACL Ashlyn Vice previously said the proposed legislation would be more aptly named the “Pimps Protection Bill”.
“This bill removes protections against pimping, repeals criminal provisions for owning and operating a brothel, and – bizarrely – proposes to make ‘sex work’ a protected attribute under the Equal Opportunity Act,” she said last month.
“We’ve seen in other jurisdictions that legalising prostitution does nothing to protect women; rather, it expands the industry and associated harms – including human trafficking and violence against vulnerable women.
“Prostitution is inherently harmful and anything that aids its expansion must be stopped.”
But Ms Vice said the ACL supported the so-called Equality Model of legalising prostitution which criminalises men who pay for sex but not the women selling themselves.
Liberal leader Nicola Centofanti introduced a Equality Model bill last year, but it failed to pass the Upper House.
Ms Franks, who is obese, told NewsWire in April that allowing babies and children to be in brothels was a “common sense provision that recognises the reality of working mothers’ lives”, and claimed that brothels were not “high risk”.
“The reality is sex workers often work from home, in fact quite regularly work from home and currently do in South Australia even though it is not lawful,” she said.
“They also live at home, with their families, with their loved ones. That doesn’t mean that a child is in the room while sexual activity is being undertaken. That means that the home, as a premises, is somewhere where that child can live.”
Header image: Stock photo of a model (Unsplash).
