Barr government decided at the last minute that individual sex workers would not be required to register. This will be a decades-old overhaul of the sex industry law in the ACT region.
The ACT parliament, (ACT Legislative Assembly), passed a major reform of Canberra's sex industry law on Tuesday (July 31). These include brothel bosses providing free condoms to sex workers and allowing HIV-positive workers to provide sexual service.
In addition, the bill also removes the words "prostitute" and "prostitution", and individual sex workers are not required to register on Canberra's government website, Access Canberra.
ACT Justice minister Shane Lartenbury (Shane Rattenbury) said that past experience has shown that the registration system has failed, with only 14 sex workers registered. "when you open the newspaper and look at the yellow pages, you can see that Canberra has more than 14 sex workers."
However, the deregistration also leaves sex workers without a lot of support, especially those who want to join the industry, says Vicky Dunn (Vicki Dunne), a opposition party lawmaker at the Ministry of Health. "what is the problem of having sex workers register to get the required services? If privacy is a problem, why can't government set up an independent registry to provide appropriate protection for sex workers and the information they provide? Instead of making friends with them, government gave up some of the most vulnerable people in our community. "
Dunn notes that disregistration of sex workers is not fair to other professions, such as lawyers, doctors and so on. "when other occupations still need to be registered, it becomes, to a certain extent, a form of 'positive discrimination'," she said.
Dunn proposed 19 amendments to the bill, all voted down by Labour and the Greens.
Mr Ratembri said the deregistration did not constitute positive discrimination. "you have to judge according to the specific circumstances of the industry, and we are concerned about why people are required to register, the impact it has, and whether there is a better alternative to it." "for example, a person who does a hairdresser at home doesn't need to register with Access Canberra," he said. Even if they still need to meet certain health and safety requirements at work, they don't have to register to do business. "
Without a registration system, Ratembri argues, sex workers who had been exposed to sexual invasion would not be afraid of being punished. Whether you like it or not, the sex industry is a disgrace from the public's point of view. A lot of people don't want to put it on record for life. The amendment actually improves the health and safety of sex workers. When they report a case to the police, they do not have to worry about receiving allegations or complaints. And the system has failed. "
However, this is not completely deregistered, but sex workers are not allowed to register. As a result, the 14 registered sex workers are still on record.
