Page 2441 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 31 July 2018
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Madam Assistant Speaker, in this detail stage I want to dwell on two issues that I touched on: the issue of requiring sex workers to register with the fair trading commission and the issue of conducting sexual activities whilst having an STI.
Removing the requirement on sex workers to register with the fair trading commission seems odd. The minister, in his presentation speech, sought to justify the removal of the requirement on a number of grounds. In his presentation speech, he noted that many sole operators do not register and that, given the very low rate of compliance, the requirement to register is not working. It seems that the government have decided that because it is too difficult to manage they will make it go away. The minister told us that there are concerns about privacy and personal safety but did not quantify or otherwise give evidence for this claim.
I am aware that these issues were raised with the Standing Committee on Justice and Community Safety during the inquiry in 2012. Even if we do away with these requirements, there are still residual issues which would persist.
Ms Cheyne was incorrect this morning when she said that there would no longer be a record of these registrants with the Registrar-General’s office. I sought clarification on this when I received a briefing last week. The existing register would exist and would continue to exist in accordance with the Territory Records Act, so there will be some people whose names and information will still be held on a register, and will be for as long as is required by the Territory Records Act. This mechanism today takes away the future requirement to register but does not obliterate the existing register. I just need to put that on the record. The minister said that it is a barrier to sex workers accessing health and other outreach services, but again the minister did not say why registration per se creates this barrier. He said that removal will improve social inclusion for sex workers but did not say how.
The minister said it helps to remove red tape and the regulatory burden on sole traders. I hope that there are other sole traders in other industries out there who are hearing this and might come along to the minister and ask that they, too, no longer be registered. There are a range of occupations that require registration, and the minister himself referred to that this morning. If you are a medical practitioner, you require registration. If you are, as the minister referred to this morning, a legal practitioner, you require registration. That goes across the board to all sorts of people in all sorts of occupations. In a way, this move singles out one occupation for what could be called positive discrimination while other occupations are still required to register.
The removal of the requirement to register in fact deregulates the sole operator sex work industry. The regulator will not know who the sole operator sex workers are, where they are, who they might employ and whether they expose children to the industry. Indeed, what if the situation occurs where a child is exposed to the industry only as a casual observer? With this deregulation, the fair trading commission’s powers to investigate complaints about unfair trade practices will be significantly limited in this space. If the government is so concerned about the impact of this regulation on sex workers, what would be wrong with turning the regulation into
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