NSWP members Vixen Collective and Scarlet Alliance have released a statement welcoming the announcement by the government of the Australian state of Victoria committing to decriminalise sex work.
The statement, which you can read in full on the Scarlet Alliance website, says:
“The repeal of the Sex Work Act 1994 is a positive and urgently overdue change. The licensing framework it establishes for sex work legislation has long been burdensome and unworkable for Victorian sex workers, criminalising many of our essential safety strategies and workplace health and safety measures, unnecessarily restricting our autonomy over our work and workplaces, and forcing us to choose between working safely and working legally.
The Victorian government’s recognition that sex work is work and that police are not suitable regulators of the sex industry is significant in its aspiration to afford the benefits of decriminalisation already experienced by New South Wales and Northern Territory, and a signal to other jurisdictions in Australia that it is time to take an evidence- and rights-based approach to sex work to support the safety, self-determination and wellbeing of sex workers and our communities.
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Vixen Collective and Scarlet Alliance will continue to advocate strongly for the benefits of the full decriminalisation of sex work to be available to all Victorian sex workers, enabling autonomy over where and how we work.”
Both Vixen Collective and Scarlet Alliance call on the experiences of sex workers to be centred in the process to implement decriminalisation in Victoria. A public consultation on the preferred model and how it should be implemented is open for submissions until 27 August 2021. Sex workers and allies are encouraged to participate in the public consultation by writing a submission or answering the survey questions at https://engage.vic.gov.au/sex-work-decriminalisation.