The legendary club Madame Jojo’s recently announced that its doors were closing, prompting many to mourn the death of Soho. But the area has been subject to various “clean-up” campaigns throughout its…
Theresa May’s much vaunted Modern Slavery Bill is designed to stamp out what she describes as a “disgusting trade in human beings”, and a new report on trafficking from the National Crime Agency (NCA…
Peta Brady’s Ugly Mugs, which I saw in Sydney last week, opens with a gurney being wheeled onto the stage – on it, a sex worker who has died at the hands of a client and who, like the phoenix tattooed…
Watch the Honourable Michael Kirby, visiting professorial fellow at UNSW Australia, talk about how the law impacts HIV below. Michael Kirby is a former justice of the High Court of Australia, serving from…
The number of new HIV diagnoses in Australia remains the highest in 20 years, according to data released today by UNSW’s Kirby Institute. While rates have remained stable over the past two years, the number…
Nationally and internationally, states adopt many different approaches to regulate brothels, ranging from legalisation to prohibition. But underlying all of these approaches is an ongoing assumption that…
In the 20 years I have worked on issues around the night-time economy, I’ve seen sex workers treated in wildly varying ways: greeted with humane understanding and mild curiosity by residents’ groups, and…
Cases in which women or children have been forced into prostitution under the violent control of a third party are often described as the tip of a very large iceberg. One of the principal statistical claims…
The moral panic on the supposed prevalence of trafficking in the global sex industry rests on a lie: that the majority of sex workers are trafficked. In fact, the opposite is true. However, on the basis…
Both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland are taking steps towards new regulations for the sex work industry, principally aimed at better protecting victims of coercion and trafficking. However…
Lucy Platt, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
In the ongoing debate on the law’s response to sex work, it has not been forgotten that sex workers have pressing health needs. However, the debate is still very much focused on sexually transmitted infections…
The “Nordic model” of prostitution is often heralded for being particularly progressive and woman-friendly, built on a feminist definition of prostitution as a form of male violence against women. France…
A recent report by the non-governmental organisation Coalition Against Trafficking in Women Australia recommends the adoption of the Nordic Model in Australia. Also known as the Swedish Model, this legislation…
Imagine a scenario where prostitution is not restricted or sanctioned but buying sex is banned. Could such an approach work in Australia? It already has elsewhere, and the evidence suggests it’s worth…
Scottish police were forced to issue a statement that they did “not advocate the banning of condoms” after a BBC report, which ran under the headline “Police ask for condom ban in Edinburgh saunas”, said…
Melbourne sex worker Tracy Connelly was brutally murdered in her van last week. In a sad irony, Connelly was killed metres from where sex workers and their allies demonstrated their support for a global…
Sexual expression is a fundamental part of being human, with most of us able to choose our sexual partners and, to varying degrees, meet our intimacy needs and desires. While not all people with disabilities…
The sexual revolution happened in the late 1960s, so it seems insane that so-called western liberal democracies still appear to have major hang-ups about sex. This is especially true when it comes to commercialised…
France is the latest European country to aim for a “society without prostitution”. The proposal to make it a crime to purchase any sexual service (alongside Sweden, Norway and Iceland) has stimulated public…
Can the mining boom be blamed for the rising rates of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in some states? The Australian Medical Association thinks so, with its Queensland president Dr Richard Kidd…
Interim Director, UWA Public Policy Institute; Associate Professor & Programme Co-ordinator (Masters of Public Policy), The University of Western Australia