Red-Green politics retrograde on prostitution

The charter of the Global Greens states that affiliates “will work to ensure that all men, women and children can achieve economic security, without recourse to personally damaging activities such as pornography, prostitution or the sale of organs”.

The Australian Greens policies have often appeared out of line with this aim, specifically in states like Western Australia where the Greens have pushed for the establishment of red light districts. WA Greens leader, Giz Watson also attacked state Liberal MP’s for what she called “holding notions of perceived third party exploitation in prostitution”.

NSW Greens MP Cate Faehrmann also defended the industry when she warned lawmakers against reacting harshly to recent investigations of human trafficking and sex slavery.

Faehrmann opposed the NSW government’s attempts to create a brothel licensing authority arguing that New Zealand and NSW provided two working decriminalised models.

The Australian Greens also use the term ‘sex work’ in their policy detail and support a push to end criminalisation of consensual adult sex work and support the purchasers of sexual services. The question that this policy does not address is how much sex work is actually consensual? And how they plan to help prostitutes who are not consensually working in the sex industry?

Other Greens internationally oppose the ‘sex work’ terminology used by the left in Australia. The Greens USA believe this terminology masks violent and illegal trafficking and state that research is continuing to show that only a minority of prostitutes genuinely choose to work in the sex industry.

Equally The French Green Party make an interesting point that free choice in prostitution is relative, in a society where gender inequality is institutionalised.

While the debate rages on in Australia, what’s striking is the major disconnect in policy between Australia’s mainstream left with their international counterparts.

Through adopting a libertarian approach to prostitution, Australia’s left have promoted a belief that access to sexual gratification is a human right and that the trade of sex consists of an equal and consensual power dynamic.

International evidence consistently shows the belief of equality in the sex trade to be false with the majority of prostitutes having faced higher instances of disadvantage, trauma, sexual abuse, and mental health disorders.

The attitudes of Australia’s left are not only blind the international problems of trafficking but are a broader betrayal of traditional left values of solidarity with those who are disadvantaged or oppressed. 

This belief also fails to recognise that consent provided through vulnerability is exploitative and something which many of Australia’s progressive counterparts consider a form of slavery.