The Australian public has won a democratic victory over the political and media machine by forcing the leaders debate to be televised 1 hour earlier due to the popularity of the Masterchef final.
As Julia Gillard said without any sense of irony on the ABC 7.30 Report, 21 July:
“Australia is a great country you get to watch what you want on TV....’’
Fiona Patten commented:
“Your hypocrisy is duly noted Julia. Your party is the censorship party. Only the ASP has the ‘’recipe” for a straightforward classification system across film, TV and internet.”
I'm Seranna and I'm the N.T Senate Candidate for the Australian Sex party.
I have seen Fiona from afar for the past decade and thought- wow how amazing- there is a women who knows what she wants and can talk about it sooo easily. Last Thursday afternoon I had the opportunity to meet her in person.
I went to pick her up from the airport and enquired about the trip. She is the only person I've met who hugged me and replied, "YES! it was a GRREEEAAAT flight!" Fiona's energy, enthusiasm and bubbly personality was inspirational. I thought I was the only person with that much energy after a flight!
Thursday at 5pm we went to ABC radio and I did my first ever radio interview, as the senate candidate. I’ve done many interviews over the years about my published books, my films and the recent brothel and police registration debate, yet with only 3 weeks of research- of the Sex Party’s policies- I just about fell over when the announcer talking about removal of the porn ban in communities asked, "how do you motivate parents that don't care about their children? I thought Oh gosh, what have I got myself in for?
Friday we arrived at Browns Mart and at 11am. A few familiar faces arrived for the press conference- and as Fiona announced me as the N.T senate Candidate, my heart raced. Then the local media from the radio, TV and newspapers started pounding questions at me. They asked why I decided to become a politician, what the party’s policies on the mining tax were and why N.T voters should vote for me and furthermore why people that don't even have sex should vote for me.
The flashes of camera started and I was so nervous I couldn't fully smile. When we were finally finished I felt like I had been racked over the hot coals.
I'd been having nightmares all week about the press conference and was glad to finally have it over. We even went for a few drinks afterwards to calm my nerves.
On Saturday morning the Northern Territory news ran a story on page 3. I nervously read over the article which I was pretty satisfied with except for the photo. But everyone knows the camera puts on 10 pounds, right? I logged online and read the comments by readers, some people pointed out perceived faults of the campaign but the majority of comments were positive.
On Saturday afternoon we headed to Monsoons, a local pub, to do a promotional public meeting. I'd been plugging it all week, putting up posters and handing out flyers. Fiona and I enjoyed a pizza and to make sure I was on the ball I only drank water or Mother.
The questions started coming from not only the locals but also backpackers and foreigners. We handed out t-shirts and stickers to everyone and before I knew it we had a sea of people in Sex Party promotional gear.
Listening to Fiona answer people questions about the party and its policies I once again felt inspired by such a independent, strong woman, I soaked in every minute of it and found myself answering questions as well. It was a bit overwhelming to talk to people about the party when I still feel so new to it all but I believe I managed to pull it off. Maybe this Senator idea isn't so bad.
By 5:15pm things were in full swing and after a fake tattoo of the Sex
Party was put on someone’s bum everyone started to join in and before long we had photos being taken of bums with our logo on it. True Sex Party style.
At 6:15 we had a room full of people talking about how amazing the sex party was and our lucky door prize which consisted of an array of sex toys went to the manger of one of the adult shops.
June the 2nd marked international whores day, the birth of the sex worker rights movement. This year the ‘South Australian Sex Industry Network’ (SIN) and a newly formed lobby group ‘Sex Workers Gaining Empowerment, Rights and Recognition’ (SWAGGERR) joined with the Working Womens Centre of SA, Scarlet Alliance, and the AIDs Council of South Australia to call for the decriminalisation of sex work in South Australia.
A rally was held on the steps of parliament house with more than 50 sex workers and their supporters in attendance.
The Hon Gail Gago, the Minister of the status of women spoke at the rally in support of the cause and Hon Steph Key member for Ashford announced she was planning on drafting a bill for the decriminalisation of sex work.
“Sex workers and our workplaces are still criminalised in South Australia, and we are the only state in Australia to have had no law reform on this for more than 55 years. We commend Steph Key and other supportive politicians and look forward to working closely with them to ensure any new legislation is going to promote the health safety and wellbeing of South Australian sex workers. Its time for this discussion to be removed form moral hysteria and placed clearly within a workers safety and rights framework “ said Ari Reid, Manager of SIN.
There is currently a petition calling for the decriminalisation of sex workers in South Australia and interested people are encouraged to contact SIN to see how they can support this important human rights issue.
New Customs regulations that require all new arrivals into Australia to declare, along with firearms and drugs, whether they have any ‘pornography’ in their possession, now make that experience not a lot different from going through Customs in Iran.
‘Pornography’ is a term that western democratic governments should never use in their official language because it means nothing ….and then it means everything. The word is not used at all in the federal Classification Act, which is the ultimate reference for Customs on classifying and labelling media that comes into the country. So why did they think that this was a good term to use for their new CEO Instrument of Approval No. 9 of 2009?
They were trying to stop a perceived increase in the amount of child porn being introduced into the country so why wouldn’t they simply ask the question ‘Do you have any ‘child pornography’ or ‘objectional images’ or even ‘illegal porn’? But no. They asked a question which now gives Government officials an unfettered right to examine someone’s laptop or mobile phone as they re-enter the country, looking for legal material.
If you answer ‘No’ to the Customs question, thinking that of course you don’t have any of that disgusting stuff on your laptop or mobile but you do have a photo of you and your partner in the bath together at that mountain resort or the latest office funny that someone sent you, which showed a couple nuded up in a public toilet – well your done. You’ve lied under oath and are guilty of an offence that can carry serious penalties. “But its not illegal material!”, you say. While that’s perfectly true, you still lied.
In a statement to AM, Customs said that “including an express reference to pornography is intended to enhance the interception of prohibited material at the border. If travelers declare pornography and it is not illegal they will keep it. Illegal pornography will be confiscated and fines or charges may be laid.”
The problem with this is that over the past decade, the amount of legal material in the adult classification categories in Australia has been severely truncated and is now the most restricted in the western world. For example, non violent, fetishistic X rated film material that is quite legal in New Zealand, is illegal here. It’s not illegal to possess here but strangely, is illegal to bring into the country. Adult sexual material that is shown on late night TV in Spain is illegal to import into Australia. Again, its legal to possess here and to download but is prohibited material when you are crossing our borders. R rated computer games which are legal in most of the western world are illegal to bring in through Customs and many young people will come a cropper in this area under the new Customs regulation.
In sanctioning official searches of people for legal material, the Rudd government has stooped to an all time low in its relentless pursuit of sexually straight-jacketing Australian culture. The problem is that the Opposition, led by the mad monk Tony Abbott, is potentially worse. Tasmanian Liberal Senator Guy Barnett was the real architect of this stupid regulation. He applied extraordinary and undue pressure on Customs officials in a Senate Estimates hearing late last year and accused them in the most vitriolic way of opening the floodgates to child and ‘teeny’ porn in Australia. It was a performance that his old Taswegian colleague, Brian Harradine would have been proud of. Barnett is an old style, right wing, Baptist, conservative who has set his sites on ensuring that gay rights are repealed, that abortion is re criminalized and that sexual cultures are strongly repressed. He is a dangerous and driven ideologue who makes Harradine look like an amateur and heaven help Australia if he ever gets a Cabinet position in a future Abbott administration.
Australia is truly beginning to behave like a theocracy in its approach to sexual culture and the main problem is that both major political parties are trying to outdo each other. In NSW the problem is even worse where you have the David Clark ‘Opus Dei’ faction of the Liberal Party controlling pre selection and a Premier who is deeply religious in all aspects of her daily life. Couple that with a Police Commissioner who worships at Hillsong and its no surprise that last month we saw a young gay adult shop owner go to jail for the first time for selling federally classified X18+ films. That’s right. He was sent to prison for selling films that the Commonwealth had classified as suitable for all Australians. These films were even legal to bring through Customs as long as you answered ‘yes’ to the question!
How bad or offensive can a film be when approved by a panel of experts all hand-picked by former Prime Minister, John Howard? Should someone go to jail for selling non violent consenting erotica of this kind? Well, only in a state where all semblance of normality around sex is fast disappearing. The humourless NSW Attorney General, John Hatsistagos, tried to rationalize the jail sentence in a reply to Greens MLA, Lee Rhiannon last week. He said the jail sentences were there because NSW people wanted them. This was utter bullshit and thoroughly disproved by over a dozen professional opinion polls from Morgans and McNair et al, as well as two surveys carried out by the Commonwealth Classification Board and the Bureau of Statistics. These showed three quarters of respondents wanted to see X18+ films legally sold through adult shops.
So what can people do about overturning this silly Customs law? If you’re into the left-field approach then you could encourage everyone to say that they do have ‘porn’ on them and then drag out a bikini babe calendar from the bottom of your bag or flash a beefcake Manpower nude on your mobile phone. If everyone did this it would soon cause massive delays. But the real issue is not really with Customs. This increasing official demonization of Australian sexual culture originates in state and federal parliaments. Voting away from both major parties at the coming federal election would be a good start. While Abbott and Rudd may not understand the Nanny State message because they are in fact, the nannies, their party secretaries sure as hell will.
On Tuesday night 11th May I attended the the Internet Censorship Debate organised by the St James Ethics Committee at the Sydney Recital Hall. The hall was near capacity with over 1,000 attendees.
The motion was "Governments should not censor the internet". The overwhelming result from a partisan crowd; For 70%, Against 20%, Uncertain 10%. We'll all be familiar with most of the ideas and positions put by the panelists.
The strange thing was that the three speakers against the motion took the view that this was a broad question and shouldn't include issues of political censorship in any country nor the ALP's proposed internet filter. Well that didn't work. In fact two of the three said they were against the filter and thought it wouldn't work. They also called upon familiar heart string tugging debates about protecting children from nasties and preventing access to child porn sites, especially their last speaker Elizabeth Handsley Professor of Law at Flinders Uni. As the only female panelist she began by saying only she had experienced the 24 hour pain of child birth and thus had a perspective of the need to protect children that the male panelists could never have. Fair enough but that doesn't help a filter protect any child.
David Marr and Antony Lowenstein who spoke for the motion were fabulous.
Marr warned of the possibility of bracket creep once such legislation was introduced. Today the government say they are protecting kids but who knows what this or another government might use the filter for in the future. Of course the lack of transparency in the filtering process loomed large. He also claimed it was a politically motivated policy in order to influence the middle ground of voters who warm to the idea of protecting kids, even though the filter would fail to protect children.
He also claimed the filter was definitely Rudd's policy, not Conroy's, and that as Rudd had been a vulnerable child he jumped on ideas associated with protecting vulnerable children.
Marr wondered why the ALP would persist with such a flawed technology when, assuming it is re-elected and the filter activated, the opposition could display a scan of a sex act from the web each day in parliament and claim the filter was another failed project and demand that the government fix it so these sex images couldn't be accessed. Marr has a good point. The opposition have been rabid and effective on the now defunct insulation scheme and problems with the schools building project etc etc.
He lampooned the Classification Offices (in)ability to classify the content of the internet, referring to 16 people in an office in Surry Hills trying to classify content when during the hour and an half of the debate 1,000 hours or so of new video content had been uploaded to tube sites.
Lowenstein closed with an observation that the filter policy was being ridden bare-back into parliament by the churches who had their hands all over it. Strangely no one thought to state that one very dangerous place for a child to be was in the care of certain priests, though I guess this is an aside to the motion debated.
The audience was invited to speak once the panelists had finished. A woman from a child rape crisis centre spoke about her experience with child abuse victims and pointed out that the majority of child abuse occurs in the family home and is committed by a family member.
Wearing my other hat of Eros CEO I recently wrote the letter below to the head of ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) to voice our opposition to the introduction of a new stld (sonsored top level domain) called .xxx.
The debate about this proposal has been going on since 2005 and in 2007 we thought it was all over when ICANN formally rejected the application by the company ICM. Then, the proposal did not have the support of governments around the world or the adult industry. And that is important because an stld must have industry support. It didn't then and it doesn't now. But ICM knows that managing the .xxx domain is worth a fortune and they have spent a fortune lobbying for its introduction so they are not going to give up lightly.
.xxx is in no one's benefit except the sponsoring company ICM. It will not protect children, nor stop child pornography nor advance the adult industry.
Dear Mr Beckstrom,
Opposition to .XXX TLD Proposal
The Eros Association is the peak national organisation for the Australian Adult industry. We represent the majority of the Australian adult retail and on line industry and have done so since 1992.
I am writing to express our opposition to the introduction of the TLD XXX.
I attended the ICANN meeting in Wellington in 2006 and met with ICANN and GAC delegates to explain our opposition to the proposal. At that time we submitted letters from major on line businesses that also opposed the introduction of the new TLD
Our objections have not changed.There is no support from the Australian on line adult industry for the TLD XXX. I note that the ICM website states that they have support form the adult industry and free speech advocates. I am yet to find anyone.
We can see no benefit for the adult on line community or the community at large.
The industry is concerned about child protection and illegal material being made available on line but does not believe that the TLD XXX will address these issues in any way. There will still be plenty of adult material on the .com domain and frankly child pornographers are criminals and they will not be concerned about NOT using a .xxx domain.
We also have great concern about a non-adult industry body establishing and regulating “best practices” for the adult industry.
Even with the best intentions, deciding what is and what isn’t child pornography or illegal material at a global level, is almost impossible. In Australia for example the performer does not have to be under 18 but only needs to appear to be under 18 for the content to be deemed illegal. The importation of such content into Australia can attract a five year prison sentence.
From an Australian point of view, we anticipate that if the .XXX TLD was introduced it would receive a blanket ban under the government’s proposed mandatory internet filter. Under the proposal, sites which contravene Australia’s strict X film rating will be blocked by Australian ISPs. The proposed guidelines for .XXX content are in excess of the Australian standard so it will be logical for the Australian government to simply block all sites with that TLD - despite the fact that many of them will actually meet the Australian guidelines.
There is nothing in this proposed TLD for the Australian on line adult industry.In fact it could be extremely negative for us.
Please don’t hesitate to contact me if I can provide further information.
Sometimes I whine about my work and the fact that 20 years on I am still fighting for the same old things. Well I had good reason to shut up at last week’s F Conference.
It was attended by 500 women and a few men and children. It was the first feminist conference for 15 years and 40 years since the first one was held in Sydney in 1970. We were privileged to have a few of the women who attended that first conference there. They reminisced and lamented that the issues they were standing up for then, are sadly still on the agenda now. A woman's right to control her fertility, achieving economic independence and equality were among them. Sure some things are better. In 1984 a women earned 83 cents for every dollar men earned. Now we earn 84 cents… woohoo! The pill is certainly easier to come by but a young woman is facing jail in Queensland for the crime of procuring an abortion and abortion is still in the Crimes Act in NSW.
But there have been a lot of changes and they were highlighted at the conference. The first panel was a group of extraordinary aboriginal women who had been working for their communities since the 70's but in the 70's they didn't feel part of the women's movement - even though in retrospect they obviously were. In their campaigns against domestic violence for example, they brought the men with them. I loved their message. It was holistic in its simplicity and respect. Respect for family, for elders and for the land. Pretty easy really..
I went with some trepidation though and wondered whether the event would be filled with Sheila Jeffries and Melinda Tankard Reist types. I am sure that there were people who supported some of their theories but for the most part it was a very sex-positive event. In fact one of the panel speakers Dr Zora Simic described Melinda as the type of feminist Tony Abbott likes. Elena Jeffreys from Scarlet Alliance gave an impassioned plea to feminists to respect the autonomy of sex workers and her presentation nearly had the audience on their feet cheering.
It actually felt that nearly all of the missions that the Sex Party stands for were covered at the conference. Eva Cox, amongst others, spoke about the paternalistic nature of the intervention. Anne Summers and Elizabeth Broderick spoke about the appallingly few women in the public boards and parliaments of our country.
I attended a number of conference workshops, the highlight being the Feminism and Porn workshop. Most of the workshops that I attended had about 20-30 people but this one was packed and the room, which fitted 30 people comfortably, had nearly 60 people squeezed in, mainly women under 35. I was a little nervous as to how this topic would be received but knew we were in good hands with fabulous Sex Party candidate, Marianna Leishmann (AKA Zahra Stardust) and Katrina Byrne running the show. They started by providing two feminist arguments towards porn. The Sheila Jefferies and Andrea Dworkin model that all porn is bad and the other model that women in porn can be positively subversive and sexual expression is a good thing for women. We then broke into groups to discuss what we wanted to see in porn, if anything. With some angst I outed myself and as it turned out there were a number of women in the room who worked in and with the adult industry and others who wanted to. The overwhelming response from the people, not only in my group but in all groups (and I have the butcher’s paper to prove it) was that they wanted to see more diversity, more fetish, more information about consent, more women directing, more dramatic content, more female ejaculation, less censorship and greater respect for the women who work in porn. I kid you not. It was fabulous and if only our politicians could have been there.
The Australian Sex Party was unable to register a state branch in either South Australia or Tasmania before both state elections on the weekend.
So we threw our weight behind the new computer games party in S.A. - Gamers 4 Croydon.
They fielded a candidate in the electorate of Croydon which just happened to be safe seat of the state’s notorious pro-censorship Attorney General, Michael Atkinson. This guy has vetoed the creation of a new R rated category for computer games for a couple of years through a casting vote when Censorship Ministers have met to discuss the proposal.
We printed 20,000 how to vote cards supporting the gamer’s party and distributed them through adult shops around the state. Many thanks to AAPD’s John Mayall for coordinating this effort. We advised voters to vote away from the stale prudish Labor government. We also contacted our online networks on Facebook and Twitter and let the 3,000 people who visit our website every day know that this election could have a major effect on censorship laws.
Although Atkinson still won the seat he suffered a 14% swing against him and has now announced that he will resign as Attorney General. This is a very good result for all those who champion personal freedom and the right to have adult games for adult gamers. Atkinson’s veto of an R rated games category meant that computer games distributors and classification officers at the Classification Board (CB) both had nowhere to go in trying to classify the many R rated games that were submitted to them over the past 10 years. Sheer weight of numbers meant that many games which were naturally a ‘soft’ R rated game managed to sneak into the MA category as CB officers tried not to appear too censorious by knocking back too many of these high level games presented to them. Especially in terms of violence as it was the sexual themes in the R classification that was always in Atkinson’s sights.
While Atkinson insists he resigned to allow new blood into Labor in S.A. there are many who believe that he was pushed and that his combative ‘high Anglican’ approach to moral issues and his singularly stupid approach to the bikie legislation in S.A. threatened to stain Labor for more than the next term in government. Indeed his attitudes to moral issues were even worse than Catholic and Pentacostal parliamentarians and next to Senator Brian Harradine, he may well have been the worst wowser that the Australian parliaments have ever seen. The sooner he leaves politics altogether the better off we'll all be.
June the 2nd marked international whores day, the birth of the sex worker rights movement. This year the ‘South Australian Sex Industry Network’ (SIN) and a newly formed lobby group ‘Sex Workers Gaining Empowerment, Rights and Recognition’ (SWAGGERR) joined with the Working Womens Centre of SA, Scarlet Alliance, and the AIDs Council of South Australia to call for the decriminalisation of sex work in South Australia.
Sometimes I whine about my work and the fact that 20 years on I am still fighting for the same old things. Well I had good reason to shut up at last week’s F Conference.