Sex Party Sees Red on World Aids Day

Australian Sex Party candidate for the Higgins by election, Fiona Patten, will spend World AIDS day
selling Red Ribbons outside the Jam Factory in Chapel st today.

Ms Patten, a former Board Member of AFAO and the AIDS Action Council, said that the recent dramatic
35% rise in HIV/AIDS infections in young Victorian men aged 18 – 29 was evidence of a monumental
policy failure in sex education.

“School sex education classes should be at the forefront of this fight in
giving young people the tools to negotiate safe sex but I doubt that even 10% of the schools in Higgins
would be doing this well”, she said. “Without a national sex education curriculum that teaches safe sex
philosophy and techniques to young people, we could see large numbers of young men infected over the
next few years”.

One in five young gay men in Australia who are HIV positive do not know it (2008: Suck it and See
campaign). Ms Patten said that Generation Y had grown up without seeing the Grim Reaper on TV and
hardly any of them had seen friends and lovers waste and die from AIDS related diseases, like people in
their 30s and 40s had. New drugs had also made HIV/AIDS more invisible.

She also warned both major parties that mandatory internet filtering would totally sabotage most
HIV/AIDS programs. “Mandatory internet filtering proponents like Greens candidate, Clive Hamilton,
have ignored the unsophisticated nature of ISP filters and their inability to distinguish sexual
information from sexual titillation’, she said. “Mandatory internet filtering, is being pursued by
Communications Minister Stephen Conroy and Clive Hamilton without any thought into its effects on
public health and safety. They are simply drawing a curtain over all sexual information ‐ driven by a
need to stop other people from watching porn.”

Last week, a whistleblower in the Minister’s department informed Ms Patten that both her own party’s
website and www.sexeducation.com.au had been blocked by the department’s internet filtering system.

Fiona Patten: 0413 734 613
Robbie Swan: 0413 871 604

Australian Sex Party: 02 6285 2477, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it www.sexparty.org.au