Sex workers in Queensland must choose: be safe or be legal

The charges against Janet* were a set-up. But in Queensland it’s legal for undercover police to pose as clients, to pressure sex workers into offering blacklisted services, then arrest them under the state’s “puritanical” prostitution laws.

She remembers receiving a call and taking a booking. When the casually dressed man showed up, he started asking unusual questions about the scope of her services and her business operation.

“Usually at the beginning of every booking I have a chat with a client,” she says. “He came across as extra weird and extra awkward. The line of questioning got sketchy.

“Things proceeded nearly up to the point where I was trying to get him into the shower. Then he revealed he was a police officer, at which point in time he arrested me.”

Private sex workers in Queensland are not allowed to work with anyone else. They cannot text another sex worker, for safety, before and after a booking. They cannot hire someone to help them with a website. They cannot employ a receptionist.

The industry says these restrictions – particularly the inability for sex workers to contact a colleague – mean many are vulnerable because they have to work in isolation and without support. Undercover officers from the police unit that proactively enforces these laws, the prostitution enforcement taskforce, work in pairs.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Badges urging the decriminalisation of sex work. Photograph: Respect Inc

Janet remembers that after her arrest a second police officer entered her unit.

“Once they were in the room they were asking additional questions, like ‘Do you have anyone else helping you with your website?’ Any business owner should be allowed to have someone helping with my website.

“They did a search of my room. They went through my stuff and even the guy that arrested me was being really gung-ho. He found my toy pair of handcuffs and said ‘Can we put a weapons charge down for this?’ They did try to come up with as many things as possible.”

‘Our basic safety strategies are illegal’

Kayla Rose, a Brisbane sex worker, told a forum at Queensland’s Parliament House late last year the law forced workers into invidious choices.

“Sex workers have to choose between working legally or working safely,” Rose said.

“Our basic safety strategies are illegal. If we’re implementing these safety strategies ... then sex workers are charged.”

The forum, which launched a push for the decriminalisation of sex work in Queensland, laid bare how the state’s regime affects the welfare, health and industrial rights of workers.

The secretary of the Scarlet Alliance, the Australian Sex Workers’ Association, Erica Magenta, says successive governments have ignored the concerns of sex workers.

'It absolutely should be seen as rape': when sex workers are conned Read more

“Today’s laws that license a small number of brothels but criminalise the rest of the sex industry in Queensland reflect that there has been a reluctance by consecutive Queensland governments to acknowledge that sex work is work, and to listen to sex workers,” she says.

“The sex industry continues to be framed as a problem to be monitored and restricted. These laws have been informed by a legacy of fear and moral arguments against sex work rather than being based on evidence, best practice and prioritising sex workers’ safety and right to work.”

Decriminalisation has support from groups representing the sex industry, public health experts and doctors. Studies show the experience in New Zealand, which in 2003 became the first country to legalise sex work, had been successful in making the industry safer.

Groups campaigning for decriminalisation in Queensland say that under the status quo, 80% of sex workers have to break the law to protect themselves, and report that police enforcement of minor regulatory offences has increased in recent years.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A participant at the sex work laws and workplace health and safety symposium. Photograph: Respect Inc

The most common charge – and the way police justify launching undercover operations – relates to the state’s advertising guidelines. The prostitution licensing authority maintains a long lost of banned words and phrases to ensure sex workers who advertise do not “offend community expectations”.

In no other industry are police involved in the regular enforcement of workplace regulations, or are advertisers legally required to meet morality standards. The words “natural”, “kissable”, “double” and “tasty” are all banned by the authority.

The role of police as the industry watchdog means they are often distrusted when called upon to help in genuine criminal situations.

“Police are our regulators and our protectors,” says Angie*, a 48-year-old sex worker who has been in Brisbane for more than two decades. “But they can’t do both jobs.”

Angie was sexually assaulted by a client in February 2018. She phoned the prostitution enforcement taskforce and was told to make a report to a local police station. She sat down in front of a detective and told her story, involving a client who she said performed a sex act on her despite being given clear boundaries, and being told to stop.

“[The detective] just sat there and looked at me and he said, ‘Well, where’s the crime?’

“Once someone says no, then consent is removed. There’s still consent in paid sexual activities. No still means no.”

Angie went to a second police station. The man was ultimately charged and, it emerged, had placed other sex workers in difficult positions.

“I’m 48 years old,” says Angie. “I’m not some young new girl in the industry. For me, at 48, to go to police and say I’ve been sexually assaulted, it’s hard to explain to someone how that involves fronting up to people who you are afraid of.

“In my statement I had to end up almost admitting to a crime to explain something to police.

“If I was legally able to have someone just there at home, or to work with another sex worker, guys would probably not try to do things that way.”

Asian and migrant workers targeted

Proponents of laws prohibiting sex workers from working in collaboration with others argue they are a safeguard against exploitation. But they have been enforced, and sex workers prosecuted, even in cases where it is clear the breach of law is not in any sense connected to organised crime.

Asian and migrant sex workers say they are more commonly targeted. One told Guardian Australia she had been treated roughly and told she would be “sent back to where you came from” by a police officer during a raid.

Vickki Boon, from DecrimQLD, a group campaigning to change the laws, told the forum it was difficult for migrant sex workers, particularly people whose first language was not English, to navigate the complex regulations.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The audience listens to a talk at the symposium. Photograph: Respect Inc

“We know [Asian workers are being targeted] because we hear from Asian and migrant sex workers. We have been hearing this for a long time. We hear about it again and again and again. And it’s not stopping.”

She said there was a pattern to police behaviour.

“They pick problems with our advertising so they can get approval to go undercover. They come into our home or workplace after making a booking, but they are undercover police pretending to be clients. They ask us to do services that are illegal and if we agree they arrest us.

“They take advantage of our language skills. Often they ... make out that our communicating with sex worker friends is more than that and that we are some kind of organised gang.

“It’s very difficult for any Asian sex worker to convince the police we are there [consensually].

“The police don’t believe that we have the ability to work independently. They believe we are being controlled and try to get us to admit that someone put in our advertising, or helped us write it, or that someone is answering our phones. They try to get us to tell them who this is. Even when there is no one.”

Jules Kim, the chief executive officer of the Scarlett Alliance, said evidence suggested decriminalisation would mean greater transparency for the industry as a whole, and better workplace health and safety standards.

“Decriminalisation means as sex workers we are subject to, and can access, the same laws, regulatory frameworks and protections as everyone else. People are misinformed if they think decriminalisation is an absence of regulation”

The shadow of the Fitzgerald inquiry

The historical experience in Queensland has demanded caution whenever reform is discussed. The Fitzgerald inquiry of the late 1980s was prompted by revelations about police corruption and graft linked to illegal prostitution and other organised crime.

The inquiry made an argument for “legal, controlled” prostitution and recommended a review of regulation, with a view to looking at whether certain activities could be legalised or decriminalised. It also suggested the potential for fines rather than criminal penalties, and for police to cease their role as regulators of the sex industry.

The state passed laws in 1992 and 1999, at the time heralded as the toughest in the country, partly because of the shadow cast by the inquiry. They allowed for small licensed brothels, but the industry has stuttered and failed to grow, amid regular complaints from operators that they cannot turn a profit. There are only 20 legal brothels in the state, most in the south-east, meaning private services are the only option in many cities and towns.

Many private sex workers believe the legal situation – in particular the extent to which police enforce regulations – is in thrall to licence-paying brothel owners, who claim their business interests are undercut by lone operators.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Candi Forrest at the symposium. Photograph: Respect Inc

“Thirty years after Fitzgerald, police in this state are still moved to act by pressure from a minority of business operators – not to keep sex workers safe, but to keep the licensing framework financially viable,” Candi Forrest, from DecrimQLD, says.

“Having sex worked pre-Fitzgerald, I know for a fact that sex workers are not better off with the licensing framework.”

The former Queensland crime and misconduct commission has reviewed the laws twice, and both times it rejected change on the basis it might encourage organised crime. Senior ministers in the Palaszczuk government have recently confirmed they are open to a potential review by the law reform commission.

The police prostitution enforcement taskforce declined to discuss its role, offering only a short statement:

“The Queensland police service commits to targeting all forms of illegal prostitution activity through the prostitution enforcement taskforce. This taskforce has forged and maintains solid relationships with government and non-government agencies with the view to police and enforce laws concerning Queensland’s prostitution industry.

“The QPS does not comment on lawful strategies employed to investigate this type of criminal activity.”

Janet has not worked in Queensland since her arrest. But she came back to Brisbane to fight the charges, and the case against her collapsed.

Police had seized money they claimed was “tainted goods” which ultimately had to be returned.

“They generally assume that we don’t have resources or we won’t take it to court because we don’t want our names out there in newspaper articles,” Janet says.

“I haven’t been back because I don’t feel particularly safe [working in Queensland]. I’m one of the people who has dragged them all the way to court and embarrassed them in the process. It feels safer to avoid it.

“I think the situation [in Queensland] is puritanical. And I think there is a lot of moral prescriptivism with regards to sex work. There’s so much stigma that we’re not smart or that we’re going to be easily intimidated.”

*Names have been changed