Our submission to the ACT Government’s consultation on Fairer and Safer Sex Work Regulation in the ACT draws on the expertise of our member organisations, DecrimACT, and ACT sex workers’ lived experiences, and calls for full decriminalisation. That means repealing the Sex Work Act 1992, the Sex Work Regulation 2018 and the Sex Work Code of Practice, so that sex workers and sex work businesses are covered by the same planning, business, work health and safety and criminal laws as everyone else. The current registration system has only five compliant businesses in Canberra and confines brothels to the industrial suburbs of Fyshwick and Mitchell. It pushes most of us into criminalised settings with no workplace protections, or into working completely alone.

The submission responds to each consultation question and makes 17 recommendations. These include repealing sex work-specific offences, such as soliciting, mandatory condom use and the ‘child on premises’ offence, all of which are already covered by general criminal, child protection or WHS law. It also asks that sex work businesses be allowed to operate wherever a shop can, and that sex workers be able to work from home with a colleague or support person present. Other recommendations cover introducing a specific protected attribute for sex workers in the Discrimination Act 1991, letting people have historical sex work convictions extinguished, and destroying all former registers. The submission also calls for a single commencement date rather than staged reform, a statutory review within five years, and funding for a peer-led sex worker organisation to support implementation.