{"id":5948,"date":"2023-03-12T11:14:13","date_gmt":"2023-03-12T01:14:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scarletalliance.org.au\/?p=5948"},"modified":"2024-01-20T16:06:32","modified_gmt":"2024-01-20T05:06:32","slug":"stans-revealed-trafficked-exposes-nick-mckenzies-white-knight-fantasy-based-on-racist-stereotyping","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scarletalliance.org.au\/stans-revealed-trafficked-exposes-nick-mckenzies-white-knight-fantasy-based-on-racist-stereotyping\/","title":{"rendered":"Stan\u2019s Revealed: Trafficked exposes Nick McKenzie\u2019s white knight fantasy based on racist stereotyping"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nick McKenzie tells us he has exposed an underworld of human trafficking. All he has exposed is his own ignorance and racist assumptions about Asian migrant sex workers. This documentary highlights the failure of the criminal justice approach to trafficking, and that Australia needs to provide accessible migration pathways and full rights to migrant sex workers.<\/span><\/h4>\n

“There seems to be an ignorance and voyeuristic fascination with migrant sex workers that is perpetuated by a seemingly never ending stream of ill informed and poorly researched media stories. Dangerously, these stories peddle well worn stereotypes which then become public opinion, and are the drivers behind bad policies that overstep the fair and reasonable application of the law. When it comes to migrant sex workers, fair and reasonable goes out the window, and the voices of actual migrant sex workers are always absent.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Excerpt from “WE ARE MIGRANT SEX WORKERS” Poster- as part of We Don’t Cross Borders, Borders Cross Us Poster Collection (2012).<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The documentary presents lurid, unethical (and potentially illegal) undercover footage of sex workers engaging in normal work activities as evidence of trafficking and exploitation. This non-consensual, exploitative footage of Asian migrant sex workers at work, in lingerie, does nothing to further the premise of the documentary, and only serves to titillate the audience. Nick McKenzie continually implies that the capturing of this banal footage puts his undercover investigators at risk, when it is actually the Asian migrant sex workers who are having their privacy and wellbeing put at risk.<\/span><\/p>\n

Footage of sex workers working from motel rooms in Queensland, and introducing themselves to clients inside brothels in Victoria is provided as evidence of \u201csex trafficking syndicates\u201d, when all that is portrayed is normal business practices of individual sex workers. The documentary buys into and promotes racist assumptions that Asian women are passive, uneducated and at the mercy of shadowy hidden figures, and refuses to acknowledge that Asian migrant sex workers are well travelled, experienced, empowered and independent.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nick McKenzie then travels to South Korea to get the testimony of a sex worker who willingly travelled to Melbourne to do sex work, but experienced an exploitative working environment. Migrant sex workers should have full access to industrial rights mechanisms in order to address their working conditions, without fear of deportation. Tellingly, when asked if she tried to seek help from police, this worker states that \u201cthe police themselves are scary\u201d. This is repeated later by UK police stating that alleged trafficking victims are \u201cnot willing to talk\u201d to them. These comments articulate that the police themselves are perpetrators of violence to sex workers, and that police engagement usually ends in the deportation of the migrant worker. This documentary could have explored the failure of the current criminal justice approach to trafficking and the need for Australia to embrace a rights based approach and accessible migration pathways, but instead decided to support an approach that does not support victims of exploitation or trafficking.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe media has a lot of power to shape people\u2019s ideas and by creating these stereotypes they affect people\u2019s view of us, including the police. Anti-trafficking [media] and stereotyping impacts on sex workers – it results in raids, harassment and discrimination toward Asian sex workers \u2026These raids are harmful, sex workers who experience them now associate the police force with fear and danger rather than safety and are unlikely to go to them for support. This creates further barriers for sex workers to access justice and services in society.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Bee, a sex worker and migrant from Thailand and Vixen peer educator, speaking in Naarm on International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers 2022.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Nick McKenzie, like a bull in a china shop, doorstops an alleged \u201cvisa fixer\u201d. Rather than question Australia\u2019s inaccessible migration policies and practices that force migrant workers to engage third parties to access legal migration, Nick frames these third parties as \u201cthe handmaidens of organised crime\u201d. We posit that it is the barriers to migrant sex workers accessing safe and legal migration pathways that are the real handmaidens of organised crime.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jules Kim, then CEO of Scarlet Alliance, Australian Sex Workers Association (and current Global Coordinator of the Global Network of Sex Worker Projects) presents an evidence and rights based response in this otherwise sensationalist and ill-informed piece. Jules clearly articulates that Australia is complicit in creating vulnerabilities to exploitation through its migration policies and barriers to access industrial rights mechanisms for migrant workers. Her final statement that \u201cthere are a lot of crooks in this scenario\u201d refers to the institutions responsible for the barriers to migration and rights for migrant workers. We agree, and would add that the unevidenced narrative perpetuated in this documentary means that truth and the rights of Asian migrant sex workers are the victims.<\/span><\/p>\n

The documentary suggests that tighter regulation of the sex industry is a solution to these imagined issues. There is a plethora of evidence (please see the further reading resource list) that the full decriminalisation of sex work is the best practice model of sex industry regulation, and that a decriminalised environment <\/span>assists <\/span><\/i>in the prevention and detection of exploitation and trafficking, and access to justice and support. Only through a decriminalised environment are sex workers able to safely access our health, legal and industrial rights. Suggestions that there are people who should be banned from running a sex industry business (but not banned from running other businesses that employ people) are based on a misguided assumption that sex workers are somehow <\/span>inherently<\/span><\/i> more vulnerable than other workers, rather than looking at the legislative frameworks, policies and pervasive stigma and discrimination that denies sex workers and migrants access to full legal, industrial and health rights.<\/span><\/p>\n

The reality is that trafficking in the sex industry in Australia is isolated, and not a systemic feature of the industry. Data from the Australian Institute of Criminology on trafficking prosecutions data and convictions demonstrates that trafficking occurs mostly <\/span>outside <\/span><\/i>the sex industry, and that sex industry cases largely involve migrant sex workers who come to do sex work in Australia. The documentary seems to suggest that the lack of prosecutions is somehow evidence that systemic trafficking is \u201chiding in plain sight\u201d. This obsession of finding trafficking cases <\/span>that do not exist<\/span><\/i> diverts the focus from actual cases of trafficking in Australia and prevents an evidence-based response to the problem.<\/span><\/p>\n

Statement made in collaboration between Scarlet Alliance, Australian Sex Workers Association; Vixen<\/a>; and Respect Inc<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Further Reading Resources:<\/strong><\/p>\n