Joe O'Toole (Independent)

I congratulate Senator Mullen on the work he has done on this motion. It is crucially important and reflects where we are as a society, even if it makes many people feel uneasy.

This is an issue I have raised over the past 15 years and it is time we were honest and open about how we deal with it. There are arguments about this issue but society is afraid to act. There is no logical reason, if we look at the triangle between the pimp, the prostitute and the punter, that two of those people are trading in illegality while the other goes scot free in law. Someone pimping a woman, a child or even a man, who is selling sex to someone, and the prostitute who is part of that, are guilty under the law of the land while the third person is not.

I do not like using words such as "client". It is like the phrase "oldest profession", it is used as if a person is buying a glass of port or going to see the dentist. It is an unequal relationship in every way possible.

The Minister takes a solid and sensible view of the world. We cannot have a situation where the person using the services of a pimp or a prostitute cannot be found guilty. It is possible to go through legislation and point to a line that states that a person can be charged with using the services of a prostitute but I have not been able to find any such case in the past 20 years. It is not acceptable to use that excuse.

This is about supply and demand. By allowing a situation where the person creating the demand is not charged or found guilty, we are driving sex slavery. We are fuelling and feeding the abuse of women. One of the problems I have with the new immigration regulations is that people must drop under the radar for three or four months while they try to secure a new residence permit. This is a classic example of how people drop out of the official system into the nether world where they are wide open for exploitation. I have heard the Minister's arguments in favour of the new regulations and I understand his motivation, but this will create problems.

We should think back to the debates we had on child pornography. Why did we introduce that legislation that made it a crime for someone to look at child pornography or to possess images, film or computer files containing child pornography? We all agreed that looking was a crime because it encouraged, fed and supported the exploitation and abuse of children somewhere else. The thinking was logical - if we allow people to look at and pay for child pornography, somewhere else down the line, we are encouraging child abuse and paedophilia. That was the reason behind it. It is absolutely logical. There is no gainsaying that. We should close this gap. If we are looking at the question of equality - I do not mean equality in the legal sense but in terms of the perfect meaning of the word - how can two sides of the triangle be guilty but the third side, without whom this cannot operate, never be found guilty? The only way to deal with this is by way of the final point in Senator Mullen's motion, that is, to follow the lead of Sweden, Norway and Iceland by criminalising the purchase of sex in order to target the demand for the sex exploitation industry.

I have spent much of my life in situations where I win the argument but get no delivery on the facts at the end of the day. I have spent many occasions shouting across tables when I have been sure of winning the argument. I am absolutely certain I can win the argument tonight but I am very uncertain as to whether that will get any result at the end of the day.

Legalising prostitution is another argument which will come into this debate. This is part of what Senator Mullen referred to as using terms like "the oldest profession". As he quite rightly said, it is not the oldest profession but the oldest oppression and suppression. It can never be anything else. By using a term such as "sex worker", it is as if somebody suddenly decides to leave the restaurant business and become a sex worker. It is unacceptable. That kind of soft, user-friendly language, which has tried to take the sting out of what is happening here in ways which make it possible to include it in polite conversation, is unacceptable. It is an abuse of language. It should be seen as such.

People are not prostitutes by choice, except in pornographic material. We are told people love this job and find it easy and so on. Women who become prostitutes do so because they are driven by desperation and as a result of being victims of poverty, drugs, addiction, fear and other negative aspects.

By saying that, in some way, brothels and prostitution allow usually brutal men to find sexual satisfaction, because were it not available they would take it out on people close to them or on innocent people walking the roads or other groups, is like saying it was lucky we put the people in the institutions referred to the Ryan report because if they were not abusing children there, they would have abused children somewhere else. What is happening is unacceptable.

I am happy to second Senator Mullen's motion and appeal to the Minister to take it seriously and to colleagues on all sides of the House to look at what we are doing in terms of respect for the dignity of women, in particular, and for poor people who are exploited and trafficked, especially immigrants. We must take this action and I commend the motion to the House.