Sydney - Prostitution is regulated differently in
Australia's six states, allowing researchers like Basil Donovan to
compare how the industry operates under different rules and the
implications for public health.
Donovan, from the University of New South Wales, found that sex
workers in his state had the lowest incidence of sexually transmitted
disease.
If the health of those who work in the industry was the only
consideration, he argues, other jurisdictions should fall into line
with the biggest state and decriminalize prostitution and deregulate
the industry.
'The prevalence of gonorrhoea in sex workers in Sydney is as close
as you can get to zero,' Donovan, an internationally recognized
expert in sexual health, said.
In his view, persuasion works better than regulation and this
explains the sex industry's low rate of sexually transmitted diseases
in New South Wales.
In the neighbouring states of Queensland and Victoria,
prostitution is still a criminal offence and brothels have to be
licenced. Donovan says this has driven much of the industry out onto
the street and made it harder for health programmes to reach
prostitutes.
'It's very difficult to run health promotion programmes and to
access those women to ensure they are seeing doctors,' he said.
In New South Wales, by contrast, the law does not obstruct
conveying the safe-sex message.
Letting the industry regulate itself has had clear benefits in
terms of best practice. Within a few years of the first case of
HIV/AIDS infections emergence in New South Wales in the early 1980s,
the industry declared condom use mandatory in brothels.
'It probably saved thousands of lives and stopped HIV/AIDS
becoming a generalized epidemic,' Donovan said.
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