Wednesday, 31 July 2024

Southside Justice

Georgie PURCELL (Northern Victoria) (18:32): (1016) My adjournment matter is for the Attorney-General, and the action I seek is for the reinstatement of Southside Justice’s sex worker legal program funding. As many of you will know, I know all too well the stigma and discrimination that sex workers face – so much so that I never thought I would be standing here as an elected member of Parliament. Since I have this platform, I must use it to protect other sex workers and to ensure their rights are upheld and that they are treated as any other workers in the state. I was alarmed to learn that Southside Justice’s sex worker legal program, one of the only specialised legal services for sex workers in Victoria, no longer has government funding. Southside Justice has supported and protected sex workers for 50 years, long before the government and society saw fit to provide them with basic working and safety rights. In 2022 they received funding for two years from the Victorian government to establish this statewide sex worker legal program. However, it ended on 30 June 2024.

The full decriminalisation of sex work in Victoria cannot be achieved without the corresponding investment to fully realise and socialise these important new laws. This requires the Sex Work Decriminalisation Act 2022 to be litigated and individuals to be protected by it through the provision of specialised legal services for sex workers. Two years of funding is insufficient to give effect to these new rights at work for sex workers. The government had the opportunity to grant funding with Southside Justice’s prebudget submission, but it refused to fund the continuation and modest expansion of the statewide program, without which the expansion to engage with sex workers from migrant backgrounds who require specialist legal knowledge in immigration law cannot go ahead, leaving many sex workers without legal protection or even awareness of their newly acquired rights. Fortunately, the Victorian Legal Services Board has stepped up to provide one year of further funding to prevent their immediate and imminent closure.

This is the second sex work advocacy organisation that has not been properly funded. It is crucial that legal centres are able to offer free legal support to people with financial disadvantage and precarious income arrangements, as is often the case with sex work. An act is only as good as its implementation. I know that the government is committed to ensuring the decriminalisation of sex work as reflected in the act, and I ask the minister to reinstate financial support to Southside Justice and other sex work advocacy organisations to ensure the fulfilment of this aim.