Criminalising sex work in South Australia creating disease risk, says state's chief health officer Nicola Spurrier
Chief public health officer Professor Nicola Spurrier said South Australian sex workers feared going to healthcare providers because their activity was illegal.
South Australia's chief public health officer Nicola Spurrier has criticised the state's law criminalising sex workers as creating a disease risk.
Professor Spurrier told a parliamentary committee on the Repeal of Sex Work Offences Bill that criminalising sex work in 2021 created barriers to use of safe sex practices and access to appropriate health care.
"We are at risking of increasing what I believe are preventable diseases, HIV and sexually transmissible diseases in this state," Spurrier said. "Despite the leadership shown by South Australian sex workers in managing their own health and safety at work, I think as a society we need to do more. From a purely biological perspective, bacteria and viruses do not discriminate on whether sexual activity is paid or unpaid."
Spurrier said sex workers had told the state government SA Health department’s communicable disease control branch they feared going to healthcare providers because their work was illegal. She said safe sex supplies such as condoms had been used by police as evidence in court against street-based sex workers: "This obviously means they feel compelled to not use those safe sex practices and that means they'll increase the risk of both acquiring and also transmitting transmissible diseases."
The committee was told the Covid-19 pandemic also made sex workers more vulnerable, with barriers to getting advice from SA Health. Instead, the sex work industry developed its own health promotion resource and information.
Law Society of South Australia president Rebecca Sandford told the parliamentary committee the society maintained “strong support for full decriminalisation” of the state's sex industry. Removing the threat of prosecution for engaging in sex work was a significant positive step towards ensuring the safety, rights and wellbeing of all sex workers in South Australia, she said.
The latest campaign to decriminalise sex work in South Australia failed in late 2019, with the House of Assembly voting 24 to 19 to defeat the bill. At the time, some MPs had raised concerns about sex workers soliciting on the street and the locations of brothels in their electorates.