The Parliament of the Australian state of Queensland passed a bill on Thursday to decriminalise sex work. The Criminal Code (Decriminalising Sex Work) and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2024 also includes new offences against child prostitution and coercion to perform sex work. The Queensland Attorney-General Yvette D’Ath stated that “sex workers should not have to choose between operating legally with safety risks and operating safely with legal risks – they will now be able to operate both safely and legally.”
The law was first introduced on February 15, following the report of the sex work legislation published by the Queensland Law Reform Commission (QLRC) in March 2023. The QLRC review identified significant barriers for sex workers in the previous legislation. Chapter 22A (Prostitution) of the Criminal Code 1899 only allowed sex work to be conducted in licensed brothels or by independent, private sex workers. Sex workers who worked in a group or in a public setting like soliciting on the street were at risk of being charged with a maximum penalty of up to 7 years imprisonment. Illegal sex workers were unable to report crimes committed against them to the police.
The new legislation allows for solicitation, advertising, and working in groups. This enables sex workers to operate without fear of prosecution and for issues or crimes committed against them to be reported to police. Additionally, the new law updated the Anti-Discrimination Act 1991 to include protection for sex workers, ensuring that sex workers could not be discriminated against by hotels and accommodations for believing that guests would be using a room for sex work.
Queensland non-profit advocacy group, Respect Inc., welcomed the legislation, stating that, “decriminalisation, including anti-discrimination protections, would send a message that discrimination would no longer be tolerated.”
Apart from decriminalising sex work, there are now offences to protect children from sexual exploitation and specifically to prevent children from being coerced to perform sex work. A new section 217A in the Criminal Code 1899 will make it an offence to obtain commercial sexual services from a person who is not an adult.
Sex work has been decriminalised in other states of Australia, including New South Wales in 1995, Victoria in 2022, and the Northern Territory in 2019.
