Police Commissioner Grant Stevens says the legislation to decriminalise prostitution doesn’t meet safety needs
The state’s Attorney-General and Police Commissioner are on a collision course over police search powers in brothels.
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A push to decriminalise prostitution needs to give the state’s police force wider powers in order to win its support, Commissioner Grant Stevens says.
SA Police’s desire to retain their sweeping search and entry powers amid warnings the industry could be run by criminal bikie gangs puts it on a collision course with Attorney-General Vickie Chapman, who is championing the legislation in the Lower House.
Ms Chapman said changes that had passed the Upper House – allowing police to enter brothels if they suspected a crime had been or was about to be committed – struck the right balance, but was open to stricter rules governing street-based prostitution.
Mr Stevens told ABC Radio the legislation before State Parliament “doesn’t meet the threshold we think that would be necessary for a safe environment”.
“It’s not for us to specifically describe what should be in place other than to say there should be a regulatory framework across the industry, like we have for the tattoo industry, like we have for second-hand dealers, for the gaming industry, liquor licensing,” he said.
“While the tattoo industry was unregulated, we had fire bombings of tattoo shops, we’ve had tattoo parlours used as clubrooms, assaults, serious assaults happening.
“We want to make sure that those types of behaviours don’t find their way into the sex industry because of a desire to change the way we deal with it in South Australia.”
An SA Police spokesman told The Advertiser it wanted officers to be authorised to “enter and search any premises that we suspect on reasonable grounds to be a brothel”, as is currently the case in SA.
Because sex work is criminalised, police have the broad power to enter any premises they suspect to be a brothel. Ms Chapman said restricting those search and entry powers “ensures a balance is met between entering premises in the investigation of a crime and simply entering premises with no reasonable cause”.
She said she was open to a street soliciting model similar to NSW, where it is illegal for prostitution to be solicited on a road “near or within the view from a dwelling, school, church or hospital”.
Greens MP Tammy Franks said she was “just as worried about police corruption in the sex industry as I am about bikies owning brothels”.
“Both need to be weeded out of the industry,” she said.
The laws are set to be debated in the Lower House when State Parliament returns from its winter break next month.
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