Activists Julie Bates AO and Dame Catherine Healey join bid to legalise sex work in South Australia

South Australian MPs will vote on a push to legalise sex work in June as Greens MP Tammy Franks accelerates her bid to overhaul the state’s “archaic” laws.

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South Australian MPs will vote on a push to legalise sex work in June as Greens MP Tammy Franks accelerates her bid to overhaul the state’s “archaic” laws.

Ms Franks said she was hopeful her push to legalise sex work would pass the Upper House and be debated promptly in the Lower House, rather than “left to languish”.

TAKING A STAND: Dame Catherine Healy and Julie Bates AO with red umbrellas, the Symbol of the Sex Worker Rights Movement, as they join the push to decriminalise prostitution in SA. Picture: Naomi Jellicoe

Her Bill is identical to Liberal frontbencher Michelle Lensink’s, which passed the Upper House in 2017.

The legislation was not debated in the Lower House before the 2018 state election.

Ms Franks said legalising sex work in the state was “well overdue”.

“South Australia has the oldest sex work laws in the country and we desperately need reform to protect the rights of people in the sex work industry,” she said.

The push comes as sex workers’ rights activists Julie Bates AO and Dame Catherine Healey, from NZ, will on Thursday night urge for sex work to be made a legal profession in SA.

Ms Bates said it was “abundantly clear” that the rights and safety of sex workers could only be protected when sex work was decriminalised.

“Only under decriminalisation do sex workers have labour rights,” she said.

Labor MP Clare Scriven said legalising sex work would “increase the objectification of women”.