The Hon Robyn McSweeney is a Liberal member of the Western Australian Legislative Council since 2001, representing the region of South West. In this interview with the ACL's Katherine Spackman she discusses the report by the Children's Commissioner looking at the sexualisation of children. Ms McSweeney was on the committee which tabled the report in parliament. Listen to the interview below and read the related blog post on the issue.

Rhys Vallance is the Western Australian director of the Australian Christian Lobby. He spoke to the ACL's Katherine Spackman about the WA Make it Count event last week where the Premier Colin Barnett and Opposition Leader Mark McGowan addressed Christians. Western Australian go to the polls on Saturday, 9th March.

On the 9th of March 2013, Western Australians will head to the polls. In the lead up to the election, the ACL has organised a Make it Count event with the Premier and Opposition Leader of the major parties on Tuesday 26th February at Mount Pleasant Baptist Community College from 7.30 to 9pm. Head to www.wavotes.org.au for more details.



The website also has information about the Meet Your Candidate Forums, where you can get to know the candidates more and ask them questions, and parties response to a questionnaire.







WA Election from Australian Christian Lobby on Vimeo.

Media Release

Newly proposed prostitution reforms announced by the Attorney General Christian Porter do not go far enough in addressing community safety, according to the Australian Christian Lobby’s WA Director Michelle Pearse.

“The proposed laws will ban prostitution from residential areas and give Police expanded powers to shut down illegal brothels, but we are concerned that by allowing brothels to operate, demand for prostituted women will continue to rise,” Ms Pearse said.

“There is already a great demand for prostituted women and this is why we have a growing number of sex workers coming in from Asia. As long as there is a legal industry, men will continue to assume the right to exploit women by purchasing them for sex,” Ms Pearse said.

Research from the University of Queensland estimates that 90% of the brothels in Queensland are still illegal, even after the Government set up the Prostitution Licensing Authority to regulate the industry.

“I question why our Government wants to follow the failed Queensland model which proves that it is impossible to regulate brothels,” Ms Pearse said. “The continuing growth of the illegal sector puts community safety at risk.”

Ms Pearse questioned if the Attorney General had considered the safety of the women who are exploited in this industry.

“Research shows that many women in prostitution are raped, physically assaulted and threatened, and one study showed that 68% of prostituted women suffered post traumatic stress disorder”.

Ms Pearse also said that the growing demand for prostituted women has naturally led to a massive growth in human trafficking for sexual purposes including the exploitation of children in the sex industry.

“Countries across the world are passing laws and considering ways of tackling the demand for prostitution. Sweden criminalised the purchase of sex in 1999, which has resulted in a massive reduction of the industry and reduction of human trafficking.”

The Australian Christian Lobby wants the state Government to expand the proposed reforms to criminalise the purchase of sex everywhere so that men are not encouraged to exploit women.

“Community safety will only be achieved when the Government recognises that prostitution is exploitation and seeks the safety of those in prostitution as well as the wider community.”

ends

Last night’s resounding defeat of a bill to legalise euthanasia in Western Australia by 24 votes to 11 marks the fourth time a fully-constituted State parliament has carefully considered and then thrown out a euthanasia bill in the last two years, the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) said today.

ACL Managing Director Jim Wallace said that the WA decision exposes the diabolical tactics of euthanasia advocates such as Bob Brown and Philip Nitschke in seeking to overturn Federal Government legislation in order to push debate on euthanasia into the smaller Territory parliaments, where they envisage they will have more opportunity to manipulate the outcomes.

“The introduction of legalised euthanasia has now been rejected by four State Parliaments in the last two years alone – with bills rejected by the South Australian and Tasmanian Parliaments last year, and by the Victorian Parliament in 2008,” Mr Wallace said.

“In total, 10 parliamentary sitting days were used up in four jurisdictions on this issue and now yet another bill has been introduced in South Australia, with euthanasia bills again mooted for Tasmania, NSW and Victoria.

“Just how much more parliamentary time is going to be consumed by this issue as euthanasia fundamentalists pursue an ideology of death?

“In every Australian state where a parliamentary committee has closely examined euthanasia, the committee has rejected it. These were fully constituted state legislatures with a house of review. Surely it is time for our legislators to say ‘enough’,” Mr Wallace said.

“This issue is being falsely presented to the community as one of compassion but the consequences of legalising euthanasia paint a far different picture.

“How compassionate is it for people to be euthanised without their consent as happens in the Netherlands? How compassionate is it for sick and elderly people to feel they have a ‘duty to die’ because they have become a burden to their families? This is where legalised euthanasia leads.”

Mr Wallace said that Australian parliaments should be looking to affirm the intrinsic worth of all human beings and looking to build a culture of life and hope – not one of death.

Media Contact: Glynis Quinlan 0408 875 979

NB: Jim Wallace is available for interviews on this issue. ACL’s WA Director Michelle Pearse is also available for interviews in WA.

Media Release

The vast majority of Christians are opposed to euthanasia and would be deeply concerned about a bill to legalise voluntary euthanasia which is set to be debated in the WA Parliament tomorrow, the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) said today.

ACL WA Director Michelle Pearse today urged WA parliamentarians to reject the euthanasia bill and said claims by the group ‘Christians Supporting Choice for Voluntary Euthanasia’ that many Christians support euthanasia give a false impression regarding the true views of the overwhelming majority of Christians.

“ACL has battled strongly against euthanasia being legalised for years at both State and Federal levels and before numerous parliamentary inquiries. In consulting with churches and Christian leaders in WA, as well as elsewhere, we have been left in no doubt that the vast majority of Christians are opposed to euthanasia,” Mrs Pearse said.

“The Christian community’s strong opposition to legalising euthanasia is reflected by the fact that over 1200 emails have been sent to Upper House members through the ACL’s ‘Care not killing’ campaign on our Make A Stand website at www.makeastand.org.au.

“And while only 100 WA residents have signed Christians Supporting Choice for Voluntary Euthanasia’s petitions which were sent to Members of the Legislative Council, a massive 6,117 WA residents have signed petitions presented to the Legislative Council opposing euthanasia – with most of these signatures collected from WA churches.”

Mrs Pearse said that throughout history Christians have advocated for better palliative care including emotional support for the dying.

“Christians believe that every life has intrinsic worth beyond measure, no matter what a person’s physical or emotional state may be. Legalising euthanasia seeks to put a measure on the value of human lives rather than affirming its worth even in the most difficult circumstances.

“The Judeo-Christian ethic which Australian society is based on is about caring for others and a commitment to life and hope – it does not endorse killing as an alternative to helping people.”

Mrs Pearse added that supposed safeguards for euthanasia legislation don’t work.

“In the Netherlands where euthanasia has been practiced since the 1990s, 1000 people per year are killed without their consent. The Dutch experience shows that so-called voluntary euthanasia quickly becomes non-voluntary euthanasia.

“Euthanasia endangers the lives of the most vulnerable, the people we should be striving hardest to protect. We urge all WA parliamentarians to oppose the euthanasia bill.”

Media Contact: Glynis Quinlan 0408 875 979

Media Release

June 21, 2010

The Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) is not satisfied the Barnett Government has met its election commitment to properly investigate the Swedish model of prostitution regulation, ACL WA Director Michelle Pearse said today.

With the Attorney General Christian Porter announcing today that brothels would be legalised in industrial and commercial areas, Mrs Pearse said Mr Porter must explain how State-sanctioned brothels could meet the most basic workplace health and safety standards.

“How would he protect young women from being recruited into the most dangerous profession on the planet?” Mrs Pease said. “WA is about to follow the failed experiments by Labor Governments in Queensland, the ACT and Victoria where legalised brothels have led to a massive expansion of the harmful sex trade in both its legal and illegal forms.”

Mrs Pearse said that recently an under-age girl died in a legal brothel in the ACT which underscored the implausibility of making work in brothels safe. “ACL opposes legalising brothels because of the dangers to young women and believes the law should target the demand side of the sex trade which is the men who use prostituted women,” she said.

Mrs Pearse said that a report by the US Bureau of Public Affairs cited a study into the trauma prostituted women face and revealed that 60-75% of women in prostitution were raped, 70-95% were physically assaulted and 68% had post traumatic stress disorder in the same range as ‘treatment seeking combat veterans’. “Why would the WA Government sanction an industry where this occurs?”

The Federal Government has just launched a marketing campaign aimed at reducing violence in relationships. Mrs Pearse is asking the WA Government: “If Australia says ‘No’ to violence against women than why would the Government seek to sanction brothels where women are raped and assaulted? If the WA Government was truly seeking the best interests of the community, than they would not allow prostitution to occur in any area.”

At a public meeting arranged by federal member for Swan, Steve Irons, the Attorney General stated that he believed prostitution was ‘morally objectionable’. Mrs Pearse is questioning the rationale of the government in legalising an industry that is ‘morally objectionable’. “The reason that prostitution is morally objectionable is because it is an injustice to the women involved, and it is an injustice to the wives and families of the men who use prostituted women.”

Instead of legalising the industry, ACL is calling on the government to shut down all brothels and implement a law similar to Sweden’s, which penalises the buyer rather than the women who are exploited in the industry.

Canadian television journalist Victor Malarek has asked the questions about Australia’s sex trade our own journalists and politicians have failed to ask.

Speaking at a forum in Parliament House in Canberra this week, Malarek ridiculed the idea of legalising brothels saying prostitution is the most dangerous ‘profession’ on the planet.

Politicians who had bought the ‘happy hooker’ lie that it could be safe and dignified were misguided, he said, in a message that he has also taken to forums and meetings with MPs in New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia over the past week.

“We seem to think in our minds that men have the right to a young woman's body because they have money in their pocket.”

“What 18 year old dreams of giving up part of their income to their loving pimp?” he asks rhetorically.

Malarek admits to being swayed by the legalisation arguments when he first started investigating the global sex trade but the more he dug, the more he realised this was folly.

If prostitution was safe, why then do sex trade lobby groups like Australia’s Scarlet Alliance recommend a panic button for prostitutes, he asks.

The multi-award winning senior reporter for Canada’s influential CTV W-FIVE program has done what most Australian journalists and politicians have failed to do and that is question the claims of the legal brothel lobby.

His latest book, The Johns – Sex for Sale and the Men who Buy it, contains a chapter on the legalisation of brothels in which Australia’s failed experiments in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria feature heavily.

Entitled A Gift to the Johns, this chapter is scathing about the Scarlet Alliance which was influential in convincing Australian politicians to accept the legalisation of brothels.

Malarek says Sweden has the best prostitution laws where the law comes down hard on men who purchase sex, rather than on prostituted women.

Swedish police, he said, had eaves dropped on traffickers in young women and had heard them saying it was no longer any use trying to do business in Sweden.

Malarek was also scathing on the pornography industry describing porn as “an inducer sending men in to the night”.

On this Sunday night’s Open House program (from 8 pm on most major Christian radio stations), investigative journalist Malarek lifts the lid on the $20-billion-a-year sex trade, and proposes a radical way of bringing change (interview time around 9.20 pm Eastern Standard Time).

Related links: ACL's Glynis Quinlin interviews Victor Malarek

ACL has backed a proposal from West Australian Liberal MP Peter Abetz that women should view an ultrasound picture of their unborn child and have a 48-hour cooling off period after seeking an abortion.

Mr Abetz made his call for women seeking an abortion to “know the facts” during a rally on Monday night of 300 people at the WA Parliament House marking the anniversary of the 1998 liberalisation of the State’s abortion laws. Please click here for more details.

ACL believes Mr Abetz’s proposal would be an important step forward in assisting women to make a more informed choice when faced with an unsupported pregnancy.

Far too many women are still left feeling they have restricted options when experiencing an unexpected or unsupported pregnancy.

Modern technology has given us an amazing insight into the development of babies within the womb. When making a decision that will affect both themselves and their unborn child, surely it is appropriate for women to have access to as much information as possible.

Related links: ACL Media Release