The Decriminalising Sex Work Bill has been introduced into parliament on 15 February 2024. The Queensland Parliamentary Committee is reviewing the bill. Submissions on the bill close 8 March 2024.
The QLRC Review Report was released in March 2023. The Queensland Government announced its support for the recommendations and its intention to decriminalise sex work!
The QLRC Review into decriminalisation of sex work in Queensland was undertaken from 27 August 2021 – 31 March 2023
On 27 August 2021, the Attorney-General Hon Shannon Fentiman referred the Decriminalisation of Sex Work in Queensland to the independent Law Reform Commission (QLRC) to undertake a review and draft legislation to decriminalise the sex work industry. On 31 March 2023 the QLRC report was released.
Changes to the Terms of Reference
The Terms of Reference sets out the parameters of the review i.e., what was covered and what was not. The Queensland Law Reform Commission was asked to outline a framework for a decriminalised sex work industry in twelve key areas. In November 2022 the Terms of Reference were amended to remove the expectation that the QLRC will draft actual legislation. Instead, they were asked to prepare “drafting instructions”. You can read the full Terms of Reference here.
Consultation Paper
On 11 April, 2022 the QLRC released a 255 page long Consultation Paper on decriminalisation of sex work including a call for submissions.
The #DecrimQLD and Respect Inc join submission was in response to the 250 page long QLRC Consultation Paper called ‘A framework for a decriminalised sex work industry in Queensland’. The joint submission was respectfully informed by the lived experiences of sex workers in Queensland, reliable academic research, recent survey results, and community consultations. You can link to the whole submission as a PDF or look at it section by section. The proposed law reform has the potential to be the most significant policy change for sex workers, our partners, friends, families and children to ever happen in Queensland whilst simultaneously resulting in very little change for most other community members. Sex workers in Queensland and our workplaces would no longer be criminalised but instead have the same workplace, health and safety rights as other workers.
Check out the Respect Inc & DecrimQLD Submission, section by section
- Section 1 Executive Summary
- Section 2 Recommendations
- Section 3 Sex Work Under Decriminalisation
- Section 4 Criminalisation Is Not Protection
- Section 5 Licensing
- Section 6 Work Health and Safety
- Section 7 Health
- Section 8 Planning
- Section 9 Advertising
- Section 10 Public Soliciting
- Section 11 Evaluation of the new legislation after it has become law
- Section 12 Anti-Discrimination Protections for sex workers
- Section 13 Public education, Strippers, Licensed brothel conditions, Alcohol licensing, Expungement, Human Rights Act
- Section 14 Consent laws, Stealthing
- Section 15 Appendix 1, Comparison table of models of decriminalisation
- Section 16 Appendix 2, Peer Education Literature Review
- Section 17 Appendix 3, Anti-discrimination examples
- Download a ZIP file of all 17 Sections as individual PDF’s (7mb)
