Category: Articles
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Young Labor Didn’t Do its Homework
Tasmanian Labor’s agenda for its conference in Queenstown this weekend has promised an opportunity for ‘robust and spirited debate’. While the decriminalisation of brothels and the legalisation of some illicit drugs are being proposed by two separate branches of the party, the coupling of both proposals is difficult to avoid. A more cynical person would…
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The Reluctance of Tasmanian Authorities …
Consultation Session with Michel Forst, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders – Civil Society Activists, Saturday 8 October 2016 Representatives of the Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF) Southern Tasmania, Nordic Model Australia Coalition (NorMAC) and Whistleblowers Tasmania attended the civil society activists consultation session in Hobart. M. Forst is visiting Australia as part of…
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Whistleblowers Tasmania Backs Call for Parliamentary Inquiry …
Whistleblowers Tasmania has backed the call by Tessa Anne from the Women’s Liberation Front for a Parliamentary Inquiry into the conduct of the Anti-Discrimination Commissioner Robin Banks and Equal Opportunity Tasmania Policy Advisor Leica Wagner. The allegations made by Tessa Anne and reported in The Australian on Saturday 1st October are significant and need to…
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Sex Industry Lobby Group Disrupts Survivor Book Launch
On Sunday 21 August, sex trade advocates tried to derail the launch, in Townsville, Queensland, of Prostitution Narratives, a recently published compilation of sex trade survivor testimonies. The tactics used by the pro sex trade lobby are becoming increasingly nasty, especially since the release of damning stories of violence in the Australian sex trade, as described…
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Melbourne Writers’ Festival Panel Dispute Exposes Anti-Survivor Agenda
In the spirit of the popular ‘sex workers are under-represented’ stance, repeated by liberal media and prostitution advocates, ad-nauseum, Daily Life has published yet another article repeating the myth. The author, Kate Iselin, aside from being a self-described “sex worker” and published writer, is also “furious.” This time, the article targets the Melbourne Writers Festival…
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Opinion: A Reality Check on Sex Work
Recent articles have argued for and against decriminalization of prostitution. It’s an emotive subject, likely to raise strong commentary, so let’s try and see this argument against some indisputable facts. One: the entire weight of mankind’s experience in all civilised societies round the world has always centred on a stable family (or tribe) unit in which…
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Van Badham’s Freedom of Speech for Some?
Recent twitter comments on 6th April from Guardian Australia columnist Van Badham in support of the sex trade’s campaign to derail the World’s Oldest Oppression conference being held at RMIT this weekend, have many people questioning if Van Badham has any genuine commitment to freedom of speech or not. Van Badham has joined a twitter…
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Sex Offender’s Sentence Must be Appealed
On 23 December we read in the Mercury that Darren John Fenton, 48, received a suspended sentence after being found guilty of the indecent assault of two 13-year old girls on the East Coast last year. The manifestly inadequate sentence, delivered by Justice Helen Wood, is a sorry indictment of the Tasmanian judicial system –…
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UTAS Women’s Collective: A New Meaning for Inclusive?
In six decades of life as a woman, I’ve seen countless expressions of patriarchy. From the family favouritism shown to my brothers, to the societal and workplace inequities of single parenthood, and now the creeping social oblivion of female middle age. I’ve studied and worked in the male dominated professions of accounting and law, and…