Women Speak Tasmania

Tag: Scarlet Alliance

  • Before Women Speak Tasmania: The Nordic Model Campaign Years (2012–2017)

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    Although Women Speak Tasmania was formally established in 2018, several founding members — including Isla MacGregor — had been actively engaged for years in advocacy relating to prostitution law reform, sexual exploitation, and trafficking. Much of this work occurred through collaboration with the Nordic Model Australia Coalition (NorMAC) and international abolitionist networks. The period between…

  • Funding Cuts to Scarlet Alliance: Michael Keenan Gets it Right …

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    I can only congratulate Justice Minister Michael Keenan for not allocating funding to the Scarlet Alliance in the 2017/18 round of funding to NGOs for combating sex trafficking and slavery in Australia. In February, March and April this year I was a co-signatory of a group of concerned womens’ human rights campaigners who wrote to…

  • It’s Bad News from New Zealand’s Survivors …

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    Survivors from the sex trade in New Zealand are speaking out about the tragic failure of decriminalisation aimed at preventing harms to prostituted women and girls from sex buyers and pimps but here in Tasmania Young Labor and many in the Union movement don’t want to hear their voices. The Scarlet Alliance ramped up their…

  • Young Labor Didn’t Do its Homework

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    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…

  • Sex Industry Lobby Group Disrupts Survivor Book Launch

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    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…

  • NorMAC Nastiness in Hobart: A Response

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    Crikey! The pro-sex trade lobby have been misrepresenting Nordic Model supporters with a renewed vigour. The “Why be poor?” brigade of alleged “sex workers” certainly know how to spin a yarn but it’s the same old yarn and the public are just not swallowing it. After I had a remarkable opportunity to speak at Parliament…

  • Van Badham’s Freedom of Speech for Some?

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    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…

  • Scarlett Alliance Fails in Bid to Gag Professor

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    Preamble by Isla MacGregor While Women Speak Tasmania only officially started in 2018, members previously had primarily worked on issues concerning sexual exploitation and the global sex trade with the Nordic Model Australia Coalition (NORMAC). In June 2012 Prof Sheila Jeffreys came to Hobart to lobby Ministers and give public talks.  Former Scarlet Alliance member Jade…