 I'd like to introduce Jules Kim, who is a Korean-born Australian sex worker. She's the Migration Project Manager at Scarlett Alliance, Australian Sex Workers Association, the Peek National Peer Sex Worker Organization representing and informed by their sex worker membership that includes state and territory-based sex worker organizations and projects, and individual sex workers throughout Australia on issues affecting Scarlett Alliance members and sex workers in Australia and worldwide, and Australia-wide. The Migration Project is run by and for migrant sex workers with the aim of increasing understandings of migrant sex worker issues and ensuring representation by migrant sex workers in all policies, projects and issues that affect us, and many other laudable positions, but I'm gonna let you give your presentation. Thank you. Thanks. Hi, everyone. I guess the most important thing to know about me is that I'm a sex worker and a drug user, and I'm not a reformed sex worker or a drug user. I'm a current sex worker and a drug user, and I do recognize that my privilege, though I was born in Korea, in Korea there are laws that say that if I am out as a sex worker anywhere in the world, and even though I work in Australia and it's legal or decriminalized in Australia, when I go back to Korea, I can still be arrested for sex work that I've done in a legal environment. So I do recognize my privilege in being able to be frank about my sex work and drug use because I have an Australian passport. And that's not the case for many of us, but I guess the most important thing is that I use drugs and I sex work by choice. Sorry, I've got in a few bits of paper. Because often when people do talk about sex work and drug use, it's spoken about in the context of helplessness or constraint. It's assumed that either we've started sex working to pay for our drug habit, or that we have to take drugs to cope with doing sex work. This is actually a gross misunderstanding and over-simplication of both drug use and sex work. But as sex workers and drug users, we're always asked to explain or provide an excuse or an explanation as to why we do what we do. If you think about, if you were personally challenged to explain every choice that you made, and it doesn't happen to anybody else in other professions, nobody asks you why you decided to become a health worker, or were you abused? Is that why you're a health worker? Or assuming that somehow there must be some sort of damage there? And I would say that you often get the answer that you expect because as sex workers and drug users, we are so used to having to provide that sort of narrative. And that is the overwhelming narrative. And so, within these services, there is that tendency to be like, are you a good victim that's been forced, or are you an unrepentant junky whore like my good self? And it's always been my feeling like what normal person doesn't like sex and drugs. I understand that these stereotypes are further exacerbated by parts of both the drug use and sex work community that are seeking to gain legitimacy by denying what is perceived to be difficult aspects of our community. For us in the sex worker movement, it's issues of migration, migrant sex workers, sex workers living with HIV, and street based sex workers, predominantly. And by trying to steer away from these perceived stereotypes of the drug using street based sex worker in order to fit into what is essentially a constructed stereotype of normal or respectable, and it's a stereotype that our community would never fit into. Because if research and experience has shown us one thing, it is that we are diverse. Just like, you know, it's quite likely that you're sitting next to a sex worker and drug use, well, here, it's very likely. But yeah, you know, just in everyday life. But there is great personal risk in coming out. And just in response to, I guess, the question in the audience, we had that issue when we started a migration project and people said, migrant sex workers, you know, they don't want to be out, you know, they've got visa issues, family, there's considerable pressure, and they're not really interested, you know. They just want to work, they just want to make money, and they're not interested in their rights. Right? And it was a really big difference to actually have a pro sex work position. We're so used to hearing only the negative stuff about sex work. We don't have these positive depictions about our work. What are some of the good aspects? Of course, they're good and bad aspects, but we only ever hear the bad stuff. So by kind of, we published, we went out and spoke to sex workers, and we did an article called What Is It About Sex Work That Makes Me Feel Powerful? And it was really, it was very popular, and it drew a lot of people to the movement. And it made a big difference to have sex workers that were willing to stand in front of the camera and say, you know, I'm a sex worker, I came out and the sky didn't fall in, and that helped. And to also deal with the stigma and discrimination, which are the main problems, the laws, the stigma and discrimination is the main problems with our work. Not, I don't have an issue with my job, but it is the environment that we work in that's an issue. So in the public and media representation of sex workers, the sex industry is commonly divided into group that donates a hierarchy based on class, such as high-class escorts or low-class street workers. The class hierarchy assumes that some sex work is more valuable, and within the drug user movement, I have heard this recreational drug user or a drug user. I'm not quite sure what this recreational drug user is. Yeah, it is, but yeah. The view is also promoted, I guess, by sex workers and sex industry business owners, sometimes as a marketing device, but also to justify our choices in an environment that actively judges and discriminates against them. And of course, internalized stigma and morphobia play a large part in sex workers, view ourselves and other sex workers. Sometimes this leads us to justify, excuse our own behavior by actively condemning somebody else's worst or reinforcing unhelpful misconceptions with hierarchies of sex work, as well as being offensive and disempowering. It doesn't make any sense, because in reality, most of us have a lot of crossover between the communities, you know, and most sex workers have worked across different areas, different types of sex work, often at the same time. So some notions of the hierarchy in sex work can also be used by legislators to justify policing focused on one sector of the industry or type of sex work. For example, it's often the case that police arrest street-based sex workers but ignore brothel workers in the same suburb regardless of illegality. And in Australia, raids and rescue will happen frequently to Asian brothels, but a much less common place for brothels that employ predominantly white workers. And this has also become an issue when it comes to policy and law reform. When it comes to sex work law reform, which it seems like happens every six months, policymakers try to convince us that it will be too difficult to get the reform you want and we should compromise. And usually at the cost of the more marginalised in our community that street-based sex workers, HIV positive sex workers, migrant sex workers and sex workers who use drugs. And more often than not, this happens when we're not the ones that are making the decisions. For us, leaving behind any part of our community is a loss for all of us. Often we're told it's better to get something over the line and we can work on getting the changes later, which from our experience never happens. Experience shows us that what invariably happens is that the later changes end up going in the opposite direction. And far from increasing our rights, they become more regressive and restrictive. And I know people often think that Australia is a very positive environment for sex work, but the bits that you don't hear, even in New South Wales, one of the two places in the world that have some form of decriminalisation. And I would say that currently we don't have full decriminalisation anywhere. We fought and succeed in achieving decriminalisation of indoor sex work, but street-based sex workers are still criminalised in most instances. The law states that it's illegal to do sex work as long in New South Wales, no, it's legal to do sex work in New South Wales as long as you're not in view of a church, a school, a hospital, or near or within one of the, a car on the street, a dwelling, or near or within the view of one of these places. And it does not matter if you cannot be seen just as long as you're not there. So in practice, it doesn't leave many viable options for street-based sex work. And over the years, sex workers have been fighting the constant chipping away at decriminalisation in New South Wales. Just before I left Australia, we've been part of, gave evidence at Parliament House and another inquiry. This is the second in two years, even though all the evidence says, decriminalisation is the best model for all sex workers. So this select inquiry is looking to bring back police into the regulatory role and just to explain widespread police corruption, there was a Royal Commission, was one of the main reasons why decriminalisation happened in the first place. In Northern Territory, a sex worker can't get a certificate to work legally as an escort if you have a drug offence. And if you do get the privilege of being able to register, your information is stored with the police and maybe subpoenaed to court or come up if you're charged with an offence or a criminal record check is done. And that registration stays there forever. It's not removed when you cease work and in fact it remains even after you die. And registration like the brandings of yesteryear serve no other purpose than to mark your sentence to endure stigma and discrimination and increase police scrutiny for long after you've left the sex industry. In the Australian Capital Territory, the law prohibits people with HIV doing sex work or hiring a sex worker services. And this discriminatory law ignores the fact that when safer sex strategies are implemented, the risk of transmitting or acquiring HIV is minimal. Regardless, these criminal charges were laid against a sex worker living with HIV for knowingly infecting. That's the name of the law. And the name itself is misleading. It implies that infection has occurred. But within the law, a sex worker can be charged when they've provided a commercial sexual service, when they knew or were likely to know they were HIV positive, regardless of whether they actually had sex or even if they had used protective strategies or if any transmission occurred at all. And laws proposed in Western Australia seek to prevent all those who are not permanent residents or Australian citizens from working in the sex industry. So this will preclude all people on temporary visas from legally undertaking any form of sex work, even if their visa said that they could. And this has been a big issue within the sex worker movement before all sex workers and trafficking is being used, I suppose as an excuse to justify criminalization and taking away our rights. For it seems any violation of our rights is acceptable if you package them as being for our own good. So Australia's, just to put it into context, Australia's successful HIV response has been supported by the enabling legal environments in many states. So the examples that I gave you were the bad things, there are good places to work too. However, this trend to respond to trafficking through criminal legal sanctions is in direct opposition to what we know about effective HIV prevention. It was sex workers that led in monitoring, developing and implementing policy development and law reform and supporting the rights, autonomy and self-determination of all sex workers through the decriminalization of sex work is the most effective way to prevent trafficking and labor exploitation. If you think about it, within a decriminalized framework, if I'm not happy with my job, I can go and get another job, I can work somewhere else. And I don't have this kind of brand of a registration which happens within a legalized environment. And if I am, yeah, okay, sorry. And if I am a victim of a crime, then I can go to the police without worrying about being arrested for the fact that I'm a sex worker. Sorry, I'm a bit over time, so I'm just gonna jump to the end. But really, when you think about it, the emergence, yeah, for us at the beginning of the movement, when peer services started being funded in Australia in the 80s, drug users, gay men and sex workers were fighting for recognitions and law reform for their own communities. And the emergence of HIV required a fast response that saw our communities pull together and forge advocacy efforts, as well as bringing money to the table. There was a lot of crossover between the groups with sex workers involved in the drug user movement and drug users supporting the sex worker movement. And ultimately, our core issues are not so different. We believe in our right to self-determination and bodily autonomy. We are all disproportionately affected by stigma, discrimination, criminalization and incarceration. We are fighting for our right to health, our right to respect, and to social, political, legal, cultural and economic justice. And despite whatever your personal view might be, you have to respect that everyone is entitled to be rights. And, sorry, I'm aware that I've just run out of time, but the most important thing, decriminalization. Thank you so much, Jules.