Ho Hoo Hah!

I really take some exception to the term 'sex industry'.

Is it really true that anything that involves financial transaction, whether legal or illegal is worthy of the title "industry"?

While no doubt some can and, indeed, do make the case that there are the pseudo-components of industry...work venues, employees, employers, revenue, payments, clients, sales, purchases, advertising...etc....there is the question about whether sexual relationships should indeed be industrialised.

A case needs to be made for the idea of 'industry' being something that is socially beneficial.

This is more than an industrial question. There are pretty significant ethical issues. Do we feel comfortable for example talking about the drug industry, the burglary industry, the pornography industry...or (God help us) the paedophile industry.

All illegal, all profitable...but hardly socially beneficial.

This is not to say that prostitutes should not be protected. But my concern is that prostitutes should not be seeking "satisfactory working conditions", they should be seeking to be freed from prostitution.

Although those involved in the trade often declare that they are doing it by choice, and that it has no effect on them or anyone else. Both of those things would have to be seriously challenged.

Even if we were to assume that a person can be a prostitute and not be affected by it, the social consequences of allowing sexual relationships to become yet another commodity for our voracious appetites for anything would seem to me to be undesirable.

Do we really want to live in a society in which peoples' most intimate affections have actually become commodities that can be bought or sold? Is that good for us, good for them...and more importantly...good for our children?

So, let's try to support prostitutes by helping them to get out of the trade. This should be done by proper social and financial support and not by suggesting that industrial regulation would some how suffice.

Done and dusted

There is any number of comments that could be made about the recent State election I'll try and up-date some of these ad hoc remarks as the day goes on.

1. The age old dilemma about the "dodgy how to vote cards", in which Labor sympathisers obviously tried to make themselves look like Family First members, handing out cards that would give Labor a preference rather than Liberal, raises the question about the difference between legal, moral and ethical (Ethics 101). Something which may be legal is not necessarily moral.

2. The Labor campaign manager says "These questions are best left to philosophers". I want to suggest that this is equivocation of the worst kind, the 'lectorate despises this sort of casuistry and the Labor party should sack campaign managers who do not think they should act morally as well as legally.

3. Good on Premier Mike Rann for condemning this out of hand. Well done Chloe Fox for not adopting this strategy. Boo to Leon Bignell, whose victory has been tarnished even if it cannot be proved that this actually delivered the victory to him.

4. On the other hand. Let us not so be so ingenuous as to suggest that voters slavishly follow how to vote cards, and even if they do then more fool them.

We should all take responsibility for how we vote and not blame cards which short-circuit our brains.

The Legislative Council

Don't even get me started on the Legislative Council! The whole process of 'voting above the line' is in my mind an affront to our democratic rights. It suits the two major parties who want to get rid of as many independents and smaller parties as they can. Anything which impedes their open slather is a bad thing in their eyes. By voting above the line you are ceding your right to choose for yourself to these party machines.

I shall expound more about this tomorrow