Australian Sex Party
|
Australian Sex Party
|
|
|---|---|
 |
|
| Leader | Fiona Patten |
| Founded | 2009 |
| Headquarters | 10 Ipswich St Fyshwick ACT 2609 |
| Membership | 7,000 |
| Ideology |
Civil libertarianism Sex-positive Progressivism Secular liberalism |
| Colours |
Yellow and Red |
| Victorian Legislative Council |
1 / 40
|
| Website | |
| sexparty.org.au | |
The Australian Sex Party is an Australian political party founded in 2009 in response to concerns over the increasing influence of religion in Australian politics. The party was born out of an adult-industry lobby group, the Eros Association. Its leader, Fiona Patten, was formerly the association's CEO. Patten describes the party as a "civil libertarian alternative". Patten is a veteran campaigner on issues such as censorship, equality, and discrimination. Patten was elected to the Victorian Legislative Council at the 2014 state election.
The party was briefly federally deregistered by the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) on 5 May 2015, after an audit found that it could not demonstrate that it met the statutory requirement of 500 members, but was re-registered in July. The Sex Party is registered at state level in Victoria, where it has parliamentary representation, and in the Australian Capital Territory and Northern Territory.
In 2015, party leader, Fiona Patten, put forth a Private Member's Bill calling for a 150-metre (490 ft) "Safe Access Zone" around hospitals, GP clinics and health services that perform abortions, where it will be an offence to engage in behaviour that harasses or intimidates women seeking to access an abortion. The Public Health and Wellbeing Amendment (Safe Access Zone) Bill 2015 formally passed the Victorian Legislative Council without amendment.
In 2016, the Sex Party renewed its call for religious institutions to pay more state-based taxes, and to overturn long-standing exemptions.
The party contested elections for the first time at the Higgins and Bradfield by-elections in November 2009, gaining over three percent of the primary vote in both seats, coming fourth of ten, and third of twenty-two candidates, respectively.
The party contested six of 150 House of Representatives seats and all states and territories (except Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory) in the Senate at the 2010 federal election. Receiving more than 250,000 first preferences, the party won 2.04 percent of the national Senate vote. After the major parties and the Australian Greens, the Sex Party during the vote count were "neck and neck" with the Family First Party for the fourth place in the national Senate vote. The party "outpolled several more prominent minor parties and came within about 10,000 votes of Family First for the Senate in Victoria". After the party's first federal election contest, Patten claimed that the Sex Party was "now the major minor party in Australian politics":
...
Wikipedia