MS PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (12:01:21) — My question is for the Minister for Consumer Affairs, Gaming and Liquor Regulation, represented by Minister Dalidakis, and relates to massage parlours — not assuming you have any knowledge of them here. Right near my electorate office on Sydney Road, near the intersection with Albion Street, there are three massage parlours. If you head 500 metres north up Sydney Road to the intersection with Moreland Road, there are another three. It is a pattern that repeats itself not only along Sydney Road but right across Melbourne — in fact just straight metres from here along Bourke Street. My question for the minister is: does she believe that there is an unusual epidemic of neck injury in Melbourne or perhaps that the incredible prevalence of these massage parlours may be symptomatic of something else?
Supplementary:
MS PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (12:05:22) — Considering I have been raising this issue with this government for nearly four years, I take some umbrage at the lecture I have just received on this matter. By way of supplementary, assuming that unregulated sexual services, which the minister seems to be assuming, are being provided by these parlours, then obviously the current regulatory system is not working, as I have been saying in this house for some years. So I ask: is it not time that the government introduced a modern, best-practice approach, including the decriminalisation of sex work as the internationally recognised best practice, for the regulation of the adult industry?
