Fiona Patten: "Only medicinal marijuana prescribed by a doctor is legal, but the police turn a blind eye to middle-class white women like me"

While Ireland was busy not voting for Libertas and Renua – both of whom were the political equivalent of a chocolate teapot – the Australian Sex Party spent 2009-’17 giving the Antipodean ruling class a much-needed kick up their conservative arse.

Armed with one of the all-time great election slogans – “Where you come first!” – their leader Fiona Patten’s infiltration of the Victorian Legislative Council and flamboyant speaking truth to power made her a household name all over the country.

The dictionary definition of a social justice warrior, Patten has co-authored A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Sex Party with her publisher husband Robbie Swan whose satirical magazine, Matilda, was waltzing along nicely until their printers, distributors and newsagents were spooked by a cover image of a lamb sniffing up Lady Di’s skirt.

Delaying her bedtime to talk to Hot Press, the 62-year-old starts by telling us what was in the Australian Sex Party manifesto that so appealed to previously disenfranchised voters.

“It was generally a civil libertarian platform,” Fiona says. “Law reform, LGBTQI rights, voluntary assisted dying. We even looked at marine parks so that animals and fish could safely have sex. Fundamentally it was born out of frustration with Australia’s draconian censorship laws and how they were trying to extend it to the internet.

“We contested a lot of elections – obviously the name ‘The Sex Party’ bounces off a ballot paper. Australia has compulsory voting, so 95% of our population puts in a ballot. Rather than draw penises on them or spoil them some other way, a lot of people initially voted for The Sex Party as a protest: ‘I don’t give a shit about this election but don’t want to be fined.’ But as we grew, we got a lot of support from those who did oppose internet censorship; who did want to see a regulated sex industry; who did want to see law reform on gay marriage and drugs. They really did agree with the platform we were standing on and we got elected.”

In no small part due to Fiona’s campaigning, the state of Victoria’s Voluntary Assisted Dying Act came into force in June 2019. Being so emotive, was that a tough piece of legislation to get over the line?

“It’s an interesting story,” she reflects. “When I was elected in 2014, I was campaigning and met this fellow called Peter Short who was dying and I made a commitment to him that, if elected, the first thing I’d do would be to push for law reform around voluntary assisted suicide. It took a lot of people by surprise – they didn’t expect the Sex Party MP to be talking about death – but I helped get an inquiry up and running which I had the privilege of being on. We then helped shepherd legislation through the Victorian State Parliament to make assisted dying legal. We knew that once we had one state legalising it, the rest would follow and, sure enough, they did. It’s a shame the House Of Lords was so terrible recently on the UK’s assisted dying legislation.”

The rock it mainly floundered on in Britain was safeguarding. How does it work in Australia?

“When we were on the inquiry, we did a whirlwind trip and visited the Netherlands, Canada, California, Oregon and Switzerland,” Fiona recalls. “The Oregon model, which had been around for about twenty years when we were looking at it, is pretty narrow and has a lot of safeguards. You have to have been diagnosed with a disease that you’ll die from within six to twelve months. You have to be of sound mind and get two independent doctor reviews. In some cases, you’re asked to see a psychiatrist or psychologist. The medicine is delivered to you by a pharmacist in a locked box. Because the process is quite onerous, a lot of people either die or become incompetent before they get approval. Our Voluntary Assisted Dying laws are based on Oregon’s 1997 Death with Dignity Act. It’s helped thousands of people, which is a wonderful thing.”

Fiona and the Sex Party scored another major victory in 2015 when they helped push through a bill in Victoria creating safe access zones around women’s reproductive health clinics.

“The protestors and god botherers who want to harass people and show them photos of foetuses now have to stand 150 metres away from an abortion clinic,” she explains. “Once we introduced that law in Victoria, it again extended to every state in Australia. The fun fact about that – and I can say it quietly here – is that in my original bill it was only 50 metres but there was a typo in the drafting. When I pointed that out to the minister, she said, ‘Well, 150 is fine by me!’ So, it became 150.”

Fiona remains a board member of the safe injecting facility (SIF) which, despite considerable kickback, she got up and running in North Richmond.

“Even though people still complain about it every day, it’s worked out brilliantly for people who use drugs and those who want to support them,” she asserts. “We see close to a thousand clients a day, making it one of the biggest SIFs globally. It’s at the front of a health centre, so it provides easy pathways to pharmacotherapy; general medicine; getting wounds fixed; talking to someone about your mental health or housing or legal issues. Eighty to 90% of the clients have now received Hep C vaccinations. We’ve even provided a dental service which is quite hard to get if you’re using heroin. We’ve an election coming up and the opposition is promising to close it, which is ridiculous. It’s in the middle of a heroin market which has been there for nearly forty years and that market’s not going away.”

Is it old fashioned heroin or has fentanyl hit Australia?

“We haven’t seen any synthetics hit our shores in great levels,” she reveals. “There is some black market fentanyl but that’s coming out of the hospital system. In Richmond, it’s mainly all heroin. In the other Sydney facility, it’s mainly all meth. The importation of heroin from Southeast Asia is pretty straight forward and continues to hit our streets very easily.

“We’re hoping in the near future to introduce a (synthetic opioid) hydromorphone trial which will provide heroin users with a much more regulated product,” Fiona resumes. “That also goes hand-in-hand with real lifestyle changes when you’re not trying to score heroin two or three times a day.”

Is the opioid reversal drug, Naloxone, freely available in Australia?

“Yes, over the counter,” she nods. “Pharmacies and other businesses in areas where overdoses are fairly common, such as pubs and clubs, have it. Our only sticking point is getting police to carry Naloxone. We’ve been encouraging that but apparently their belts are too full. I keep saying, ‘Could you just put it in your glovebox, then?’ That’s still a work in progress.”

Before entering politics, Fiona was CEO of Australia’s national adult industry group, the Eros Association.

“We represented shops, table-top dancing venues, video companies, phone sex companies, adult magazine publishers, sex workers, brothels,” Fiona says. “This was before the internet, so there were a lot of issues around video and magazine censorship. As things changed, that turned into online censorship. Australia had this ridiculous idea of building an internet filter around the country. They banned adult computer games entirely. Even though we’re a convict country, we seem to be a home of puritan politicians. A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Sex Party tells some of the stories of when we were lobbying for the adult industry and knocking on the doors of senators in the Federal Parliament.”

Fiona also launched a fashion line that was popular with sex workers.

“It was a very strange way to get into the sex industry but that was how it happened,” she laughs. “I was a fashion designer and had a small boutique in Canberra called Body Politics. It stocked what today we’d call ‘forward fashion’. It was during a recession and the only people who had a high expendable income were sex workers. They became some of my best customers and I used to put fashion parades on for them up in Fishwick, the industrial area where all the brothels are. These would be between 3 and 5am in the restaurant my Auntie owned there. The brothels would close, and they’d come for croissants and champagne. I ended up working for the sex worker rights organisation, and as a sex worker.”

I don’t want to stereotype anybody, but would drug use be common among sex workers?

“Yes, but no more widespread than among the general population,” she observes. “Some sex workers were using and injecting drugs. I ran an outreach programme and went around to all the brothels with condoms and clean syringes. A woman in Australia called Roberta Perkins did a comparative study which revealed that drug use is far higher among nurses than it is sex workers.”

Fiona’s most recent political adventure was in 2024 as lead Senate candidate for the Legalise Cannabis Party. She failed to get elected but ensured that drug law reform was a topic of national discussion.

“During my eight years as a member of the state parliament, I tried so many approaches to drug law reform. Some, like the injecting room, were successful, others weren’t. I was out of politics when the Legalise Cannabis Party approached me. I’d been a supporter of theirs from back in the early 2000s when they were the Hemp Party. Them and the Sex Party ran some hilarious joint tickets, so I thought ‘let’s give it a shot!’ I wasn’t successful but being the Cannabis Party, we had fun!”

Australia has one of the highest cannabis use rates in the world.

“I know!” Fiona concludes. “Only medicinal marijuana prescribed by a doctor is legal, but the police turn a blind eye to middle-class white women like me. They turn a blind eye to people with jobs, but hundreds of thousands who don’t fall into those categories have been arrested over the years for use and possession. Police have options – they can issue a warning or a cautioning but if you’re Aboriginal or a migrant or a young person, you’re more likely to find yourself in the magistrate’s court. In Victoria, 30% of all magistrate court appearances are for drug possession. It’s crazy!”

• A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Sex Party is available from Amazon, Browns Books and Gardners.

Fiona also features on the latest edition of Dealing With Drugs: A Hot Press Podcast. Check it out below or on Apple Podcasts: