The party outpolled several more prominent minor parties and came within about 10,000 votes of Family First for the Senate in Victoria.

And in the Northern Territory, it managed to secure more than 5 per cent of the vote in one Senate position, qualifying for more than $3700 in taxpayer funds.

Once a party or candidate secures 4 per cent of first preferences, they are paid $2.31 for every vote they receive.

While the Sex Party gained 2.2 per cent of the Senate first preferences in Victoria, the DLP managed roughly the same. Despite this, the Victorian DLP has been vying for the last Senate spot.

The Sex Party secured a total of 54,744 first preference votes in the Senate in Victoria, compared with One Nation’s 8804 and the Australian Democrats on 11,774.

Sex Party candidate Fiona Patten said the support was encouraging and they would be back for the state election.

Sex Party policies include R and X ratings for computer games, an end to internet filters, a national sex education curriculum to prevent “the sexualisation of children”, and sexual dysfunction drugs to be put on the PBS.

Source: herladsun.com.au

Trading against the increasing conservatism of the three major parties, the Australian Sex Party has launched its election campaign speaking out on sensitive issues and quickly proving the party’s policies are sounder than their name might initially suggest.

President of the party and Victorian Senate candidate Fiona Patten told RedHotPie this week that the party would be standing candidates in every state.

“We’re hopeful that we can score a senate seat in the upcoming election,” Ms Patten said.

If the current wave of publicity continues it’s entirely possible the Sex Party will get their wish and land a member in the senate, thus making them one of the strongest civil liberties groups in Australia.

“We would be working to see less government intervention in people’s lives… a lot of our policies are about the issues politicians are afraid to talk about,” Ms Patten said.

Although the Sex Party will be speaking out on specific issues, the fights they are weighing in on may indeed strike a chord with many members of RedHotPie and indeed open-minded Australians everywhere.

Pie members may find considerable common ground with the Sex Party on issues such as the proposed internet filter, the ban on gay marriage and the archaic media classification and censorship systems.

“For the member’s of RedHotPie (the internet filter) will limit their free speech, it will make it difficult to access sites that are of an explicit sexual nature, there is no doubt about that,” explained Ms Patten.

On the issue of pornographic classification and censorship Ms Patten was quick to point the floors in the current system.

“Basically the censorship and classification system in Australia is broken; it doesn’t work. We have different laws in every state… We would like to see the whole classification scheme thrown out of the window,” said Ms Patten.

“Let’s look at spending the government’s resources on monitoring what children see and let’s leave adult content out of the picture,” she added.

While gay marriage seems to be off the table as far as Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott are concerned, the Sex Party are putting their weight behind gay Australians and their right to marry.

“This is a priority for us, I have a sister who is gay and I can’t believe that she is discriminated against under Australian law just because of who she loves. We would certainly be pushing very hard to have all Australian laws treat everyone equally in terms of their sexuality” she said.

The Australian Sex Party seems to be the only real voice against those that would impose their conservative beliefs on our social and sexual freedoms; and as the wowsers take an increasingly disproportionate stake in our government our votes may be more important now than ever.

For more information on the party and their candidates visit www.sexparty.org.au

The party’s candidates for Higgins in Victoria (Fiona Patten) and Bradfield in NSW (Zahra Stardust) go through the policies in a way that no other pollie could!

Check it out….

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Thankfully you’ve got the RedHotPie army on your side, battling conservatism, battling prudishness and basically battling all the wowsers who stand between you and a rocking good time.

Now, we’re thrilled to report on the launch of The Australian Sex Party, another great initiative from the good people at EROS. Kicking off the party at Melbourne Sexpo with great aplomb and some serious skin, the Australian Sex peeps laid out a charter for reform that will protect our bedrooms for years to come.

Wanting to know more, RedHotPie sat down with Fiona Patten, one of the main players in the party. In an extremely informative chat, Fiona described the party’s background and the role she sees their playing in Australian politics.

(RedHotpie)

So what would say the party’s mission statement is?

(Fiona Patten)

Well I think the name is an extremely honest name, we’re not family first and it was interesting when we were initially looking at these issues, because we do come from the adult industry and our roots are there, but once we looked at the issues, there were so many areas that needed attention, gender issues, sexuality issues and certainly political sex issues such as censorship,. So our clear and concise platform is: equality of gender and sexuality and freedom of speech.

You mentioned the party’s roots; can you expand on the conception of the Australia Sex Party?

Well the party had been born out of the Eros association, which is the retail industry association so it was the issues that were then raised in that association which lead us to say, even though we have much better recognition and understanding in the adult industry, we seem to be going backwards in a lot of those issues.

I think the final one was the ISP filtering, which was going to take Australian censorship back forty years. Material that is now legal in a newsagents in Australia will become illegal online, and not just in an opt out fashion, it will be black listed, so sites like RedHotPie could be blacklisted, so it’s not something you can argue if the government is saying a site contains illegal content and that’s not right, so we need to stand up within parliament rather than outside it.

So the ISP filtering was the catalyst that sparked the party’s conception

Yeah, I think that was the final straw that got us moving toward this level of organisation, I mean we had always tried to lobby and frankly, I had met with Senator Conroy a number of times while he was in opposition and raised my concerns with the ISP filtering and he said to me, “I assure you Fiona, your industry has nothing to worry about, it’s the child porn we’re after, it’s not adult material” and now they’re in parliament, and one wonders, now that they need Senator Fielding’s vote, if that has impacted how they are approaching this.

Senator Fielding wants all porn blacklisted, but it’s not just porn, I mean euthanasia sites will be black listed, anorexia sites will be black listed. Anything that the government perceives to be bad for our community, they’re talking about black listing, and ok, we might trust this government, I’m not saying that I do but you might, but what about the next government, this is such a dangerous path that we’re travelling. Yes it’s quite the slippery slope

Very much so

So tell us about the Party launch at Sexpo Melbourne, it looked quite impressive.

Thank you, it was pretty remarkable actually, we hadn’t expected the type of response we’ve received; I think we spoke to a couple of journalists before the launch, by the time we launched, we already had our 500 members, you need 500 members to register for the electoral commission, we already had those, as of today we’ve got about 1200 members, and we just didn’t expect that. I don’t know how other parties launch but yeah

Well I doubt they have the hoopla, no sexy girls, placards, porn stars next door…

No, it was a pretty special launch, and again the fact that the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre is now not giving Sexpo dates, it just furthered our position that there is this conservative creep coming in and it doesn’t matter if it’s a labour government or a liberal government, there is this conservatism coming into politics and people are concerned that the Hillsong Church or the Paradise Church or who ever will complain, and they’re much more vocal than people in the adult industry. You try getting a petition signed for sex, then try getting one signed against it and I can tell you who gets more signatures.

But the response for us has been incredible, I think our little DVD thing we put on Youtube is up to about 67,000 views.

Yeah, I’ve noticed the party’s launch has been picked up in online news circles around the world.

Well I’ve been doing interviews all over the world, even on Facebook I’ve found places like Turkey and Italy are really interested. I put the party name into Google and I think on Friday afternoon there were 16,000 direct references to the party… all of the feedback I’m getting has been great, you get one or two saying I’m a Marxist and you’re a misogynist but most of it’s great.

Well that’s a great indicator of the part sexuality issues play in the online world.

That’s right, and I think it’s also interesting in that it’s come at the right time, you know I think people have started to be concerned, “hang on, yet another government intervention”, I mean our party comes from small business, the Eros Association comes from small to medium business, that’s who we represent and it’s not just a concern about government intervention in the bedroom, it’s concern about government intervention generally and I don’t think any party has thoroughly addressed that, so I think the internet filtering has really hit a nerve and the currency of that issue was fortuitous for us.

So where do you think this conservatism has come from and how has it been left unchecked to get to this point?

I suspect it’s actually that we’ve let politics go mad, you know, politics has become about politicians, the notion of politics is much more about keeping your seat for six years than it is about actually making some changes and making some decisions.

I speak to a lot of politicians who say “Fiona, I totally agree with you and I know that 80% of the population agrees with you, however, I hold this seat by 4% and Hillsong doesn’t agree with you and they will campaign against me, so it’s you and them and me”.

I think it has become as small and as petty as that, it’s about getting elected, doing their time in politics and then retiring on a good pension.

So it’s become a simple numbers game

That’s right, and fortunately, the numbers game is on our side, we know what the polling is like, we know with RedHotPie how popular your site is, the kind of engagement and relaxation people have with sexual issues and their own sexuality, so we know we’ve got the numbers, but the trouble is we’re the quiet ones

The Australian Sex party is out to harness the masses then?

Yes absolutely, and I think fortunately, it’s a beautiful time in that the internet hopefully is one of those harnessing devices. It’s not about walking the streets protesting saying we want sex, we can make our voice heard in that online arena, and then at the polling booths!

So who’s involved in the party?

Well we launched on Thursday so it’s still pretty new, but the Eros Association is the backing force for the Sex Party. We’re looking at running candidates in the senate in 2011, so we’ve got a bit of time in front of us to find the right people, the right candidates to really get ourselves organised.

I don’t want to sound sexist, but one of policies is that we would like to see more women in politics and we would like greater gender equality. I believe our society would be a lot healthier if the public company boards were more evenly balanced between men and women, in those decision making areas.

So at this stage our thoughts are on running as many women as we can into the senate and trying to increase the number. I mean other parties kind of pay lip service to that, but it’s still jobs for the boys and you see it all the time.

So you’ve got you long term goal, what’s happening over the next year or two?

Well we’d love to get huge recognition, I mean I’d love us to have a million people engage with us online, and to go into the next election with those sort of numbers would really make a difference. I think anyone interested in the industry is probably online aware, so that’s one goal. The other area is, I wonder whether some of the parties, particularly state government will be looking at some of our issues prior to the election.

It may be that we’ve been lobbying for law reform in the Eros association, I wonder if the Australian Sex Party might be able to achieve some of that law reform, prior to being elected. That doesn’t mean we wouldn’t run candidates, it just means we would be able to put pressure on Senator Conroy about ISP filtering, we may be able to put pressure on the state’s attorney generals about their ban on the sales of X-rated materials. we may be able to look at some of the national sex education curriculum… so that would be a great achievement, if we could get some of our policies through without even getting elected.

Well you’ve identified the pressing issues, but there will always be battles waiting to be fought, have you committed to this being a long term prospect?

We are definitely looking at this as a long term, it really has been interesting. When we first thought about this party and we were thinking is it the Sexual Freedom Party, is it the freedom of speech party is it the Australia Rights Party, you know, then we just said, no, it’s the Australian Sex Party.

You start looking at sex, which is a basic part of our lives, I mean we’re all here because of it and it is intrinsic in our lives, so yes, the party could be around for a long time because it will be about everything, like how do you treat sex and sexuality in old people’s homes, how do you sexual dysfunction, if we think that sex is part of a happy and normal relationship, what happens if you can’t have sex? Because of age, because of disability, because of some form of dysfunction, these are all issues that most governments and politicians do not want to touch. So I want to be talking to Pfizer about this, I want to be talking to disability organisations about this, and we are an ageing population so these are issues we are going to want to address.

Then you look at immigration issues and thing like people trafficking, I mean I think most people trafficking is done for other purposes than sex, but it’s the sex trafficking that always hits the media. I don’t think that’s going to change, we’re going to see greater movement of people around the world so we need to look at that. If a sex worker in Bangkok, wants to come to Australia to work in brothels legally to earn some money and buy some land back home, we need to cut out that middle man, cut out the trafficker, we need to enable her to come here and work safely, and that stops the exploitation, it may be that we can create a model that can be used in other industries, be it the construction industry or the farming industry, a safe model where workers can choose to emigrate for a brief period to work and earn good money in an area that needs workers. So yes, there are lots of issues that will take us through to the second half of the 21st century.

To get all the Sex Party action you can handle, swing by sexparty.org.au