Patten established the Australian Sex Party in 2009 to focus on personal freedoms after deep frustration with stagnation on censorship, freedom, marriage equality and drug law reform. On 22 August 2017, it was announced that the Australian Sex Party would be changing its name to the Reason Party.[1][2][3]
Before entering politics, Patten was the CEO of Australia's national adult industry association, Eros Association. She championed sexual rights and health movements for more than 20 years, particularly on HIV/AIDS, after initially starting out as a small business owner with her own fashion label.
During her time as a Victorian MP, Patten has been credited for playing pivotal roles in achieving social reforms in Victoria, with examples including the passage of Victoria's assisted dying legislation, the trial of a medically supervised drug injecting room in Richmond, relaxing laws for ride-share companies such as Uber and establishing buffer zones for abortion clinics to keep protesters away from patients and staff.[4][5]
According to The Age, between November 2018 and November 2021, Patten voted with the Andrews Government's position 74.3% of the time, the second-most of any Legislative Council crossbencher, behind only Andy Meddick of the Animal Justice Party.[6]
In March 2024, Patten announced that she was deregistering Reason Australia.[7]
Patten was born in Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, the daughter of Colin Richard Lloyd "Rick" Patten, an Australian naval officer, and his wife Anne, a Scottish-born public servant who worked for a government-owned telecommunications company.[1]
Rick and Anne Patten had met in Scotland, where the former had been posted, and after her birth Patten spent parts of her childhood in the United Kingdom and the United States, in concert with her father's postings. Patten has a younger sister and a younger brother.
Patten received her primary education overseas. She excelled in sport and took particular interest in swimming. Upon returning to Australia with her family in 1978, Patten attended Hawker College in Canberra where she studied Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Industrial Arts, Technical Drawing, Landscape Design and Environmental Studies. She went on to study Landscape Architecture and Industrial Design at the University of Canberra. She later graduated with qualifications in fashion design and started her own fashion label, Body Politics. The first boutique was opened in Yarralumla in the late 1980s, where she sold her own fashion creations as well as the designs of colleagues in Sydney. During the early 1990s recession in Australia, interest in Patten's expensive collection was received largely from workers in the sex industry.[2][3]
Business career, 1988–2014
Body Politics
Patten started her career with her company Body Politics. With her large clientele of sex workers, Patten became interested in sex workers' rights, eventually joining Workers in Sex Employment (WISE), a lobbying group, to inform at-risk members of the population about the emerging threat of HIV/AIDS. Patten was employed as an outreach speaker and would once a week visit brothels to teach the women about safe sex.[4][5]
From 1990 to 1992, Patten was a sex worker herself. Her initial encounter began at Tiffany's Palace in Canberra, where she had intercourse with a client when another worker was unavailable.[6]
I remember it all very clearly and thinking afterwards: how easy was that? It was just so easy. There was this nice man in his early 30s, we had a spa and sex and that was that – Fiona Patten, article by Sally Patten for the Australian Financial Review, December 2014[7]
Patten eventually lost interest in her work, which had also interfered with her social and professional life. After working as a female escort in Cairns, Queensland, Patten quit sex work in 1992 and continued in sex education.[8]
Eros Association
In 1992, Patten and her partner, Robbie Swan, established the Eros Association, a peak body for the adult industry.[10][9][10]
The company extended its interests into publications, public relations, business, and political advocacy. Eros was heavily involved in the editing and publication of a political humour and satire magazine entitled Matilda, an adult magazine entitled Ecstacy, and launched their own "sex and politics" themed magazine Eros.[11]
In 2001, the company established the first National Museum of Erotica, dedicated to the history of erotica and the preservation of erotic art, literature, film and photography. The museum was unveiled by Chief Minister Kate Carnell. While the physical presence of the museum was closed in 2002, the collection remained preserved and continued to grow, with over 400 individual pieces catalogued by 2005, and instead maintained a virtual presence on the internet. [13]
Patten scaled down her interests in the company in 2000 to pursue other interests in advocacy. She returned in 2006 and left again in 2014 when she was elected to the Victorian Parliament.
National Museum of Erotica
The National Museum of Erotica was opened in Canberra in 2001, dedicated to the history of erotica and the preservation of erotic art, literature, film and photography. The museum was unveiled by Chief Minister Kate Carnell and was the first establishment of its kind in Australia.[14]
The National Museum of Erotica collected works from the likes of Brett Whiteley, Charles Blackman, Salvatore Zofrea, Lesbia Thorpe, Richard Larter, Mario Azzopardi, and more historically Mihály Zichy. Patten expressed that the collection and archiving of erotic, pornographic and sexual art and artefacts is fundamentally different from the collection of non-sexual material because the former was perceived as a rapidly diminishing resource in the world.[15]
The museum housed erotic artistic works, including paintings, pictures, pin-up, illustrated books, comic strips and films, from the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Hungary, Russia and Australia.[16]
The museum also displayed a collection of sex toys, including dildos, vibrators and other mechanical devices dating back to the late 1800s.[17]
The museum was closed in 2002, but the collection remained preserved and continued to grow, with over 400 individual pieces catalogued by 2005. The museum now maintains an internet archive.[18]
In 2009, Patten founded the Australian Sex Party, which began by focusing on law reform for the sex industry, but soon "broadened [its] platform to include supporting voluntary euthanasia, same-sex marriage, decriminalising cannabis for personal use, greater transparency in government through freedom of information laws, and increasing people’s right to privacy."[13] Patten later advocated for legalising cannabis rather than decriminalisation.[14]
Patten contested the seat of Higgins in Victoria at the 2009 by-election. She received over 3 per cent of the vote, placing her 4th out of 10 candidates. Her campaign was based on opposing Greens Victoria candidate Clive Hamilton's proposal for an ISP-level Internet filter which would block access to websites containing RC-rated content—that is, legal material which is banned from sale, trade or public exhibition due to its extreme nature.[citation needed]
Patten publicly criticised the proposal. She appeared in the Four Corners episode "Access Denied" arguing that it would include blocking access to adult films such as Pirates—refused classification because of a technicality—that do not depict sexual violence, are extremely popular overseas and are available for download on dozens of websites.[15]
The party contested all states and territories, except for Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory, in the Senate and six of 150 House of Representatives seats at the 2010 federal election. The party won 2.04 per cent of the national Senate vote, over 250,000 first preferences.[16] After the major parties and the 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.[17] The party "outpolled several more prominent minor parties and came within about 10,000 votes of Family First for the Senate in Victoria".[18] After the party's first federal election contest, Patten claimed that the Sex Party was "now the major minor party in Australian politics":
We've polled better than the Greens did in their first federal election and believe that our vision of Australia as the most socially progressive country in the world is equal to the Greens environmental messages of 20 years ago.[19]
While the Sex Party did not win any seats, their preferences were substantially beneficial to the Greens who won a Senate seat in every state for the first time.[20][21]
Patten contested the 2012 Melbourne state by-election, coming third out of 16 candidates, receiving 6.6 per cent of the vote, in the absence of a Liberal Party candidate. She says the party preferenced Labor ahead of the Greens due to the "anti-sex feminist movement" within the Greens,[23][24] but that future preferences may change again.[25]
On 22 August 2017, there were reports that the Australian Sex Party would be changing its name and becoming the Reason Party.[1][2][3] This was later confirmed, and the Reason Party registered for federal elections in Australia in May 2018, and was confirmed as "Reason Australia" on 30 August 2018.
In December 2018, Patten put forward a legislative bill to legalise cannabis in the state of Victoria.[27]
In February 2022, the state of Victoria decriminalised sex work. The bill passed to repeal offences and criminal penalties for consensual sex work between adults. "The Sex Work Decriminalisation Act 2021 will partially abolish street-based sex work offences and associated public health offences, remove the licensing system and move to regulate the industry through existing agencies." Patten has been referenced as having led Victoria's review into decriminalising the industry and been fighting for reforms for 40 years.[28]
In February 2022, Patten introduced a bill to the Victorian upper house to decriminalise all drugs. Under the proposal police would issue a compulsory notice and referral of drug education or treatment to people found to have used or possessed an illicit drug. Those who comply with the notice will not be found guilty or receive a criminal record. "Patrick Lawrence, chief executive of addiction, mental health and legal services hub First Step, said the bill would ensure those struggling with addiction, who were often targeted by Victoria's drug laws, received help rather than condemnation."[29][30]
Patten at a Melbourne rally for International Peace Day in September 2022, calling for an end to militarisation and for Julian Assange's freedom
On 20 September 2022, she revealed that she has cancer.[31]
In March 2024, Patten announced that Reason was to be dissolved and that she had no plans for a political comeback in the 2026 Victorian state election.[7]
Patten's book Sex, Drugs and the Electoral Roll was published in 2018.[33][34][35] It took her two years to write.[36]
Bibliography
Sex, Drugs and the Electoral Roll: My unlikely journey from sex worker to Member of Parliament (Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin, ISBN9781925575132, published in 2018)
Awards
Patten was awarded the 2020 Australian Humanist of the Year at the Wayback Machine (archived 22 September 2021) for her achievements in leading debate and securing legislation on many issues of concern to humanists, particularly end of life, abortion safety, sexual health and drugs of addiction.[37]
^ ab"Lead Candidate Announcement". legalisecannabis.org.au. Legalise Cannabis Australia. Archived from the original on 20 September 2024. Retrieved 5 September 2024.
^Moriarty, Liane; Chan, Gabrielle; Williams, Robyn; Kneen, Krissy; Mares, Peter; King, Madonna; David, Sornig; Patten, Fiona; Kurmelovs, Royce; Morton, Rick (24 September 2018). "Liane Moriarty, Fiona Patten, Krissy Kneen: books to read in October". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 20 September 2024. Retrieved 28 March 2020.
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