Thank you, Ms Jeffreys.
And while I do think Craig Thompson showed himself to be a bit of a clown, who sitting with him in that house of horrors we call the Federal Parliament isn't.
House of horrors vs whore house - At least the latter is honest about what it's selling.
And in the former? Does anyone really think they are not for sale?

Elena Jeffreys ponders why her Op Eds are rejected. It's simple. Her organisation Scarlet Alliance reminds me of the three wise monkeys - see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. An organisation that purports to represent sex workers yet can't identify and acknowledge problems in the industry is one without merit. In NSW where illegal brothels outnumber the legal ones by around 4 to 1, at least 503 grubby prostitutes supply oral sex without a condom (http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/sydney-news/more-than-500-sydney-prostitutes-are-offering-unprotected-sex-to-clients-in-brothels/story-e6freuzi-1226240239728), criminals being allowed to own brothels as no probity checks are done by the NSW Government as well as many establishments being nothing more than havens for tax and welfare fraudsters, peddlers of unsafe sex practices and sex slaves.

But if you listen to the spin from Scarlet Alliance none of this is happening. Everything is just fine with the industry - just leave us alone - we don't need regulation. The industry needs a big cleanout to improve the industry and working conditions of sex workers. Scarlet Alliance should support stronger regulation. Get with the program Ms Jeffreys!

Until Ms Jeffreys and Scarlet Allaince become a bit more fair dinkum then people and media groups will not take them seriously.

Ummm... Are you suggesting that the dominant media, the Murdoch Press, were not even less constrained?

It seems to me that the majority of so-called "left-wing" journalists are nothing more than the remnants of the Small-l Liberals. Only a relative few in the mainstream media meet my criteria for true lefties. Being a Labor staffer doesn't count these days either.

I grew up with family friends being active members of the Communist Party and I can assure you they did not have two heads. They came to their political position during the 1930's in the context of the Spanish Civil War and the rise of Fascism - surely worthy of opposition don't you think?

These days we only see sloganeering masquerading as opinion, particularly in the Murdoch Press. If Gina Rhinehart has her way, perhaps this is the future for Fairfax.

However, that said, I do take your point about the stupidity of the debate about Craig Thompson and the use of sex workers. It does not alter the fact that his abuse of Union funds was totally inappropriate and represents a general disregard for what HSU members would have a right to expect of their leaders.

Elena,

The reason that there was so much focus on Thomson is not the salacious details of his encounters, but rather that this was paid for by the lowest paid member of the medical community. That this crook rorted hundreds of thousands and was a critical member of parliament also did not help.

Other posters have noted problems with Jeffreys' article but in essense she has confused the stories slamming Thomson's use of sex workers with an attack on sex workers themselves. I never read it that way, nor has anyone else.

The problem was never Thomson's use of sex workers as such, but the fact that he paid for their services with union funds. It was not all that he did with union funds, but it was the most obvious breeach so its the one that gets reported first. Nothing has been said about the sex workers themselves, and there has been no moral comment attached to any of the stories that I have seen to date.

Jeffreys then compounds her error by putting all the blame for these imagined sins on Fairfax. In fact, every media outlet in the country has been following this story. The Sydney Morning Herald broke the story originally, as I understand it, but long before Jeffreys started paying attention.

Then there are the wild figures.. the rate of male use of sex workers may be right for all I know, but one million Australians are or have been sex workers? Really? What criteria - what definitions - are being use to get that figure..

I hope the PhD is better than this..

Getting his rocks off or listening to an aria, he is a lowlife who took from the poor to give to himself. He illicitly bought an election by use of “his” credit card and the Union knew; there is no way such cash flows would not have been felt. The entire patronage based Labor born-to-rule mentality presumably justified it all, we throw a few crumbs to the left mendicants, feel good and back to the trough.

That they sit in the same room as him is their damnation and confirmation that his Party is the “scum of the middle class”.