Robbie Swan and Fiona Patten outside Parliament House. The two have just written a book about the sex industry in Canberra. Photo: Wilkinson Publishing.
There was always going to be a book in it. Those heady Canberra days when the nation’s capital was more in the news because of sex rather than politics.
And who better to tell such a story than the people who lived it – magazine editor and sex industry lobbyist Robbie Swan and his partner Fiona Patten, the first former sex worker to be elected to a parliament anywhere in the world, and founders of the Australian Sex Party.
Their book, A funny thing happened on the way to the Sex Party has just been released. It’s a series of stories about how a young Canberra grew up and the people who grew up with it – both good and bad.
“Canberra was such a different place then as it is now,” Robbie Swan said.
“It’s a place that went through many stages, some of those never to be created again, which is probably a good thing.
“I didn’t want to write a chronology of Canberra, I just picked stories that happened, all the stories that led to the formation of the Australian Sex Party.”
It’s a record, he says, of an often misunderstood industry.
The stories tell of a time in Canberra’s history like no other. Like the time a senior conservative politician and his wife were filmed visiting a Fyshwick sex shop buying a collection of porn videos. A Commonwealth car was also filmed outside waiting for them.
Back then, Robbie said, the hypocrisy was hard to stomach: “It hit you really hard when you saw them on TV at night, seeing them so straight-laced when you had seen them shopping at Fantasy Lane. They were people after some serious kink, and they got it.”
The politician in question never admitted to the incident, nor did Robbie name him. Ironically, another politician ended up dobbing himself in for the Fantasy Lane visit, but said he only bought the videos for “research”.
Fyshwick was the centre of the sex industry from the 1980s onwards, Robbie writes in the book. Not only did the sex shops and brothels thrive, but some surprising ancillary industries, like Australia Post.
Robbie says the porn industry became the major client of its local courier service. The manager at the time was so impressed that he ended up leaving Australia Post and buying a sex shop.
Robbie says the sex industry today is a far cry from its heyday when pornography was filmed, not videotaped. Today, he says, it is spread online by anonymous keyboard warriors or controlled by crime syndicates.
A funny thing happened on the way to the Sex Party is a new book by Canberra’s Robbie Swan and Fiona Patten. Photo: Wilkinson Publishing.
“The film industry we lobbied for had dialogue, actors who could act. Some of those early films are considered classics today.
“I don’t like what is out there now. In a 10-year period, we went from something that was morally OK to something I wouldn’t touch with a barge pole, stuff that is just misogynist violence.”
These days, Robbie lives on a property near the Brindabella Mountains, although living a quieter life, he is already on to his next book.
“I’m never happier than when I’m in the mountains,” he said.
“My family is originally from Canberra and Queanbeyan, so I guess I haven’t moved too far.”
His next book is about Canberra in the late 60s and early 70s, about the Vietnam moratorium.
“For me, that was the time of Canberra’s enlightenment when Gough was elected.”
A funny thing happened on the way to the Sex Party is published by Wilkinson Publishing.
