ABSTRACT
There has been a rapid expansion of the availability and consumption of commercial sexual services in Australia since the 1970s. The traditional organisation of prostitution - massage parlour and street prostitution - has been extended to include a range of other services: escort agencies, solo prostitutes trading from residential premises, fantasy telephone calls, and sex tours to Thailand and the Philippines where child prostitution is rampant. In addition to the proliferation of prostitution services there has been an escalation in the sale, production and marketing of pornographic material in Australia. These diverse prostitution and pornography services have been lumped together and deposited under the catch-all phrase of the 'sex industry'. This discursive trend has been woven into popular culture, parliamentary discourse, government reports and public policy since the 1980s, its commonplace usage representing a distinct shift in the degree of community tolerance relating to sexual transactions.
