Australian politics heats up with 'sex party'

Party says it is devoted to sex and anti-censorship

SYDNEY (AlArabiya.net, Agencies)

National politics in Australia is likely to heat up with a new political party aimed at countering 'stiff politicians' that is entirely devoted to sex to fulfill Australia's sexual needs.

The Australian Sex Party, which will be launched at the Melbourne Sexpo on Thursday, say that politics has become too stuffy and conservative Down Under and has said it is serious about sex.

The party sees itself as a political response to the sexual needs of Australians in the face of moral campaigners and prudish politicians.

Internet filter

Fiona Patten, founder

The brains behind the Party, Fiona Patten, said the party has a real chance at seats in parliament and added they would seek to include a national sex education curriculum, reduce censorship, abolishing the Federal Government's proposed internet filter and supporting gay marriage.

Patten,who is head of the national adult retail and entertainment lobby group the Eros Association, said the idea for the party was triggered by the government's decision to place a mandatory filter on the Internet.

Under the plan, designed to shield children from online porn and violence, Internet service providers will have to filter out pornography and other material deemed inappropriate in their feeds to houses and schools.

Patten was scathing of the move, which she said would damage the porn industry, arguing that material that was deemed acceptable 20 years ago would now be banned.

"This filter actually blacklists any adult site so it means that material which is absolutely legal for an adult to buy in a news agency in Australia, they will be prohibited from viewing it online," Patten told AFP on Monday.

To counter what she termed the conservative, Christian politicians behind such legislation in Australia, Patten said the industry had determined: "If we can't beat them, join them."

"We want to be in there putting the position which I think is probably (that held by) the majority of Australians, that, yes, by all means protect children, but do not in that way reduce the Internet to a G-rated Internet," she said.

"Just crazy"

Party convenor

Commenting on a recent case where a company was forced to remove billboard ads for a medication promising "longer lasting sex" because of a large number of complaints, she said an "absolute fear of the word sex" had developed.

"And it's just crazy," Patten said. "Sex is as natural to us as food. It's a necessary part of our lives." And politics, she might add.

Meanwhile, in an unrelated but equally sexual story, an Australian holiday resort said it will hold a month-long nude "anything goes" party to combat economic downturn and cheer people up.

"Tough economic times call for stiff measures," Tony Fox, the owner of the White Cockatoo resort in Mossman, in tropical Queensland state, told the Courier-Mail newspaper.