The Politics of Sex: Prostitution and Pronography in Australia since 1945

Barbara Sullivan, The Politics of Sex: Prostitution and Pornography in Australia since 1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 280 pp., $29.95, ISBN: 0 521 55630 9.

This is a fascinating and thoroughly useful book. It provides a detailed guide to the growth of the sex industries in Australia since 1945, as is suggested by the title, but also offers a means to contextualise the development of these industries. The focus of the book is upon how Australian governments have conceptualised prostitution and pornography, showing how Australian governments have both responded and contributed to the expansion and diversification of such industries. What is interesting here is the way in which public, in particular, parliamentary conceptualising of prostitution and pornography moves over time from prohibition to the question of more or...