Fiona Patten isn’t used to not getting her way. It’s been two weeks since the Victorian government voted down her bill to cut funding to religious public hospitals that refuse to offer abortion and euthanasia and it’s clear she’s not over it.
“If I’m honest, it’s probably been one of the more disappointing campaigns that we’ve run,” she says, “but I don’t think it was all our fault.”
The founder of Victoria’s Reason party, formerly the Australian Sex Party, blames a recent cabinet reshuffle for her failure to secure a deal. She also blames the timing. “It’s too close to the end of the term … Labor like to play it safe before an election. We’re not going to stop pursuing it though.”
The abortion bill is unique, as it was the first Patten brought to a vote this term.
Her usual modus operandi is to secure a commitment from the government – such as an inquiry or trial – prior to a vote. Some of the Andrews government’s most progressive policies began this way: the nation’s first voluntary assisted dying scheme, safe access zones around abortion clinics, a safe injecting room in North Richmond, a spent convictions scheme and the decriminalisation of sex work all began as private member’s bills, introduced to parliament by Patten.
It’s an impressive list of reforms achieved as a sole operator in the eight years since she was first elected to parliament. No wonder she’s gained a reputation for hard work.
“I suspect we have put up more private member’s bills than just about anyone,” she says.
“But it’s campaigning 101. It’s putting forward a solution to a problem. I get two shots in parliament each year [to introduce a bill] and lead a debate, I don’t waste them.”
‘Satan’s Little Helper’
Patten was born in Canberra in 1964 but spent much of her childhood travelling between the UK and the US, as her father was a naval commander. She says her family wasn’t particularly religious but they attended church as a way to meet people wherever they were posted.
“My parents sure loved sending me and my siblings to Sunday school. I think they quite enjoyed their Sundays at home without us,” she says with a wink.
The family returned to Australia in 1978 where, in an oft-repeated story, she began having a recurring dream in which God told her to become a nun.
“It’s very interesting, reflecting back as an atheist, that I would have these dreams where I would try to negotiate with God. I’d tell him, ‘well, if you just let me have some fun first, then I’ll do it’,” she says.
Patten never kept her end of the bargain. Instead, she became “Satan’s Little Helper”, as she was dubbed by her conservative crossbench colleague, the former Liberal party MP Bernie Finn. Her team immediately got stickers using the moniker.
Patten began her political career as a lobbyist 30 years ago, founding the Eros Association with her partner, Robbie Swan, to campaign on behalf of the sex industry.
“I think we see our work here, still, as being a lobbyist. Slowly nudging the government towards things,” she says.
Prior to Eros, she worked as an independent fashion designer with her own brand called Body Politics. She says her best clients were sex workers, which led her to become an advocate for them and the decriminalisation of their industry.
She would visit Canberra brothels weekly, providing sex workers with condoms and sexual education material, and was involved with one of the first needle exchange programs in the capital during the HIV and AIDs epidemic in the late 1980s.
In her inaugural speech to parliament, Patten revealed that, for a short time during this period, she “jumped the counter, as they say in the industry”.
“Indeed I may be the first former sex worker to be elected to a parliament anywhere in this country, although no doubt the clients of sex workers have been elected in much greater numbers before me,” she said.
Georgie Purcell, the chief of staff to Animal Justice MP Andy Meddick, says Patten’s openness about her time as a sex worker helped others find the confidence to work in politics.
“I briefly worked in adult entertainment, or sex work, and for a long time I thought having that in my past, that I couldn’t have a public profile without having some sort of shame around it. But when Fiona first came onto the scene, it made me think perhaps it could be different,” Purcell says.
“She’s inspired a lot of people to own their pasts and to control their own stories and to know that the things that they’ve done throughout their life aren’t to be ashamed of.”
David and Goliath
Much of Eros’ work had Patten facing off against religious institutions. She describes the Catholic church as their “biggest and most powerful opponent”.
“I’ll never forget this one conversation I had with an MP out the back of Victoria’s parliament. It was the late 1990s and I was no doubt talking to him about censorship, and he stops me, points to St Patrick’s Cathedral, and says, ‘That’s where I get my advice from,’” Patten says.
“The church literally looms on this place. They have direct entry into almost every minister’s office, the premier’s office.”
Patten takes credit for the establishment of the Australian Christian Lobby, which occurred about the time Eros produced a booklet entitled Hypocrites which listed the successful prosecutions for child sexual assault cases in Australia.
“There were none from the adult industry but hundreds and hundreds from the churches and religious institutions,” she says.
“So we sent this book to every member of parliament, state and federal, and every local government councillor, we sent it to the church. We had someone send it back to us, torn into tiny pieces, like confetti. It would’ve taken them hours.”
It was, she says, the first time she received death threats in her career.
Patten and Swan went on to found the Australian Sex Party in 2009 in response to a proposal by Labor’s then communications minister, Stephen Conroy, to set up an ISP-based internet filter intended to block child exploitation material that she says would have also censored legal pornography and websites featuring information about drug use and euthanasia.
She first ran for parliament at a 2009 byelection, then went on to contest several state and federal elections, before securing a seat in the Northern Metropolitan region in Victoria’s upper house in 2014. The Sex Party changed its name to Reason Victoria before the 2018 poll, in a bid to appeal to a broader base.
Patten’s fellow crossbencher, Transport Matters MP Rod Barton, describes her as the “hardest working person in the parliament”. In this term alone, he says Patten sat on three parliamentary committees which have released 12 reports.
“She’s smart. She’s very progressive and I think she was a little surprised that I actually agreed with her on a lot of the things she’s campaigned for,” the former taxi driver says.
The duo, however, were at ideological odds when she pushed the government to lift restrictions on ride-sharing services such as Uber. (This, too, started as one of Patten’s private member’s bills).
“I obviously came into this place because the government went ahead with that and deregulated the industry. It ruined families’ lives,” Barton says. “But that’s on the government – not Fiona – for failing to compensate taxi licence-holders.”
Patten has also developed a reputation for commonly voting with the government, including to extend the state of emergency during the pandemic and then on pandemic-specific legislation. According to an analysis by the Age, between November 2018 and November 2021, Patten voted with the government 74.3% of the time – the second-most of any upper house crossbencher, behind only Meddick.
Patten says the criticism isn’t warranted. She stands by every decision she’s made in the chamber.
“I vote against the government on stupid law and order [bills], some of their environmental ones. But there’s no point working with the opposition to get stuff done, they don’t have the chequebook. They also don’t have the lower house,” she says.
Protective of her legacy
Patten worries the recent abortion bill’s defeat is a sign of what’s to come following the November election. She’s concerned a new religious bloc in the Liberal party, combined with a larger group of Labor MPs from the traditionally conservative shop workers’ union and a crossbench possibly dominated by right-wing micro-parties, could undo all her previous work.
Following the election, the parliament will be reviewing the operation of the state’s voluntary assisted dying laws. Patten says the once nation-leading legislation now “lags behind” other states and should be improved, although some MPs “on both sides” of the chamber “will try to make it more difficult to access”.
“We also shouldn’t assume that our abortion laws will never change,” she says, noting the US supreme court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade.
If reelected, Patten will reintroduce her abortion bill next term. She also wants to “be there” to ensure the government follows through on other commitments it’s made to her, including to scrap the Lord’s Prayer in parliament.
She knows the election will be a tough fight. In 2018, she waited two weeks after polling day to learn if she would retain her seat.
“I know there are some parties whose goal will be to ensure that I’m not reelected, and some who will work together to try and achieve just that,” she says. “I’ve struggled to get elected the last two elections and I will struggle to get elected in the third.”
If successful, Patten is excited by the prospect of ‘teal’ candidates joining the state parliament, describing herself as the first – she’s used the colour in campaign material since 2018.
“I’m really buoyed seeing people who aren’t in it for the power,” she says. “I’ve always said, right from the start, I don’t want to be the premier. I want to be there to affect change.”
