Caroline Norma, “The Australian Sexual Import-Export Trade”

Culturally, historically, racially, and economically, Australia has little in common with the countries of its region. It’s not Asian, and has no revolutionary, colonised, or battleground past. Even adjusted for cost-of-living differences, the citizens of Thailand, the Philippines, and Indonesia share in rates of national wealth less than 40% that of Australians. They have rich cultures, religions, and languages, but these are shared almost not at all by Australia.

They are nonetheless the target of a uniquely Australian import-export trade. This trade imports Asian women for male citizens and, in turn, exports its misogynistic men to Asia who sexually exploit and kill. Australia exports more than coal and iron ore to Asia: both its men and their unique brand of misogyny generate a sexual trade in the region.

In this so-called ‘Asia-Pacific region’, Australia is unique for accepting prostitution and tolerating the sex industry. Even the government of Thailand doesn’t roll out the legal welcome mat to pimps like Australia does, and no country in Asia treats sex-buyers as regular market-based consumers. Only in Australia is prostitution optimistically called ‘sex work’ and defended by politicians as a reasonable job for women. Asian countries don’t house trafficked Australian women in their sex industries, but Australian brothels are not only filled with imported Thai and Chinese women they advertise themselves as ‘Asian massage parlours’.

For Australian sex tourists, Thailand, the Philippines, and Indonesia are popular destinations, and some of these men turn into long-term residents of these countries to escape high costs of living. They live in Asia as Australian exports and spend their money on alcohol, drugs, prostitution, and leisure activities. They also sometimes invest in local bars and brothels. In 2024, two Australians were arrested for running brothels in Indonesia, and Australian-run bars in the former American military towns of the Philippines are filled with local young women waiting for customers.

Australian men are frequent customers of the bars and brothels of Asia, and last month one of them confessed to having killed a 17-year-old girl he bought for prostitution in Thailand. He had been living in the tourist town Pattaya for nine months, but had been travelling to the country for years. This was despite having criminal convictions in Australia, and a firearms license revoked. He was arrested at the airport attempting to flee the country covered in scratch marks. His victim was found dead with broken teeth in a suitcase he had discarded on the side of a road. He had kept her body in his apartment bathroom all day while he went out shopping, and dumped it the next night. When questioned by police at the airport, he delivered an on-camera apology to his victim’s parents. In this meaningless diatribe, he used broken English—the kind that Australian men use in Asia to pretend they’ve learnt the local language. While speaking like an imbecile, the 45-year-old nonetheless managed to blame his victim for her own murder by insinuating she asked for too much money:

I feel bad for what happened to your daughter. It was out of my control. I know you’ll be very sad, upset. Same same me. It shouldn’t happen. And I hope you’re ok. And please tell other girls to be not…just to be careful. I know you’re not but I hope.

Australians take little responsibility for this heinous crime committed by one of their fellow citizens in Asia because they’re used to it. Asian women imported into Australia’s sex industry are murdered not uncommonly: at least two in 2022 and two in 2024 (one in Perth) are reported in the media. Women and girls are trafficked from Asia into Australia’s sex industry to be pimped around the country, and Australian men buy their sexual abuse for internet streaming.

Australia is less part of Asia than a trade predator upon it. Its male citizens pimp, prostitute, and murder its women and children, both within their own country and outside of it. Their brand of misogyny is exported to Asia in the form of violent sex tourism and sex industry investment, and import demand is met by the trafficking of Asian women, and live pornography streaming of Asian children.

But the misogyny they peddle exists only as long as this sexual export-import trade can continue in Asia. Australian women find jobs, incomes, and lives away from their countrymen only while this misogyny has an Asian outlet. To confront it, we must first plug its Asian leak. Then, to keep Australian women safe from men who would stuff them into suitcases, we must make criminal the buying of women for prostitution both at home and abroad. Only once we shut down the sex trade at home can we free Asia from the misogyny of Australian men.