Eurydice Aroney

In January last year, Penrith hit 47.3 degrees Celsius and was – for a matter of hours – the hottest place on the planet. Average temperatures are increasing across the country, but Western-Central Sydney is defying normal trends and getting hotter faster. Samantha Webb, a Chatswood resident who has worked in Parramatta for the past three years, says that the temperature change from Sydney’s west to other parts of the city is not only noticeable, but substantial.

Although sex workers around the world lobby for decriminalisation, sex work law remains controversial. This article is part of a series exploring sex work and regulatory reform.

When we occupy the churches, You who threatened us with hell, we have come to eat at your table, – Protest song penned by sex workers who occupied French churches during an eight-day strike in 1975. It is a little-known fact that New South Wales was the first government in the world to remove all prostitution laws from the criminal law books in 1995. Since then, NSW and New Zealand remain the only two places in the world to have maintained a fully decriminalised sex industry.