page_title: Fiona Patten
section_title: Australian Sex Party (2009–2017)
hierarchical_section_title: Fiona Patten / Political career, 1992–present / Australian Sex Party (2009–2017)
caption_attribution_description: English: Fiona Patten campaigning during the 2009 Higgins by-election.
context_page_description: Fiona Heather Patten is an Australian politician. She is the leader of the Reason Party and has a seat in the Victorian Legislative Council, representing the Northern Metropolitan Region.
  Patten established the Australian Sex Party in 2009 to focus on personal freedoms after deep frustration with stagnation on censorship, freedom, marriage equality and drug law reform. On 22 August 2017, it was announced that the Australian Sex Party would be changing its name to the Reason Party.
  Before entering politics, Patten was the CEO of Australia's national adult industry association, Eros Association. She championed sexual rights and health movements for more than 20 years, particularly on HIV/AIDS, after initially starting out as a small businesses owner with her own fashion label.
context_section_description: In 2009, Patten founded the Australian Sex Party, which began by focusing on law reform for the sex industry, but soon "broadened [its] platform to include supporting voluntary euthanasia, same-sex marriage, decriminalising cannabis for personal use, greater transparency in government through freedom of information laws, and increasing people’s right to privacy."
  Patten contested the seat of Higgins in Victoria at the 2009 by-election. She received over 3 percent of the vote, placing her 4th out of 10 candidates. Her campaign was based on opposing Greens Victoria candidate Clive Hamilton's proposal for an ISP-level Internet filter which would block access to websites containing RC-rated content—that is, legal material which is banned from sale, trade or public exhibition due to its extreme nature.
  Patten publicly criticized the proposal. She appeared in the Four Corners episode "Access Denied" arguing that it would include blocking access to adult films such as Pirates—refused classification because of a technicality—that do not depict sexual violence, are extremely popular overseas and are available for download on dozens of websites.
  The party contested all states and territories, except for Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory, in the Senate and six of 150 House of Representatives seats at the 2010 federal election. The party won 2.04 percent of the national Senate vote, over 250,000 first preferences. After the major parties and the Greens, the Sex Party during the vote count were "neck and neck" with the Family First Party for the fourth place in the national Senate vote. The party "outpolled several more prominent minor parties and came within about 10,000 votes of Family First for the Senate in Victoria". After the party's first federal election contest, Patten claimed that the Sex Party was "now the major minor party in Australian politics":
  We've polled better than the Greens did in their first federal election and believe that our vision of Australia as the most socially progressive country in the world is equal to the Greens environmental messages of 20 years ago.
  While the Sex Party did not win any seats, their preferences were substantially beneficial to the Greens who won a Senate seat in every state for the first time.
  Patten contested the Northern Metropolitan Region in the Victorian Legislative Council at the 2010 Victorian state election.
  Patten contested the 2012 Melbourne state by-election, coming third out of 16 candidates, receiving 6.6 percent of the vote, in the absence of a Liberal Party candidate. She says the party preferenced Labor ahead of the Greens due to the "anti-sex feminist movement" within the Greens, but that future preferences may change again.
  Patten was again a Sex Party candidate for a senate seat in Victoria at the 2013 federal election.
  Patten successfully contested the Northern Metropolitan Region in the Victorian Legislative Council during the 2014 Victorian state election becoming the first candidate for the Australian Sex Party to be elected to parliament.
caption: Patten in 2009
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