The NSW Senate Candidate for the Sex Party, Zahra Stardust, is advocating sex education, anti-discrimination and human rights at the upcoming federal election.
The Newtown-based lesbian performer, who placed 3rd out of 22 candidates with 3.5% of the vote at the December Bradfield by-election, is an aerial artist, law graduate and feminist activist intent on spreading love around the world from upside down.
“The Sex Party is proud to present a complex range of policies to further promote sexual freedoms and protections within a framework of human rights,” said Ms Stardust
(aka Marianna Leishman) , who was concerned about ongoing violence, discrimination and injustice against minority groups.
“Our policies include legal recognition of sex and gender diversity, opposing a mandatory internet filter, laws to protect people from discrimination on the basis of occupation, decriminalising abortion, legalising the sale of X rated film-reviewss, convening a royal commission into child sex abuse in religious institutions, ensuring sexual rights and access for people with a disability, and ending the GST tax on tampons.”
Ms Stardust, who is the Australian Pole Dance Open Pairs Champion 2009 and Penthouse Pet October 2010 and whose work has taken her to Amsterdam, Tokyo and Stockholm, said that the latest Eros Association polls reveal that 3/4 of people in NSW desire a national comprehensive sex education curriculum, and just under 3/4 oppose the state´s ban on the sale of legal X
rated material.
“That an adult shop owner went to jail for selling X rated films last month is symptomatic of a crack down on sexual freedoms in NSW” said Ms Stardust, who enjoys using the stage as a space to promoting alternative and autonomous portrayals of women’s multiplicity and diversity.
The Sex Party, who recently launched their drug policy in Sydney’s Kings Cross, are also advocates of decriminalising euthanasia, paid parental leave, and abolishing sexual slavery through the introduction of immigration policies that allow migrant sex workers to work legally in Australia.
The law graduate, an former employee of top tier firm Allens Arthur Robinson, has also interned with the United Nations Population Fund in Eritrea on sexual and reproductive health programs, with UNIFEM Australia on gender, development and discrimination, with the Kimberley Land Council in the area of Native Title, and with Wirringa Baiya Aboriginal Women’s Legal Centre with victims of sexual assault and domestic violence.
Stardust, who claims Australians are “frustrated at the rapidly increasing conservatism in politics”, has previously had her pink bits photographed for ABC television in a protest of the airbrushing of women’s labias in men’s magazines, lent her voice to a short film-reviews featuring animated vaginas giving their perspectives on sex, appeared in Cosmo features on pornography and body image, and spoken out against the censorship of female ejaculation in adult films on national radio.
