Fiona Heather Patten born May is an Australian politician. She was the leader of Reason Australia also known as the Reason Party and was a member of the Victorian Legislative Council between and , representing the Northern Metropolitan Region , until she lost her seat at the state election.
Patten established the Australian Sex Party in to focus on personal freedoms after deep frustration with stagnation on censorship, freedom, marriage equality and drug law reform. During her time as a Victorian MP, Patten has been credited for playing pivotal roles in achieving social reforms in Victoria , with examples including the passage of Victoria's assisted dying legislation , the trial of a medically supervised drug injecting room in Richmond , relaxing laws for ride-share companies such as Uber and establishing buffer zones for abortion clinics to keep protesters away from patients and staff.
In March , Patten announced that she was deregistering Reason Australia. Patten was born in Canberra , Australian Capital Territory, the daughter of Colin Richard Lloyd "Rick" Patten, an Australian naval officer, and his wife Anne, a Scottish-born public servant who worked for a government-owned telecommunications company. Rick and Anne Patten had met in Scotland , where the former had been posted, and after her birth Patten spent parts of her childhood in the United Kingdom and the United States, in concert with her father's postings.
Patten has a younger sister and a younger brother. Patten received her primary education overseas. She excelled in sport and took particular interest in swimming. She later graduated with qualifications in fashion design and started her own fashion label, Body Politics. The first boutique was opened in Yarralumla in the late s, where she sold her own fashion creations as well as the designs of colleagues in Sydney. During the early s recession in Australia , interest in Patten's expensive collection was received largely from workers in the sex industry.
Patten started her career with her company Body Politics. Patten was employed as an outreach speaker and would once a week visit brothels to teach the women about safe sex. From to , Patten was a sex worker herself. Her initial encounter began at Tiffany's Palace in Canberra, where she had intercourse with a client when another worker was unavailable. I remember it all very clearly and thinking afterwards: how easy was that? It was just so easy. There was this nice man in his early 30s, we had a spa and sex and that was that — Fiona Patten, article by Sally Patten for the Australian Financial Review, December [7].
