Australia

Toby is our CNF Ambassador for Australia.

You are welcome to join our online meetings. To register your interest, contact me via my email below. Meeting dates and times are advertised on the CNF – Australia Facebook page as an event, also available at this direct link. The next few meetings are:

• Dates: 29 Mar, 12 Apr, 26 Apr
• Time: 8pm Melbourne Australia – 10am London UK – 3am Austin USA – 5pm Taipei

My direct email address is: cnfellowship.au@gmail.com

Advocating for body freedom in Australia

In Australia the legality of naturism is governed by state and territory exposure laws. Each state has their own set of laws, which means the problem of bringing meaningful change must be solved independently for each of our eight states and territories.

Naturists have an internal code of ethics when it comes to navigating nudity in shared spaces, however this code of ethics is not clearly visible. Our laws often do not adequately facilitate a balance between freedom to be naked and respect for other people.

The Mere Exposure Framework

In order to address these issues, and provide consistency in the push for change to laws we have constructed the Mere Exposure Framework. It is a principled framework to quantify our “Ask”, a standard for how (ideally) we would like the law to treat instances of nudity. Once a standard is in place, then you can search for changes to existing law that bring it into alignment with that standard. Here is an explainer video of how it works.

And here is a podcast-style explainer audio that dives deeper and more fully explores the framework and its application to everyday scenarios.

The latest copy of the Framework documents are available in the links below. The user guide gives step-by-step instructions for using this Framework to explore minimal changes to your own local laws.

• Mere Exposure Framework (Document A)
• Pub Tests (Document B)
• User guide for the Mere Exposure Framework

The Tweak 17 Campaign – recovering bodily autonomy in Victoria

Using tools like the Mere Exposure Framework, we are actively pushing for change in Victoria. In this state the law is written so that harmless nudity in public spaces has no legal protection outside our three clothing-optional beaches, and any non-sexual naturist activity within public view is at constant risk of being treated as unlawful, even if it is on private land. We are collaborating with the Australian Naturist Federation to advocate for a minimal change to Victorian law, to protect the right to be merely naked in appropriate contexts, and equip the law to properly distinguish between harmless nudity and genuinely criminal behaviour. The following video and audio files explain the contents of our proposal.

As follows is a more in-depth audio analysis of our advocacy document.

Our latest advocacy paper is available at this link, and at the document below. Follow our ‘Tweak 17’ Facebook page for all the latest campaign updates!