YNOT – Australian Sex Party President Fiona Patten went starkers for a pictorial published in May’s Australian edition of Hustler magazine. In the feature, titled “Wet Politics,” Patten praises Hustler publisher Larry Flynt as a hero of free speech, rails against what she considers hypocrisy in government and challenges the country’s politicians and celebrites to grow spines.

In return, the Hustler writer praised Patten as “spunky” and called her a politically rare combination of natural beauty and brains. The magazine billed the profile as the “World’s first nude pictorial with the boss of a national political party.”

And the whole thing was for a good cause: Patten donated the $1,000 modeling fee to prostate cancer research, one of several causes about which she is passionate.

A political party leader nude in print. Shocking? Perhaps. But Patten has been involved in politics long enough to realize that sometimes a good shock can revitalize a failing heartbeat.

She hopes the pictorial will touch off public debate about government intrusion into private lives and personal liberties. In particular, Patten said she hopes to remind Australian Communications Minister Steven Conroy that the sexual content of many of the most popular adult websites is predominantly amateur material created and posted by private citizens, often without financial gain — much like the photos of Patten that appear in Hustler.

“My nude photos [were] not professionally produced and were taken in the course of having a fun time, and if I want to use them to raise money for a worthwhile cause or to satisfy some exhibitionist tendencies or even just for the hell of it, government has no right to interfere with my right to do that,” she said. “It’s not harming anyone, and if people don’t want to see my nude photos they just don’t buy the magazine or open the website.”

Patten has been one of the most outspoken opponents of the internet filtering scheme supported by Conroy. She said even though the government appears to have gone quiet about the issue, filtering remains a firm Australian Labor Party commitment. According to Patten, Attorney General Nicola Roxon may be “sitting on” a reply to the recommendations of the Australian Law Reform Commission about a new film classification act for Australia for fear the reply could kill the proposed filter.

“The ALRC recommended legalizing X-rated films around Australia so that there would not be this ridiculous situation where you can get them legally on the internet but not at the local adult shop,” Patten said. “They also recommended major changes to the Refused Classification category so that 90 percent of adult websites from overseas would not be caught by the filter.”

But the Hustler profile is not all politics. The piece also revealed Patten’s love of water and her abilities in the swimming pool. She won seven swimming medals during the 1997 Masters Games and swims up to 20 kilometers a week. She also revealed how she sometimes does radio interviews from the bath, because warm water helps her think. She criticized old rock-and-rollers like Angry Anderson who has joined the National Party and Peter Garrett who shelled out a quarter million dollars of taxpayer’s money on school chaplains.

“Most of the fan base of these two old rockers would be recreational drug users, so what do they do? Sign up to political parties that have policies that will send their fans to jail for using the same substances they used at their rock concerts,” Patten said with no little sarcasm. “This is unconscionable and a betrayal of the values of many of the people who made [the former rock stars] what they are today. I call on both of these guys to repudiate their parties’ drug policies and adopt the harm-minimization drug policies of the Sex Party.”

A digital copy of the entire Hustler feature is here (PDF).