Fiona Patten

The museum also displayed a collection of sex toys, including dildos, vibrators and other mechanical devices dating back to the late 1800s.

Fiona Heather Patten (born May 1964) is an Australian politician.

Upon returning to Australia with her family in 1978, Patten attended Hawker College in Canberra where she studied Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Industrial Arts, Technical Drawing, Landscape Design and Environmental Studies.

She went on to study Landscape Architecture and Industrial Design at the University of Canberra.

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 1980s, where she sold her own fashion creations as well as the designs of colleagues in Sydney.

During the early 1990s 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.

With her large clientele of sex workers, Patten became interested in sex workers' rights, eventually joining Workers in Sex Employment (WISE), a lobbying group, to inform at-risk members of the population about the emerging threat of HIV/AIDS.

Patten was employed as an outreach speaker and would once a week visit brothels to teach the women about safe sex.

From 1990 to 1992, 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.

Patten eventually lost interest in her work, which had also interfered with her social and professional life.

After working as a female escort in Cairns, Queensland, Patten quit sex work in 1992 and continued in sex education.{{ref|{http://www.afr.com/news/politics/national/sex-partys-fiona-patten-on-her-journey-from-parlour-to-parliament-20141226-12k7l2}}

In 1992, Patten and her partner, Robbie Swan, established the Eros Association, a peak body for the adult industry.

The company extended its interests into publications, public relations, business, and political advocacy.

Eros was heavily involved in the editing and publication of a political humour and satire magazine entitled Matilda, an adult magazine entitled Ecstacy, and launched their own "sex and politics" themed magazine Eros.

The Eros Association was instrumental in support for the Brindabella Wilderness Project, an initiative to preserve wildlife in the Brindabella Valley and Mountains.

Patten scaled down her interests in the company in 2000 to pursue other interests in advocacy.

In 2001, the company established the first National Museum of Erotica, dedicated to the history of erotica and the preservation of erotic art, literature, film and photography.

The museum was unveiled by Chief Minister Kate Carnell.

The National Museum of Erotica was opened in Canberra in 2001, dedicated to the history of erotica and the preservation of erotic art, literature, film and photography.

The museum was unveiled by Chief Minister Kate Carnell and was the first establishment of its kind in Australia.

The National Museum of Erotica collected works from the likes of Brett Whiteley, Charles Blackman, Salvatore Zofrea, Lesbia Thorpe, Richard Larter, Mario Azzopardi, and more historically Mihály Zichy.

Patten expressed that the collection and archiving of erotic, pornographic and sexual art and artefacts is fundamentally different from the collection of non-sexual material because the former was perceived as a rapidly diminishing resource in the world.

The museum housed erotic artistic works, including paintings, pictures, pin-up, illustrated books, comic strips and films, from the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Hungary, Russia and Australia.

While the physical presence of the museum was closed in 2002, the collection remained preserved and continued to grow, with over 400 individual pieces catalogued by 2005, and instead maintained a virtual presence on the internet.

She returned in 2006 and left again in 2014 when she was elected to the Victorian Parliament.

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.

She is the leader of Reason Australia (also known as the Reason Party) and was a member of the Victorian Legislative Council between 2014 and 2022, representing the Northern Metropolitan Region until she lost her seat at the 2022 state election.

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 business owner with her own fashion label.

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.

According to The Age, between November 2018 and November 2021, Patten voted with the Andrews Government's position 74.3% of the time, the second-most of any Legislative Council crossbencher, behind only Andy Meddick.

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.