Mapp Wayne: Prostitution Reform Bill — In Committee 
Mapp Wayne: Prostitution Reform Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:608;Page:5234] 
Dr WAYNE MAPP (NZ National—North Shore) 
: 
 I will speak specifically to the amendments I have proposed on Supplementary Order Paper 68. I have already dealt with the issue of brothels so the amendments I will speak to at this point relate to the issue of soliciting. As I have indicated under section 26 of the Summary Offences Act soliciting is an offence punishable by a fine of $200 but it is not actually enforced. Police officers in their vehicles drive past Fort Street and Karangahape Road and ignore prostitutes who are soliciting. So what this amendment will essentially do is put into law current police practice. 
It does two things. On the one hand it gives councils the power to regulate where soliciting would take place. It specifically says “except those areas where soliciting customarily takes place.” For instance one would expect that the Auckland City Council would permit soliciting in Fort Street and Karangahape Road because that is where it customarily takes place. One would expect the Manukau City Council to permit it to take place in Hunter’s Corner in Papatoetoe. Of course in North Shore City there would be no places where soliciting would take place because there is no soliciting in the North Shore which might say something about the nature of the society that I represent. I will go one step further and also say that the soliciting that did take place would then be subject to further restrictions. It would be in a defined area in which it customarily takes place now— 
Dr Paul Hutchison 
: Customary rights. 
Dr WAYNE MAPP 
: Customary rights. In addition if it is causing a nuisance or constitutes harassment then that would be an offence also under the Summary Offences Act which would be subject to a fine of $2000. It also criminalises the clients—and that is an important point. If the clients themselves are harassing or causing a nuisance—and that does happen; we have seen evidence of that—then they would also be committing an offence. In that sense the law is intended to be even-handed. The worst aspect of the current law is that it is not even-handed: the prostitutes can be convicted of soliciting—if the law is enforced and that does not happen very often—but the clients get off scot-free. 
I know there is a school of thought typified by Dianne Yates and Marc Alexander in particular that colloquially refers to the Swedish model; needless to say I would prefer the phrase the “Swedish law”. That would make soliciting by the client a criminal offence. I have polled the electorate of North Shore by a telephone poll. It was scientifically conducted by a random survey from the electoral roll and I can tell members that of the 150-odd respondents only about 20 percent favoured the Swedish approach to legislation. So I do not believe that if this Parliament went as far as that we would have community consent for what we were doing. For that reason I will be voting against the Swedish approach to legislation. 
I suggest that the amendments I have put up which give local authorities power to pass by-laws and to then establish some new offences around harassment and the committing of a nuisance in public places would provide the appropriate controls. 
It has been pointed out to me by Dr Paul Hutchison that soliciting is undertaken by people who are totally marginalised and that it ought to be discouraged by legislation. But in my view that is the reason we should not be compounding the marginalisation by the existing offences. I ask the Committee to support those proposals because I think they are a constructive way of advancing New Zealand’s law.