Williamson Maurice: Prostitution Reform Bill — Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee 
Williamson Maurice: Prostitution Reform Bill — Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee 
[Volume:607;Page:4465] 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (NZ National—Pakuranga) 
: 
 It will be very hard to convey some of my sentiments on this bill in a 5-minute speech but I will make my best effort. When I became an Associate Minister of Health in 1990 one of the first briefings I had from the Ministry of Health was about the biggest threat that faced New Zealand and it was to do with HIV/AIDS. I was told that if we went down the same path as Amsterdam Rotterdam Hamburg or Glasgow we would see the most stunning levels of the infection going through our intravenous drug user community our sex worker community and our homosexual community. It seemed to me that there was some logic in being a pragmatist rather than a moralist. I understand that there are people in this Parliament who feel strongly about the sale of someone’s body for money and I do not think it is a particularly nice concept. If someone asked me whether I would like my daughter to be a prostitute when she grows up my answer would be no. I do not particularly like the idea that my sons might grow up to be homosexual but they might. If it does happen it will be best to live with it in a way that tries to minimise the harm and the damage to those people rather than sitting in judgment and saying “I’m going to outlaw and ban it.” That has not worked in any form of moral code for human beings at all. 
Larry Baldock asked a question today about the involvement of gangs in prostitution. I tell that member that the biggest gang involvement was that of the mafia in the United States who were involved in corruption and coercion within prostitution while it was totally illegal. It does not make sense to say that if it is kept illegal the gangs the underworld and the corruption will somehow be kept out. If anything I think the logic works the other way. 
What we are talking about here—or at least I hope that is all we are talking about—is a matter of “willing seller willing buyer” conducted between consenting adults away from the public gaze. I certainly do not want young children involved. I do not want coercion involved. I do not want drug industries involved or immigration breaches stolen property or gangs involved. If any of those things are involved then I welcome the police using all their muscle and might to go in and clean up those aspects of the industry. I do not think there are many members of this Parliament who do not want that to happen. 
As an Associate Health Minister I funded the Prostitutes Collective to go out and give condoms to their members saying: “Don’t have sex without one of these because there is a dreadful virus that knows no boundaries and it can kill you and your client and your client’s brother and sister who may happen to sleep with someone else.” I remember an elderly lady once said to me at a meeting “What you are talking about with prostitutes is disgusting.” and I said “What if your son visited one?” to which she replied “He never would.” But some people must visit prostitutes because there are 10000 sex workers and they must have some clients. Even if that woman’s son did not visit a prostitute he might fall in love with a young lady who had been going out with a guy who had been with a prostitute at some stage and as the HIV virus knows no boundaries he might be infected as well. We all have an obligation to try to be sensible about that. 
I came at the subject from the same perspective I used in regard to the clean-needle exchange. I do not like people using heroin. I think it is wrong that they use it but I would rather that they use clean needles than share HIV and hepatitis and all the other dreadful viruses. There are some lunatics like the Catholic Action Group which thinks that that is something God visits on people who are evil. The Catholic Action Group sent me an email saying I would burn in the furnace for eternity because I supported fornication. I am happy to admit to that—my hand is now up. I am a fornicator and I hope other members are prepared to say they are as well. I am happy to say so. I have done the maths and using my physics formula I have worked out that if the furnace is 5000 degrees and my 82-kilogram frame were thrown into it I would last 3.2 seconds—that is hardly an eternity. I do not think I will burn for a long time at all; the Catholic Action Group is an outrage. 
I heard other things in this House during the time of the homosexual law reform that really riled me. They were mainly from my own colleagues—John Banks Norman Jones and others. Fran Wilde was told that she would go—she would be history—because she was advocating the “immoral” decriminalisation of homosexuality. She was not actually making it compulsory she was just decriminalising it. Norman Jones said we would see homosexuals copulating on the side of the motorway as we drove home at night; it is in  
Hansard— 
have a look. I have not yet seen one homosexual copulating on the motorway as I drive home. 
I do want to get this clear because I do know where the moral conservative view comes from and I understand it. We need to make sure that this legislation stops all the nasty elements because I do not want people being coerced into prostitution and I do not want young people being involved in this. I remember that the day after we had negotiated the contracts with the Prostitutes Collective for the funding of condoms the police went into a brothel in Christchurch posing as TV3 cameramen. One officer went upstairs into the bedroom took his gear off and lay naked beside a young lady who said “What can I do for you for $100?” and he said “You’re busted.” Give us a break! That is ridiculous. We had the police totally working against what the Ministry of Health was desperately trying to achieve. 
I know that Phil Goff has some concerns and so do I in regard to whether prostitution will be stuck in residential neighbourhoods and whether local authorities can license it and so on but I ask members to think about this. If it is a case of willing seller and willing buyer between consenting adults do members think they have a dog’s show of ever making it stop? It has been around long before politicians have been and it has been around since before we were around—but only just. It will always be around because of necessity. We are not all as handsome as Peter Brown. We cannot all visit the ports of the world and get it for free like he did. Some of the poor bastards who look like I do have to pay when we go around the world—I have not but I am sure that it will happen one day. 
Where is the victim? That is the question I ask the moral right—if that is what those people who oppose it are called. The example of the homosexual law reform is really good because the next thing I got was the Keith Hay brigade—which was pretty much made up of the people who fund the Maxim Institute—coming to me and saying: “You support the Homosexual Law Reform Bill and you’re dog tucker in your electorate. You’re gone. You will never be re-elected.” It scared the living bejesus out of me. I thought “Wow. They’ve got such networks and funding that this will impact on me.” But guess what—it made not one jot of difference. I got elected in 1987 and carried on. 
The best example can be provided by Fran Wilde. People in this House said to Fran Wilde: “Listen here. You’re gone. You will never be re-elected. You’re history.” In 1987 after she had passed the bill she got an increased majority. In 1990 she withstood the blue flood of National seats that took over the Wellington area. We won Miramar and all sorts of seats but we did not win Wellington Central because Fran Wilde stayed on. She then stood for the mayoralty and got one of the biggest votes ever and in my view Fran Wilde is one of New Zealand’s very valuable citizens. She saw a need to fix something and she did it. 
I hope that as members debate this issue they will understand that we are not advocating the evils of child prostitution or coercion corruption or anything else—I would be on the ramparts fighting against that as well. I am asking members to please think about something that will always occur behind closed doors whatever members legislate tonight and whatever members think is morally right or wrong. Why do we not just say that it is not a criminal offence? 
I know that New Zealand audiences never see this but what amazes me is that no one in New Zealand ever understood that prostitution has always been legal here. It is stupidity if I go down to one of the brothels tonight and say to someone “Here’s a hundred bucks will you do something for me?” no one is a criminal; but if the prostitute says “Give us a hundred bucks and I’ll do the following—” she alone is a criminal. If that is not a law made by men for men I do not know what is. 
Members who think the Dianne Yates solution is right to make everybody a criminal have got to be dreaming. That would be about as successful as prohibition was in the United States in the 1920s. That makes everybody criminals for something that will carry on happening. I ask everybody in this Parliament to think about this issue carefully to get away from their prejudices in the background which will really affect them and to vote accordingly.