Chadwick Steve: Manukau City Council (Control of Street Prostitution) Bill — Second Reading 
Chadwick Steve: Manukau City Council (Control of Street Prostitution) Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:634;Page:5656] 
STEVE CHADWICK (Labour—Rotorua) 
: 
 I am pleased to take a turn on the Manukau City Council (Control of Street Prostitution) Bill because I chaired the Local Government and Environment Committee. I will not be speaking rhetoric such as that from the member opposite Judith Collins who I note withdrew her party from the ministerial task force on family violence. A lot of rhetoric is coming from the Opposition. The Local Government and Environment Committee that I chaired worked very well on this bill. We take local bills very seriously. Every party on the select committee voted unanimously against this well-intended but very flawed bill. The member opposite is carping on. She is a lawyer; I will point out why this is legislatively a flawed piece of legislation. 
We took this bill seriously because we know about the limitations of local bills and the impact when a local authority comes to the House to ask for support for a local issue of some concern. None of us on the select committee—not one member—condoned prostitution but some of us pragmatically accepted that this trade exists now and needs to be both managed and supported from both a community safety and a public health perspective. 
We heard a lot of anecdotal evidence particularly about the numbers of young people entering prostitution. We heard widely ranging figures from those saying that there has been a four-hundredfold increase in prostitution in Manukau to others saying that this simply is not true. The police themselves have received reports that there are about 150 street workers in Manukau. We want to be very careful about some of the emotion and anecdote we heard at the select committee. We were really worried about that. 
We were also concerned about some of the evidence we heard about young people. None of us—and we also heard this during the debate on the Prostitution Reform Act—wanted young people to enter into prostitution as a profession. We accepted that there is very negative behaviour associated with street work—such as littering noise nuisance and some public safety elements—but the fundamental mechanism proposed in this bill to try to fix this is a very very flawed process that will not produce the desired effects. 
Members in the House from Manurewa and Manukau can stand up and vote in support of this bill—and I am sure that they will just to show that they are supporting the local council—but that will not solve the problems for Papatoetoe Manurewa the Auckland City Council Wellington or anywhere else. This bill will solve the issues only for Manukau. That is not the way to go forward on national solutions and other options need to be explored. The Prostitution Reform Act—let us remind ourselves—decriminalised soliciting in 2003. Allowing a local Act which this would be to amend public statute sets a very significant and undesirable precedent. That is what the member opposite as a lawyer knows but she likes the rhetoric that shows a fundamental approach to moral issues and it is quite a horrible sight. 
Prohibition of under-18-year-old prostitutes exists now in the Prostitution Reform Act. Yes we may be seeing some younger people entering into the profession. None of us on the select committee liked to see that; neither does the Prostitutes Collective. It would rather work with those young people to get them out of the profession—that is the best way to go about it. 
I want to mention the offence provisions in this bill. I think some of the offence provisions proposed actually breach the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child which New Zealand is an international signatory to. There is a $10000 fine for soliciting on the streets or loitering. This is a terribly perverse incentive—it actually drives young people to prostitute themselves for money to pay the $10000 fine—and is fundamentally flawed. Another flaw is the $5000 fine for refusing to give information to the police. This actually breaches the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. It is very very difficult for police to link causality to the information they receive. So again the bill is fundamentally flawed. 
We propose that other legislative options could be enacted such as the Summary Offences Act the Litter Act or the district plans of local authorities. The district plan of the Manukau local authority excluded home-based brothels. In other words it drove prostitutes into soliciting on the street and street prostitution. If the local authority just looked at the tools it has now it could manage the growth in the prostitution industry. Strategies such as those of the council in Wellington—and I am sure Mark Blumsky a very reasonable member on this select committee will mention them—show that when we have eyes and ears out on the street we actually manage issues like loitering soliciting and the issues mentioned in this bill. The use of halfway houses such as those in California is another option that needs to be looked at nationally. In Onehunga there is Awhina Taina which supports young girls—those of about 17 years old—who enter into prostitution. 
The select committee members looked at all of these options and put them reasonably back in our report. We knew that the council members would say: “This is dreadful—oh woe is me. The Government is not listening!”. Well we are listening. This Government set up the Prostitution Law Review Committee. There are 11 people on this committee looking at the impact of the Prostitution Reform Act and they will be reporting back to Parliament. That is the mechanism that needs to be utilised to address the issues of every local authority around the country—not to fix it for Manukau and to heck with the rest of the country. 
This bill is a clumsy and parochial approach to cleaning up prostitution even if it was well intended. It stigmatises prostitution. It tips its hat again at the buyers of prostitution—the Women’s Health Collective and the Maori Wardens Association told us that. There are other approaches that we as a Labour Government feel are far stronger: acknowledge the reality of street-based prostitution; include sex workers in finding solutions; maintain care and protection of street workers; work collaboratively—do not withdraw from a collaborative approach—with the police local authorities the Maori Wardens Association and the Prostitutes Collective; and also consider safe housing. These people do not want to be having sex on the street or in alleyways; they would actually prefer their trade to be done in a safe location. A local bill mechanism will not moderate behaviour—the Law Society told us that. It told us that this is a fundamentally flawed bill that should be voted down. 
I end by saying that a new puritan age is darkening our doors to quote John Mortimer QC. This Labour Government’s door is open to look at approaches that will ameliorate the negative and unintended impacts of the Prostitution Reform Act. That is the way to go and that is why we will vote down this bill.