Baldock Larry: Prostitution Reform Bill — Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee 
Baldock Larry: Prostitution Reform Bill — Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee 
[Volume:607;Page:4475] 
LARRY BALDOCK (United Future) 
: 
 I rise to speak again on the title and again I will be voting against it. My reason is that I do not believe that it truly encapsulates what the bill will do. The word “reform” has within it an implication that it will improve the situation—that we will be heading in a better direction. That is all we who are opposing this legislation are asking for. We are asking for an assurance that the lofty aims of the bill will actually be achieved through this legislation. 
When I first joined the Justice and Electoral Committee to begin looking into this bill after it had been to select committees in previous Parliaments Tim Barnett told me that it was based upon the New South Wales decriminalisation model. The first question I asked was whether the committee had gone to New South Wales to study what had happened there. The answer was that no one had but that Tim Barnett and Dr Wayne Mapp had made personal journeys to look at the situation in that state. Just recently I received the itinerary of their trip and I understand they spent approximately 2 days in New South Wales looking at the situation there. This House is about to vote seriously on this legislation—and I genuinely hope that we are able to defeat it—yet in spite of the nearest model to the one proposed being only about 1200 miles away in a place where a decriminalisation model has been in place for the last 10 years at least no one apart from two willing select committee members has spent more than 2 days there. I find that staggering 
It is true—and Tim Barnett has mentioned this before—that there is a great deal of debate about what is really happening in New South Wales. We of course promote certain statistics that we have come in contact with and there are people we have spoken to. The  
Sydney Morning Herald 
 has written considerable articles about the real situation in New South Wales and others with another view say that all is wonderful and rosy for prostitutes across the channel. All I ask the Committee today is that if we are genuinely serious about the consequences of this bill upon New Zealand society we ought to be stopping right now and sending a proper delegation to New South Wales to investigate for a period longer than 2 days what is really taking place there. 
Other people also went to New South Wales including the journalist from Television One who went there to do an  
Assignment 
 programme. The evidence they brought back and put on television in New Zealand did not convince me in any way that there was an improvement in the lives of prostitutes in New South Wales; nor was there any improvement in the number of under-age people getting involved in prostitution; nor was any cleaner or less criminal an element involved in the prostitution industry in New South Wales. 
Others have said that we are attacking this issue only from the moral perspective but that is not true. We are simply asking for legitimate evidence that this bill will achieve something of the aims it purports to have. I do not therefore support the name “Prostitution Reform Bill” for this legislation. No matter how we feel about the desire for prostitutes to have a better life the desire to have clean and safe sex and so on we cannot categorically say that this bill will achieve anything like what it aims to achieve. I think a better title would be the “Expansion of Prostitution Bill” because this bill is not just about prostitutes themselves; it is about the expansion of the prostitution industry through decriminalising pimping and brothel-keeping. 
If the Prostitutes Collective had come to Parliament and said that some things were going wrong in massage parlours and that they faced difficulties because the only law that made their activity in any way illegal was the law that stated that it was against the law to solicit in a public place and that they would like to see that law changed then I might have been able to come around to saying that we could do something about that. It would be a very minor tweak to the existing law. But this bill goes much further than that. It is good news for pimps. In fact the title ought to be the “Good News for Pimps and Brothel-keepers Bill” because they are the ones who will be the beneficiaries of this legislation. Prostitution always involves the exploitation of those who are involved in the sex industry because it is the brothel-keepers who make more money by far than they do.