Hague Kevin: Manukau City Council (Regulation of Prostitution in Specified Places) Bill — First Reading 
Hague Kevin: Manukau City Council (Regulation of Prostitution in Specified Places) Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:666;Page:13797] 
KEVIN HAGUE (Green) 
: 
 Our caucus sometimes has debates over bills that we do not support or that we support only in part as to whether there is some value in allowing them to go to select committee in the hope that a better bill may emerge. Today I stand to say that the Green Party does not support the Manukau City Council (Regulation of Prostitution in Specified Places) Bill. However some of our members believe that there would be value in discussing the issues further in a select committee and they will vote for the bill’s first reading on that basis. Those members believe that local communities should make local decisions if this is possible without undermining the law. 
The majority of us however will oppose the bill at its first reading. Our reasons for opposing the bill are exactly the same as the reasons that the Green Party vigorously opposed the equivalent bill the last time that George Hawkins introduced it in 2005 and are the same reasons that the Green Party strongly supported Tim Barnett’s original Prostitution Reform Act. The bill enables the council to re-criminalise soliciting in particular areas of its choosing. This effectively recreates exactly the imposition on the rights of sex workers that existed under the old law except that the penalties will be 10 times higher. It is constitutionally objectionable furthermore for local authorities effectively to create criminal law. 
The point of the Prostitution Reform Act was to focus the law on those behaviours that can be associated with soliciting that present actual problems such as people being harassed or intimidated offensive signage or behaviour or used condoms left in public places. There are solutions and remedies for all of those behaviours. Rather than the moral objections that some people have about prostitution this principle is being reversed by the bill that stands before us today. 
I am not belittling the concerns or the anxiety of the Manukau City Council local residents or shopkeepers; rather I am restating the point of view that I expressed back in 2003 as the executive director of the New Zealand Aids Foundation alongside my colleagues from the New Zealand Family Planning Association the National Council of Women the Maori Women’s Welfare League the Public Health Association the New Zealand Federation of Business and Professional Women the YWCA and many other organisations. Those concerns were that marginalised desperate and vulnerable members of our society who end up street-based soliciting in places such as Hunters Corner are easier to reach out to with services and with information if they are not doubly victimised and hiding from criminal sanctions such as those again proposed in this bill. 
Street-based soliciting at Hunters Corner is hardly a new phenomenon. It was extensively discussed in the debate and in the submissions made on Tim’s original bill. The arguments being made tonight in favour of this bill were considered and rejected at that time and then considered and rejected again in 2005 by the Local Government and Environment Committee and by Parliament. Then in 2008 the Prostitution Law Review Committee visited the areas that the council was concerned about discussed the issues broadly and heard from the police that they were more concerned about family violence and abuse of alcohol in these areas. The review committee again rejected the arguments advanced by the council endorsing the recommendation made by the select committee. 
In 2009 the crime prevention unit of the Ministry of Justice undertook another comprehensive review of the specific issues addressed by the bill published under the title  
Review of street-based prostitution in Manukau City 
. Again the review concluded—as have all reviews—that localised measures for working with sex workers and non-governmental organisations were a more productive way to address any actual problems being experienced and that legislative approaches were unlikely to be effective and were quite likely to create fresh problems. 
In summary this bill intends to unwind the intent of the original Act. It is constitutionally repugnant has been considered frequently and in great depth and is both extremely unlikely to achieve its intent and likely to further marginalise some of the most vulnerable members in our entire society. It is a waste of this House’s time. I do not support it going any further.