Baldock Larry: Prostitution Reform Bill — Procedure Third Reading 
Baldock Larry: Prostitution Reform Bill — Procedure Third Reading 
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LARRY BALDOCK (United Future) 
: 
 I rise to speak in the third and final reading of this bill and I want to begin by thanking all of those across New Zealand who have taken the time to make their views known to us members of the House. To those who have lobbied and worked hard to try to convince us about the issues involved in this bill I say that I trust they will not be disappointed tonight when the final vote is taken. 
In standing to speak I try to raise new points every time. I have had my share of speeches on this bill as most members will know but every time it is possible to come up with new reasons that we should oppose this bill because there are hundreds of reasons that it should not be passed into law tonight. In the very beginning the bill was promoted to New Zealand as decriminalisation of prostitution and all the supporters of it were very clear in their opposition to any legalising of prostitution. They wanted to decriminalise. Legalisation as in Victoria Australia is clearly acknowledged to be a disaster but this bill’s supporters decided and declared that the decriminalisation model such as that in New South Wales was a raving success and that was why they wanted it brought here to New Zealand. 
One of my concerns right throughout this debate has been our obligations under the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women and the Protocol to Prevent Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons Especially Women and Children which is our obligation as a signatory to the UN charter. It has always been my concern that if we liberalise our laws here in New Zealand we will invite the possibility of the trafficking of women and children for prostitution which is occurring on a wide scale around the world. When I raised these issues with the Minister of Justice he told me that no it was perfectly OK to pass this law because the more that this issue was out in the open the more it would be possible to control the evil of the trafficking of women which is nothing less than slavery of women. 
Well if that is the case I want to draw members’ attention to a recent article in the  
Australian 
 newspaper: “Police lay their first sex traffic charges in Australia. The Australian Federal Police have charged a man and his mother with sexual servitude offences against three Indonesian women who claim they were held captive in a Western Sydney flat.” Sydney of course is where prostitution has been decriminalised. “The charges are the first to be made by the AFP under laws to combat sex trafficking and the Government Minister for Immigration”—similar perhaps to our Minister of Immigration—“said this rarely happens in Australia. But a 4-month investigation by the  
Australian 
 has uncovered widespread trafficking abuse and exploitation of sex slaves revealing that women trafficked from South-east Asia were forced to have sex with hundreds of men to pay off so-called contracts. Although some sources said there could be a thousand or more women under contract at any one time Mr Ruddock continued to play down the problem.” 
I believe that is what we are about to unleash in our nation if we pass this decriminalisation of prostitution. There is no guarantee whatsoever that we will be able to better control the evils that occur in this industry if we bring everything out into the open. I have said on many many occasions that in fact it is significantly in the open in New Zealand already and I do not know how much more open it can become. 
Another article from the  
Australian 
 talking about the famous King’s Cross strip which of course has been operating for many years under a decriminalisation model states: “The future of Australia’s most famous stretch of strip clubs brothels and adult shops is threatened after the Sydney City Council voted to prohibit new sex industry businesses from setting up in the heart of the red-light district. This sleazy drugs-rife pocket of the inner city has been in the cross hairs of the council since it gained control of the suburb from the South Sydney local authority on May 8.” I say to members that that does not sound to me like a success story from the decriminalisation of prostitution. That area is still referred to as a “sleazy drugs-rife pocket of the inner city”. There are enough problems with what we have already in this country without our opening the door to further proliferation of this problem. 
I believe that if this bill is passed tonight and even one extra woman is trafficked in prostitution—or even one more of our young women in New Zealand is enticed to go into prostitution—then this bill will have failed. No one has been able to give me a guarantee in this House yet that this bill will not do that. A lot has been said about it not leading to a massive increase but has anyone been able to promise me that this bill will not lead to an increase of even one? If one person were trafficked into New Zealand as a result of this bill we would be failing our obligations under the UN charter and surely that must be of concern to this Labour Government which is so committed to the United Nations and to its obligations under those treaties. Clause 9.5 of those obligations says that member States should do everything they can to reduce the demand that leads to the trafficking of women and children—estimated to be 700000 to 4 million every year around the world. But no we have our heads in the sand in this country and as some members have said with very great clarity we are about to unleash market forces if we pass this bill. 
The truth is that this measure is really no longer decriminalisation of prostitution; it is legalisation similar to that found in Victoria Australia. If we do a comparison between that state’s legislation and what ours now looks like we find some incredible similarities. There is licensing. There is zoning. There are health regulations although we wonder where the army of occupational safety and health workers will come from here in New Zealand to do anything about trying to protect the health of our sex workers. We cannot find enough police now to inspect our massage parlours and to close down the ones that are operating without licences let alone find the extra occupational safety and health workers who are to go around making life better for those in the sex industry. 
The amendments to the bill that went through the House 2 weeks ago have basically passed the responsibility for taking care of the sex industry on to local government. If this bill passes tonight this House will be delegating responsibility—we could say “passing the buck”—to our local city councils and passing on to them the cost of regulating the sex industry and I believe that is grossly unfair. I served for a time as a member of the Tauranga District Council. During that time we had debates about some of the moral issues in our community. I believe that if every council throughout this country has to go through the process that is now required of it under the Local Government Act—to consult its communities over every by-law it passes—those councils will have enormous trouble enforcing what this Government hopes they will do under this law. 
Interestingly enough soon after those amendments were passed the following appeared in the  
Bay of Plenty Times 
: “Sex workers fear red tape. Tauranga sex workers have rejected the idea of the local council regulating their industries saying the move would only tie them up in red tape. Sex industry workers also fear that council workers will not have the right skills to successfully deal with them and want the job to stay with the police.” 
I believe that we in this House are meant to listen and I think we have been getting mixed messages all the way through this debate. One of the very difficult things I found as I held public debates around the country was on one occasion to hear how terrible such a life is and that therefore this law needs to be passed to make things better and on another occasion to hear that the life actually is pretty good and “We don’t need you interfering in it at all”. It has become very difficult to know how we should address this situation but I am totally convinced that this law is not good law. Those who look to it to try to save them from the misery they are in will be sorely disappointed. This law offers no salvation for them. I hope the House will reject it tonight. I believe we should embark on an inquiry that will look seriously into the situation of the sex industry in New Zealand and come up with some real solutions that will not open the door to market forces which will damage everybody involved with the industry.