Baldock Larry: General Debate 
Baldock Larry: General Debate 
[Volume:625;Page:20243] 
LARRY BALDOCK (United Future) 
: 
 I would like to take the opportunity this afternoon to address the House on the first report of the Prostitution Law Review Committee on the nature and extent of the sex industry in New Zealand released by the Ministry of Justice just a few weeks ago. The committee was required by law to give an assessment of the number of sex workers in New Zealand as soon as possible after the passing of the Prostitution Reform Act—and I concede that one positive feature of the Act is that we are able to get better information on the nature of the sex industry in New Zealand. I believe we should have had that information before we looked at changing the law. However at least now we do have some information. 
The report which was tabled in April 2005 almost 2 years after the Act passed is rather late. Nevertheless it is useful. But with the make-up of the committee mandated to include two persons nominated by the Minister of Commerce to represent the operators of prostitution businesses and three persons nominated by the New Zealand Prostitutes Collective out of a total of 11 members I think many New Zealanders wondered whether the report would be so biased as to be of no use. It comes as some surprise really to see that the report seems to be reasonably factual—as factual as can be expected in the light of the difficult circumstances associated with gathering information about the sex industry. Paul Fitzharris is to be commended for his role as chair in guiding the committee and I would like to take the opportunity to pay respect to one of United Future’s nominees to the committee Sue Martin a former national coordinator of End Child Prostitution Child Pornography Child Sex Tourism and Trafficking in Children for Sexual Purposes (ECPAT New Zealand)# who had to resign after illness and passed away last year. I thank the Minister for appointing Mr Alan Bell the new ECPAT New Zealand national coordinator as her replacement. 
One of the most disturbing findings of the report though is the number of under-age young people predominately female involved in the sex industry in New Zealand particularly those involved in street soliciting 20 percent of whom are estimated to be under age. That is something we should all be very concerned about because those who supported this legislation 2 years ago said that the legislation would do something about it. The New Zealand Prostitutes Collective part of the report of course tries to downplay that issue and deny it by stating on page 49: “However the NZPC”—the New Zealand Prostitutes Collective—“did not consider there were significant numbers of under age sex workers working in the industry.” I want to ask the New Zealand Prostitutes Collective what it considers to be significant numbers. Two hundred young people in New Zealand under the age of 18 being caught up in the web of prostitution is I consider very very significant. I wonder whether the New Zealand Prostitutes Collective would be concerned if there were 1000 of them. How many would it consider to be significant? I believe we ought to consider even one person in this country being caught into the inherent exploitation and degradation of prostitution to be very significant indeed. 
But then it may not come as much of a surprise to find that the New Zealand Prostitutes Collective does not consider the number of under-age sex workers to be significant because with at least $300000 of taxpayer funding it is promoting prostitution as a glamorous occupation. If one looks at the magazines it produces such as the  
Siren 
 magazine one will see that it often encourages young women to go to Europe and engage in prostitution in order to pay for their OE which is something I believe that the Government should be withdrawing its funding from immediately. We should consider that even to have one under-age young life on the streets is significant and that something should be done about it. 
What is being done about this appalling situation? Two hundred under-age people are out most nights of the week—perhaps many more than that number if the truth be known—according to reports that have been appearing in the newspapers lately. On the mean streets of Hunters Corner Mama Tere acknowledges she is finding more and more young people and in fact she has seen prostitution quadruple in her experience over the last 2 years. We see headlines such as “Act fails to protect girls”; “Number of prostitutes rises 40 percent”; “Enforce the law”. That is really the problem. The law is no good if it is not going to be enforced by the police. The report reveals that in New Zealand where we have the incredible situation of so many young women being involved in under-age prostitution there is one police officer in the Auckland City Police District who is given 45 percent of his time to oversee something like 243 businesses of prostitution and to somehow monitor 360 people on the streets who are engaged in street soliciting. It is appalling. The Minister of Police in answers to my questions to him earlier today proudly proclaimed that one prosecution has been made. One prosecution after 2 years is appalling.