Ogilvy Bernie: Prostitution Reform Bill — In Committee 
Ogilvy Bernie: Prostitution Reform Bill — In Committee 
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BERNIE OGILVY (United Future) 
: 
 I wish to speak on the title of this Prostitution Reform Bill. Although the title is three words in length I think only two are relevant. When I went to the dictionary to look up the word “reform” I found some interesting little meanings. There was “to form anew”. How does one form anew a prostitute? That is an interesting question. Then there was “to improve for the better”. 
Peter Brown 
: The member’s getting all kinky. 
BERNIE OGILVY 
: That is right. There was “to give up a reprehensible habit” and I cannot understand how that can work either. And “reform” means “to improve or improvement of morals”. That is the exact quote. 
I would agree with the previous speaker that this bill is filled with contradictions and confusion as the word “reform” also spells out to us. We cannot have “reform” if we are to make things in the entire industry worse. I cannot understand that and neither can anyone else. If the endeavour of this bill is to decriminalise prostitution we have got to a place where we have to take some of that back and criminalise some other parts of it. The confusion for everybody and the difficulty of putting that into order will be incredible. So as it stands I see both the “reform” as well as the “bill” part of the title as bad law. 
One of the questions I have been worried about is whom this bill is set up for. In other words who will be better off if that is the promoter’s intention? If I look at the history of New Zealand and just look at us or if I start from the Maori people who came here earlier I would very much question whether Maori people will be better off under this particular legislation. I do not think that even recent immigrants later than the Pakeha influx would have had prostitution on their minds when they came to this nation. I look at Samoans and at other Pacific Islanders like Tongans Niueans and Cook Islanders and I ask them whether it was their intention to come to a nation that would have that industry as an open market programme. I do not believe it was. 
When I asked the Asian people with whom I have contact in Auckland whether prostitution was on their minds when they came here and when I talked to an Iranian doctor the other day they said very certainly “No”. In fact the Iranian doctor is so concerned that he has taken his child out of a school in Auckland and put her into an Islamic school so that she will not be exposed to this thought-line. I have talked to people from Thailand Mainland China Taiwan and Hong Kong and none of them have said that prostitution is why they came here. They are concerned about this bill. I talked to some Ethiopians the other day and they are very concerned about it. I would have thought it was very important for the promoter of this bill to figure out which people it would make better off. 
It is for me at this point in the debate on the title to say with clarity that I will vote against this bill. I am certain that as it stands this bill will cause every ethnic group and everybody else in this nation both embarrassment and a sense of degradation and great loss for this generation as well as for future generations.