Collins Judith: Prostitution Reform Bill — In Committee 
Collins Judith: Prostitution Reform Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:608;Page:5752] 
JUDITH COLLINS (NZ National—Clevedon) 
: 
 That was a very good speech from the previous speaker and I agreed with every word that she said except that I did not ever vote for this bill. I read this bill and it is not about the health and safety of women and men who are prostitutes. It is about normalisation of prostitution. Prostitution should not be a normalised activity. It is not something that should be on a CV. It is not something for which there should be a career choice. It is not something that should ever be a career’s day activity with work experience in our schools. That is what this bill is all about. This bill is all about normalising an activity that is not something that should ever be normalised. It is not right. That is it. 
It does not worry me one scrap that there are people who wish to be prostitutes. They currently work in massage parlours or else they work on Hunter’s Corner in Papatoetoe. A few weeks ago I was with the police emergency response unit. We popped in to see the prostitutes on Hunter’s corner. I had been told that the police constantly harass those people. What a load of rubbish! We turned up. They came over and said: “Hi how are you tonight? Oh is that the lady off TV?”. Well of course it was; that was me! Then they said to the police: “How’s your night going?”. The police replied: “How’s your night going?”. Well the answer was—and these are the prostitutes who are victimised by the police as we are constantly told by the people who want to normalise prostitution—“There’s a guy up the road who’s been hassling us. Can you go and sort him out?”. So off we went looking for the guy who had been hassling the prostitutes. What sort of hassling is that? 
We came back and found a prostitute sitting sniffing glue from a glue bag. Well frankly if one is doing that sort of job one probably needs to sniff glue. The police officer said: “Now look I’ve told you that you can’t go around sniffing glue out of your glue bag.” He took the glue bag off the prostitute and threw it away. I say: “Good on him for doing that.” The prostitute’s reaction was: “Oh OK.”. That was it. There was no hassle. It is a load of rubbish to say there was. 
If this bill was about stopping people from being prosecuted for soliciting then I would probably support it because all we would have to do is simply amend the current law to remove the offence of soliciting—which currently I am told carries a $200 fine. That is all we would need to do. But this bill goes so much further than that. It is really saying: “Let’s have pimps. Pimps would be fine.” These pimps will have strings of women and men working for them selling their services feeding them with drugs and beating them up if they do not go to work. That is what this Parliament will be legalising if this bill goes through. 
It is a very very sad day when we are spending yet another day of this Parliament’s time debating the sort of nonsense that this bill puts forward. We have far more important issues in this country yet this Parliament spends so much time on this nonsense. It has spent 2 years of select committee hearings and deliberations on this. The people of this country are saying to us to get on with something that is serious yet this Parliament is constantly talking about prostitution. We should not have this bill. 
This bill does not look after the health of prostitutes. If it did the first thing we would do is get prostitutes into a situation where they are no longer prostitutes. As for that member over there—that Government junior whip Jill Pettis who has always got something to say but never stands up and takes a call—I ask why she does not stop her screeching get up make a sensible speech as other members have tonight and actually be a contributor to this Parliament. I know that Mr Brown says that is not possible but I like to live in hope. Please let us live in hope. 
This bill is a very bad bill. It is sending a signal to our young people that this is in fact an occupation that they can go along with. It is an occupation where we are going to say if this Parliament goes through with this bill: “It is OK. You don’t have to keep trying at school. You don’t have to go out and do a job like truck driving or whatever. You can go and be a prostitute—and guess what? It is not really that bad.” Well it is that bad. It is an absolute denigration of people and of everything for families.