Catchpole Brent: Prostitution Reform Bill — Procedure Third Reading 
Catchpole Brent: Prostitution Reform Bill — Procedure Third Reading 
[Volume:609;Page:6589] 
BRENT CATCHPOLE (NZ First) 
: 
 This bill is a mishmash of band-aids and it will not achieve the stated aims of its promoter Labour’s Tim Barnett. Mr Barnett would have us believe that under this bill the health safety and employment laws will protect prostitutes and sex workers. Under the current law prostitution is not illegal and therefore they already have those rights. 
This bill is not about the health and well-being of prostitutes. Instead it is about the decriminalisation of the peripheral businesses surrounding prostitution—such things as pimping brothel keeping trafficking in young women and drugs. This bill prohibits the hiring of children under the age of 18. Current laws already prohibit that yet if we look at the prostitutes who are working on the streets of the cities of New Zealand we will find girls as young as 10 11 and 12 years of age selling their bodies in order to feed drug habits. There is no evidence to support Tim Barnett’s claim that this bill will improve the situation or make it any safer for sex workers. The exact opposite of that will occur because the reforms will not be able to be policed thus opening the door to organised crime. I include in that comment the New Zealand Prostitutes Collective which is an organisation championed by the Prime Minister and funded by the Government. It is the prime target—the one organisation that is out there promoting prostitution and recruiting young people into it under the guise of providing them with a service. 
From the day that this bill was introduced in September 2000 New Zealand First and in particular my colleague Peter Brown have campaigned against these reforms. Peter Brown has seen prostitution first hand. Firstly as a ship’s officer and then while running his own stevedoring business he has seen the degradation of prostitutes as they flocked to the docks and to the ports to wait for the arrival of ships. He saw the degradation of those women particularly the young women and especially the young Maori women and it saddened him. All the New Zealand First members have voted against this bill in all its stages before the House—during the first reading the second reading and the Committee stage—because we firmly believe that the bill will not help sex workers. Instead it sends the wrong message to the young and the vulnerable. 
I urge all members of this House to vote against this bill and to support a member’s bill that I have in the ballot. My bill would provide a real solution to the issues surrounding prostitution. My bill is based on the Swedish law and prostitution has almost entirely disappeared from the streets of Sweden. Tim Barnett will suggest that prostitution has simply been driven underground but there is no evidence of that. In fact all the evidence shows that prostitution is no more underground in Sweden than it ever was. My bill like the Swedish law provides support programmes to help and encourage sex workers to leave the industry. It provides support education and real alternatives for them outside that industry. Other European countries are currently examining the same law with a view to adopting it in the same way as the Swedish people have done because those countries have seen that it has worked in Sweden. I will name the countries. Holland is one of them. Holland legalised prostitution and it is now looking to change the law back. Holland has realised that it does not work when prostitution is legalised—and nor will it work when it is decriminalised. 
I will vote against this bill and I ask all members to vote against this mishmash of a band-aid bill called the Prostitution Reform Bill. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Before I call the next speaker I want to advise the people who are listening to this debate that the only people who can participate in it are members of Parliament. I make that point very seriously. There is no contribution other than that from members of Parliament.