Blumsky Mark: Manukau City Council (Control of Street Prostitution) Bill — Second Reading 
Blumsky Mark: Manukau City Council (Control of Street Prostitution) Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:634;Page:5671] 
MARK BLUMSKY (National) 
: 
 I am one of the few speakers tonight who was also a member of the Local Government and Environment Committee. I am basing my speech on what I saw and heard in the select committee what I read in the submissions and what I have personally discovered first-hand in discussions I have had outside the select committee process that addressed questions I had to answer in my own mind. I am not tainted by any previous discussion in the House; I do not have any background in that debate at all. My position and the way I will vote on this bill is formed purely from the process I have just underlined. 
I actually enjoyed the select committee process. Even though at the end of the day we had a minority report I thought the whole committee took very seriously the problem that Manukau is bringing to the table. It made every attempt to listen to understand and to have great compassion for the problems that people were bringing to the table. So I congratulate the select committee on that process and I also acknowledge the fine work that the officials did for us. 
This is a hard situation because I have followed all my National Party colleagues in the debate and I have reached a different conclusion. I say to my esteemed colleague Dr Hutchison that I will not try to take apart his argument. This has been a passionate debate. There is a lot of emotion in this issue and one cannot take it lightly. The biggest problem also for me is that I am a huge fan of local government and of the fact that local government should be looking for local solutions. The problem is that I do not think this bill is a very good solution. One has to support where local government is coming from emotionally but the debate and the discussions we have been hearing focus on kids aged 12. That is not the issue here; the issue is street prostitution in Manukau not 12-year-olds in prostitution. That is a different issue that sure as hell needs to be addressed by this House and the review with great urgency. 
At the end of the day this is not a good bill and I cannot support it just about for that reason alone. I will allude to some of the reasons why this is so. One of the major concerns I had in the select committee was that I felt many of the submissions came from people who just wanted to ban prostitution full stop. Most of those submitters just did not like prostitution and they have that right—that is not an issue—but that was not the purpose for the select committee inquiry. At the end of the day prostitution is legal and I am sure this House will have the chance to re-debate that if that process is part of the August 2007 review. I sure as heck hope—and I am sure it will happen—that all of those who made submissions on the Manukau City Council (Control of Street Prostitution) Bill will make submissions on the review process. 
I first of all decided on the following reality check: will the bill if it is passed make a difference? Will any difference be made to the problems that Manukau is talking about? One has to ask the industry. According to the New Zealand Prostitutes Collective since the Prostitution Reform Act 2003 was passed “we have seen many positive gains and examples of the impact of the legislation. These gains include health and safety employment rights greater access to health services and reporting of incidents to the police. The Manukau City Council bill endangers this.” 
It is not just the New Zealand Prostitutes Collective that says this. Recently I wandered the streets as I do most nights with Winston. As members know I live in Cuba Mall and it is very easy for me to wander through the red-light area of our city. Winston and I have had the chance over many nights to converse with people in the street prostitution industry. I assure the House they are very clear in the message they gave me that this bill will not make a bean’s worth of difference to stopping street prostitution—in Wellington Manukau or wherever. The problem was that they ended up patting Winston half the jolly time. I quote again: “The purpose of the Manukau City Council bill is to prohibit soliciting and the NZPC does not believe it will achieve this goal by recriminalising people.” 
But I have to suggest that through this process the community has spoken of some real concerns and issues. In the select committee we heard some terrible stories. For example too many people are now buying P and in an effort to get money to subsidise their P habit many of them unfortunately are selling their bodies. But even worse we heard stories of families where the older members forced their younger family members on to the street to earn the money to support someone else’s habit. That is where the message came out loud and clear that some of them were kids aged 12. Those older family members are a real problem because of what they are forcing their younger family members into doing so that they can feed their own habit. The tragedy is that the Prostitution Reform Act 2003 supposedly prohibits prostitution by people under 18. So that has turned to custard and needs to be very seriously addressed. The police need to be provided with the tools—namely more police—so that they can deal with the problem. They have made it very clear that under-age prostitution is not a priority for them. They weigh other issues much higher in priority given their resources. 
After reading the submissions and hearing the submitters I suggest that a lot of the issues associated with prostitution in Manukau are not actually about prostitution itself. I have a tendency to believe that the bill is a bit of a sledgehammer to crack a nut. The situation in Manukau is not very different from that in many other places. It seems there is an issue with litter there is an issue with noise there is an issue with graffiti and there is an issue with public nuisance. Many of the submitters who came before the committee wanted to talk about litter noise and public nuisance. There is a hell of a lot of law out there now that can be used to address those problems. The president of Hunters Corner Town Centre Papatoetoe said that he was very specific about noise offensive litter left in doorways and the perceived association with crime and graffiti. 
As I indicated earlier many of the submitters wanted to talk about litter and graffiti and things not being clean. The police have very much come under the spotlight and rightly so and I say to the Government that it has to send a message to the police in South Auckland that they must reprioritise on this issue the minute the Government gives them the numbers. How big is the problem? Many of my colleagues in the House today alluded to the fact that the numbers of people involved are not as dramatically large as we have been told. The issue has been talked up. There is an average of six to 10 not the hundreds that we are hearing. I have had that first-hand as well. 
The bill imposes fines of up to $10000 and the people who came through the process made it quite clear that they would just work harder to raise the $10000. I can assure the House that if they are fined $10000 they will be out on the streets a lot more to earn the money to pay the fine. If members honestly believe that a $10000 fine will get those people off the streets they are absolutely wrong. In the worst case if they fear a fine they go underground. If they go underground we have incredible issues to do with safety. We have talked about the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and there are issues there. As I said issues were raised about cleanliness. 
I fully sympathise with the intent of the bill but it does not deliver the solution that Manukau is after. There is a review due in under a year’s time. That review I hope will bring something back to the House that can provide solutions to some of the problems. I hope we look at those solutions in a nationwide picture not a specific locality picture. Because the problems of those 12-year-olds and so on are not Manukau’s problems; they are New Zealand’s problems. I say to the Government: “You have to be part of that solution.”