Turner Judy: Prostitution Reform Bill — Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee 
Turner Judy: Prostitution Reform Bill — Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee 
[Volume:607;Page:4470] 
JUDY TURNER (United Future) 
: 
 One of the aspects of tikanga Maori that I most admire—and I hope the Committee will let me try to explain this in the best terms I know how—is the concept that we move forward into the future by backing into the future. My understanding is that the thought is that we make decisions about our future from that which we can learn from what has gone before and I admire that. 
The sponsor’s intention is to bring about through this legislation harm minimisation. However if we are to look at what has gone before then we need to look to the experience of Victoria Australia. In fact as time has passed since 1982 with the Victoria legislation the state has been embroiled in a series of ongoing legislative tweaking to redress the consequences of the supposed reform. It has had to bring in licensing and local planning controls to limit the size of brothels to outlaw advertising to establish a prostitution control board to register prostitutes to have mandatory health checks to criminalise street prostitution and to have mandatory disclosure to landlords. The Victoria publication the  
Age 
 newspaper reported in 1999 that there had been an increase in the number of legal brothels from 40 to 94 in just a decade. This number needs to be added to the 84 escort agencies. However the real growth in Victoria was in the illegal sector which trebled in 12 months and outnumbered the legal members and establishments of the industry. For instance Victoria now stages the annual Sexpo which illustrates how acceptable the industry is now. It is reported that women in booths at the Sexpo will sell their services of a kind for the same price as one can buy a pottle of frozen yoghurt at the next stand. 
The misbelief that once decriminalised women in the industry will be able to choose their own working conditions and their own clients and have industry health and safety standards in place are misplaced. The truth is that it has become much more difficult in Victoria for women to set up in business for themselves due to the illegal monopolisation of the industry by brothel-owners. For instance the average going rate on the market for brothels is A$1 million. Mandatory disclosure means that prostitutes setting up in business face exorbitant costs due to inflated rentals. Brothel managers and owners demand anywhere between 50 to 60 percent of the takings making it now a fact that it is very difficult for prostitutes to earn a living. 
Safety has been reduced. Jocelyn Snow of the Prostitutes Collective of Victoria in her study of the impact of legislation on the conditions of exploitation faced by prostitutes found “The worst thing was the clients—the arrogance the smell the violence the demands. One in five clients still request and get unsafe sex.” The 1998 study conducted by the Macfarlane Burnet Institute for Medical Research and Public Health done in conjunction with the Prostitutes Collective of Victoria stated that 40 percent of men in the study did not use condoms when exploiting prostituted women. 
Street prostitution was very much in the news during 2001. Residents in the main prostitution area of St Kilda demanded action from the state Government because the prostituted women were being abused in the porches and gardens of St Kilda residents. A residents’ spokeswomen said that there is now an open-air uncontrolled unmanaged all-day brothel. 
Legislation that was intended to eliminate organised crime from the sex industry has in fact had the reverse effect. It has brought with it an explosion in the trafficking of women into prostitution by organised crime. Convicted criminals fronted by supposedly more reputable people remain in business.