Franks Stephen: Prostitution Reform Bill — Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee 
Franks Stephen: Prostitution Reform Bill — Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee 
[Volume:607;Page:4472] 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT NZ) 
: 
 I have listened to this debate in the hope that it would indicate a rational way through what is becoming an increasingly complex set of questions. When I spoke in the second reading debate I said that I had found it very hard to make a decision even after sitting through all the evidence and chairing the select committee for the second stage. I have now been through the amendments that are proposed and recognising that this is the title debate have tried to think what it is that is likely to emerge from that process overall. 
I indicated that I would oppose the bill in the form in which it was reported back because it did not do what it said it would do. It was not the simple decriminalisation that people were promised. It did not rationalise the law as could have easily been done since prostitution was already legal and all we needed to do was to get rid of the anomalies in solicitation. Solicitation could have been confined to hard sell aggressive interfering sale and we could have left the pimping law pretty much in place. As Mr Goff said our anti-trafficking law is already a form of anti-pimping law and maybe that could be rationalised. It could have dealt with the underage problem with more practical remedies or dealt with the mechanics of enforcement of law against child prostitution. It does none of these things. 
So I look at the bill and I look at the amendments to see how it has been fixed. When going through the problems the first one I identify is that the bill as a reform for prostitution is patently a bid for legitimisation or normalisation or destigmatisation of an activity that most people believe is undesirable. I listened to Mr Williamson and to his comparison with homosexual law reform and I was confirmed in my fear. I myself supported homosexual law reform—in fact I think I was pretty influential in the speeches made by one or more of the MPs who supported it. But I did not expect then that what has happened would occur. 
What we have seen as a result is that homosexuality has moved from being something that was unfairly and improperly treated by the criminal law to becoming a privileged status—for sexual orientation to be added into human rights law. Although I can discriminate against rugby players if I do not like rugby or I can discriminate against occupational groups—students social workers or even returned soldiers—if I do not like their values or their views I am not allowed to discriminate against homosexuals however much I might think homosexuality is undesirable. Here of course I am using “I” as “one”. What is happening here and we can see it in the definitions in this bill is that prostitution is redefined as commercial sexual services and prostitutes are redefined as sex workers and the objective is normalisation or destigmatisation. 
The next stage of course as I think is clearly signalled in Mr Goff’s Supplementary Order Paper is for prostitution to be treated by the law as an activity that it is verboten to criticise. I say that because Mr Goff’s Supplementary Order Paper recognises that local authorities who exercise the powers he wants to give them could be prevented from doing that in terms of the courts holding that it was an invalid form of breach of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. I think that is a signal to this Committee that what is happening here is not what the bill promises. 
The bill is not about protecting human rights protecting people from improper police practices or protecting them from the inability to enforce their contracts and the other disabilities that are presently attendant on prostitution. The bill goes the other way. After all the amendments we have seen the bill still has no practical means of enforcing health and safety rules for example. There are provisions for inspectors but the police must get warrants if they want to check on someone’s age. The inspectors may not enter homes. It is clearly contemplated by this bill that the preferred mode of operating a prostitution business is from home—by happy little cooperatives of self-employed prostitutes. Mr Goff’s bill goes further in that direction. He exempts the health and safety provisions. They are not to apply to self-employed prostitutes in brothels of fewer than four workers. Even the rhetoric about health and safety in that area has been proved very quickly to be hollow by the Supplementary Order Paper in the name of the Minister of Justice presumably with the support of the Labour Party. Labour members on the Justice and Electoral Committee made it very plain that their voting was on a party basis. 
I also look at the provisions relating to the police and their ability to enforce the under-age provisions. Mr Fairbrother when speaking about Mr Goff’s amendments said he was not aware of anyone being prosecuted for the offences that were put into the Crimes Act only a year and a half ago. Mr Goff made a big play of the fact that he had put these offences into our law already. Why have there been no prosecutions when the police told us that a good chunk of the prostitution at the moment is carried out by under-age workers? What is going to change when this bill deliberately makes it necessary for the police to get a search warrant before they can even enter premises and check on someone’s age? The select committee rejected suggestions that young workers should be obliged to carry identification. We have made a law that expects identification to be carried for drinking but not for selling one’s body. It may well be that there should be identification for neither but I cannot stand the insincerity that goes with a bill that purports to be a reform and instead sets out to create a smokescreen and lays the ground for a privileged status. 
I look also at this as bad law. It is a strict liability offence for a newspaper to accept an advertisement from a 17-year-old prostitute. The newspaper has no means of protecting itself. If the woman lies if she gives false identification if she induces the newspaper to take the advertisement by any trick whatsoever she is utterly immune from prosecution. The newspaper has no way of protecting itself. That is a deliberate decision in this bill and the select committee considered it at length. 
There is a provision in the bill which was intended to be protective that says that welfare benefits cannot be denied by reason of a refusal to take work as a prostitute. Of course it is redundant now that Mr Maharey has abolished the work test but at the time that we were considering this provision we also considered whether it might not be a backward or unintended inducement to prostitution. A very easy way of avoiding this stand-down would be to go from one form of employment to prostitution perhaps for one night and then one could not be required to go back to work. That possibility was pointed out at the drafting stage. Various drafting solutions were offered but they were rejected by the majority on the committee because those members have no intention of seeing this law work in its terms. They want this bill to be a smokescreen. 
We had another similar debate in the select committee. Drafting was done for us in relation to protecting neighbourhoods from concentrations of kerb-crawlers. Mr Goff’s bill deals with brothels. Brothels generated no complaints. I do not think there were any complaints to our committee about the location of brothels but there was serious complaint about concentrations of street prostitutes and the needles the noise the drinking the broken glass and the criminal element that was attracted by street workers. Mr Goff’s amendments do absolutely nothing about that and the committee rejected any provisions to deal with it. Mr Mapp’s amendments may deal with that or may give some power to do so but not directly.