Collins Judith: Prostitution Reform Bill — Second Reading 
Collins Judith: Prostitution Reform Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:606;Page:3623] 
JUDITH COLLINS (NZ National—Clevedon) 
: 
 I rise to say that I will not support the bill and I will not support it for various reasons. In my opinion prostitution is rape accompanied by payment—if the prostitute is lucky. That is all it is. I will not vote against this bill just because of moral issues. I will vote against it because I believe that prostitution is a terrible thing for prostitutes. There are already supposedly 8000 prostitutes in this country. Members of the House who are worried about prostitutes being criminalised should read the first sentence of the introduction in the commentary on the bill: “Prostitution itself is not an illegal activity in New Zealand.” What is illegal is pimping soliciting on the streets and that sort of activity. Prostitution itself is not an illegal activity and it has not been for over 100 years. What makes anyone think that voting in favour of this bill will decriminalise prostitution? It will not because it cannot. What it does do is decriminalise the activities of people who will abuse people who happen to be prostitutes. 
In my years as a lawyer I dealt with several prostitutes. They were generally really good clients—they always paid in cash they never expected something for nothing and they always had a jolly good sense of humour. That is worth a lot in my book. I did take the opportunity to ask those women about their lives as prostitutes and it was not a very pretty tale. One woman showed me her diary which was basically her tally book of how many men she was servicing within a night. On a really good night—which was the way she described it—there were nine. I asked her what she thought about when that was happening to her and she said to me: “Judith what I do is I don’t see anything. I’m not there and all I can think about is a $100 bill and it’s flying in the air towards me and I’m about to catch it.” If anyone in this Parliament has ever dealt with rape victims as I have that is a similar tale—the disassociation of the mind from the body and the focusing on not being there because it is all over now. That is what we are talking about.  
We have been told that this bill will help the safety of prostitutes but we have just heard from the previous speaker that it will not help the safety of prostitutes. We have been told that it will be a crime to coerce someone into having commercial sex. Well gee whiz it already is a crime. That is what the Crimes Act is for. It is already a crime. For those who say that it will stop under-age prostitution I think I have just seen a pig fly through the air. That is absolute rubbish. We were told in a previous Parliament that lowering the drinking age to 18 would stop 16-year-olds from drinking and what has happened? Now 14-year-olds are drinking. That is what happens in this country when those kinds of laws are passed. [ 
Interruption 
] I remind Lianne Dalziel that this is a conscience vote and I have given her people some credit tonight. She should remember that.  
We have heard tonight from Georgina Beyer who in my opinion is the most capable member of the Labour caucus and is not a Minister only because of her transsexual background. That is the only reason because she is definitely the most capable. She has told us tonight about the psychological damage of being a prostitute. I have spoken with prostitutes myself and asked them what it is that they do and what the damage is to them. I asked one of them if there was a lot of drug use in massage parlours—which by the way I have to tell some members on the other side of the House are actually brothels—and she said to me: “Of course Judith there has to be drugs because how the hell else would you do the job?”. That sounds sensible to me and I see Georgina Beyer is agreeing. Do not tell me this legislation will help those people. It is already a very very bad industry. At the moment we have brothels. They are regulated. The police have access to them. There are controls over who can work in them. This bill will not help that situation at all. It will lead to legitimised pimping and soliciting on the streets. If members think that it will not they should go down King’s Cross in Sydney sometime and see the 14 year-olds prostituting themselves on the streets. Do not tell me this bill will not do that. Of course it will.  
I will not be supporting this bill. We have been told that if the vote on the second reading is lost tonight it will be another 20 years before this legislation comes back to Parliament. I say “Thank God for that.”