STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT NZ) : I started on this process with something more than an open mind. I started with the presupposition that the law should have no place in the bedrooms of the nation; that it was a matter of private morality, and that by endeavouring to regulate private morality we would be doing more harm than good. I sat on the Justice and Electoral Committee, which heard the evidence, or most of it. I reached the stage where I could not take any more, and, in the end, for my sin—I ceased to come along—I became the chairman of the committee that had to bring it to the conclusion. I was pleased to hear Georgina Beyer’s comments about having an open mind. Unfortunately, I still have an open mind. I propose to vote against the bill, at this stage, out of revulsion, but not out of revulsion for prostitution; I believe that only those without sin should cast the first stone. My revulsion is at what appeared to me, throughout this, to be a kind of insincerity—I am not allowed, in the Chamber, to use the word that would describe it better. I came to feel revulsion for those who wanted to tap into looking fashionable, who wanted to tap into a list of noble objectives, but refused to look at the detail, and refused to look at what we were actually doing and how the law would actually work.

During the select committee’s consideration of the bill, I tried to get someone to tell me which human rights of sex workers were presently not the same for them as for everyone else. I tried to get someone to tell me what in this bill actually safeguards a human right of a sex worker, but I never got an answer. I tried to get someone to tell me what in this bill protects sex workers from exploitation, when in fact we are abolishing the law against pimping, and when, around the world, the activity of the pimps who enslave those who work for them, in a variety of ways, is the most exploitative element of prostitution. I tried to get someone to tell me how this bill promoted the welfare and occupational health and safety of sex workers when in fact the promoters of the bill actually admit there is a deliberate bias, in what we have really done, against brothels and in favour of what they seem to see as some kind of utopian worker cooperatives—small worker cooperatives, probably not more than four, that would have no boss. So what they have done is put health and safety obligations on brothel owners—the bosses, the operators—then build a law that will encourage street-work and will increase the hurdles, the potential liabilities, for brothel owners.

I considered that, and I said that if these slogans meant something, we would be working through this bill to try to see how it will actually be implemented. For example, we prohibit the use in prostitution of persons under 18 years of age. Let us put aside for the moment the fact that that was already illegal under the Crimes Act. It is claimed as one of the benefits of the bill. When the police told us that to make it work they will need to know how old people are, that they will need to be able to find out how old people are reasonably conveniently, and that one way of doing that would be to require, as at present, brothel-keepers to have evidence of age, the promoters of the bill said no. We have a prohibition on the use in prostitution of persons under 18 years of age, and I suggested that there ought to be at least some responsibility or some culpability on a 17-year-old who deliberately uses false age identification, but there was no prospect of that. So I came to the position where I had to go back to my caucus—and ACT will stand up for unpopular principle, if necessary—and I had to say: “I’m finding it very hard to recommend that you vote for this bill, which should have been a simple decriminalisation.”

I proposed a test: a provision that stated, in detail, that nothing in the bill will prevent someone who believes prostitution is wrong from advocating strongly against it; a provision that would confirm that the legislation is intended to decriminalise but not to normalise. In other words, the normal social pressures that Ms Rich mentioned—the pressures from parents, schools, other agencies against an activity that most will think is damaging—should be given free rein, provided that there is no unlawful coercion. That provision was removed. In fact, at one stage in the drafting we had something that was a little bit beefier than the pious reference that we now see in clause 3. So I became convinced that there was an agenda here that was about more than just taking away the impediments to public health.

We had much evidence—none of it very compelling, though, in the sense of showing the link between cause and effect—from people who are active in the industry that the law presently discourages the use of condoms and other preventives, and that there is some present discouragement to using health services. I accept that, but what I do not accept is that the methods that one might use to ensure that those discouragements are removed, without encouraging more stand-over tactics, were not acceptable to the select committee.

I spent a bit of time in Holland in October, while this bill was being considered. I visited the chief of police in charge of the Amsterdam vice squad, as we would call it. We talked for 2 or 3 hours about how they have been dealing with the various issues, and at the end of it he said to me, in very good English: “If I were in your position I would think we have heaven.” The big problem for them is trafficking, drug use, gangs, and the control of this industry by criminals. What does this bill do? It wipes out the only real reason that I can see, from the evidence given to us at the select committee, that there is not significant criminal involvement in prostitution in New Zealand—that is, the Massage Parlours Act.

It was probably never intended as a way of keeping prostitution relatively clean, but that has been the practical effect. Loathe though I am to see a situation where a law is effectively disregarded or un-enforced, change may be worse. I am forced to think that there is some type of legislative Hipprocratic-type rule: “First do no harm.” I cannot be satisfied that here we are doing no harm. It is an on-balance conclusion. I would like to be persuaded, if this bill gets to the Committee stage, by amendments that show more sincerity than there has been to date. The real interest here is in public health and in removing some of the unpleasantness and the risks. Police corruption is just one of the real risks in this industry.

The only positive thing that this bill does at the moment is that it sends the labour inspector into the brothel. It forgets about all those who will then run out the backdoor and will thereafter be working without the benefit of a labour inspector, without the benefit of the current police register, and without the benefit of the fact that the current threat—the threat to the pimps—at the moment does not affect the prostitute. Prostitution has not been illegal in New Zealand for 100 years. The current threats are all on the brothel keepers and the pimps. Yet somehow I am supposed to believe that removing the only sanctions or threats to the brothel keepers and the pimps will bring nirvana and a world of women and young men free of coercion.