SUE BRADFORD (Green) : I stand here in Parliament this evening to make one last plea to my fellow MPs—whatever political party they come from—to consider having the courage to cast a vote in favour of the decriminalisation of prostitution. The bill before us, which we have so hotly examined and debated for the last 3 years, is a good one, aimed simply at improving the health, safety, and welfare of one of the most vulnerable and exploited groups of workers in New Zealand. All the evils of the sex industry, which the opponents of this bill talk about with such anger—such as coercion, child prostitution, and the blatant exploitation of women—exist now. This bill aims to help end these evils, not promote them.

I have grown entirely sick of the misinformation that has been deliberately circulated in our communities. That misinformation about the Prostitution Reform Bill makes it sound as though the bill itself was causing all these iniquities, rather than aiming to end them. Representatives of organisations overseas—such as ECPAT Australia, the United Nations Children’s Fund, the World Health Organization, and the International Save the Children Alliance—call for the decriminalisation of prostitution, because they know that restrictive laws merely encourage violence, trafficking, rape, and the spread of HIV/AIDS—not the opposite. The way to combat these things is through the harm minimisation approach promoted in the bill before us today—through good public health and education; through strong penalties against coercion and the use of under-age prostitutes; and through the creation of an environment in which sex workers, mainly women, are not obliged to become part of the criminal underworld in order to carry out their occupation.

To those of my colleagues in Parliament who profess to be feminists, I make a special plea that they consider voting in favour of the bill today. Many of our struggles in the 1970s and 1980s centred on women’s right to choose—our right to take, and keep, control of our lives and our bodies. I therefore cannot understand why puritanical, 19th century concepts of abolitionism still have such a strong hold on women like Sandra Coney and others—for whom I have a very high regard, but who continue to believe that somehow continuing to criminalise prostitutes will help end the exploitation of women. That simply does not compute. How can the arresting of women empower them? How can putting them through the degrading processes of police custody and a court appearance, followed by the appearance of a conviction on their criminal record—which will dog them for the rest of their lives—free them or empower them? In what way will the arresting of women make it easier for women to exit the sex industry when a prostitution-related conviction is one of the major barriers to future employment or career advancement?

I do not know how many of the feminists and women MPs who oppose this bill have been through multiple experiences of strip-searching, arrest, imprisonment, police violence, and conviction, as I have. I would like to assure them that these are not experiences, in any context, that are likely, in any way, to improve one’s self-esteem or ability to enter straight, upside employment. It is high time we moved into an era where the Victorian hypocrisy of convicting and condemning women who sell sexual services, while protecting the men who buy them, is discarded once and for all. Tonight is our chance to do that. This is not to say that we should move to the so-called Swedish model, in which it is the clients who are criminalised. An amendment to this bill, proposing the Swedish model, was thrown out by a hearty majority 2 weeks ago, showing, I believe, that many MPs have learnt from the experiences of places like the UK and Sweden, where all that happened was that much of the industry was driven further underground, with all the resulting negative impacts in terms of things like the spread of STDs, rape, violence, and other harms to sex workers themselves and those around them. As long as prostitution is a reality, is it not more important for those of us who identify as feminists to promote the rights and well-being of one of the most vulnerable and exploited groups of women, rather than to continue to allow the forces of the State to harass and criminalise them?

I would like to turn now from feminists to another group of my fellow MPs—the members of the ACT party, who, I gather, are quite divided among themselves about this bill. As avowedly the party in Parliament that is most dedicated to getting Government out of ordinary people’s lives, I fail to comprehend how ACT members cannot support this bill. Decriminalisation of prostitution is all about getting the police out of the bedroom, when it comes to sex between two consenting adults. Why on earth do some ACT MPs think we should get the State out of education, health, housing, prisons, and everywhere else but not out of the bedroom—one of the most private places we can enter? There is a certain lack of consistency here, which is simply incomprehensible to me, and I appeal to ACT members to put their principles above their fear of the purveyors of certain brands of moral outrage.

On the other side of the House, we have a number of people from trade union backgrounds, who have, it seems, chosen to turn their backs on this particular group of workers. I am not talking about people like Lynne Pillay, or Helen Duncan, or Rick Barker, or a large number of other Labour people who have staunchly supported their colleague Tim Barnett’s bill. Rather, I am talking about some others who seem to think that workers’ rights are something that are to be left outside the door, when it comes to a brothel or massage parlour. Of course, this has been the status quo for generations. Sex workers have been, and are, subject to bullying, rape by the boss, and other forms of sexual harassment, as well as arbitrary fines, forced sex with clients, withholding of wages, enforced overtime, and denial of any time off for holidays or illness. In the current setting, many workers are taken on as self-employed, independent contractors with no protection as employees and with zero employment rights.

The protections of the Employment Relations Act, the health and safety in employment legislation, and accident compensation legislation simply do not apply, yet some of these workers are suffering the most feudally oppressive treatment by management seen in New Zealand today. Employers can get away with this because prostitution currently takes place in the criminal world. If this bill is passed, the balance of power between employers and workers in this industry will gradually begin to shift. It will take time, but workers will have the law on their side for the first time. They will have the capacity to unionise if they want to, and they will be much more able to leave the boss behind and set up in a self or group employment situation should they so choose.

Anyone who understands and supports the basic principles of trade unionism should vote for this bill. In my role as the Green Party member of Parliament responsible for disability issues, I would like to address another matter altogether. In the 3 years I have spent working on this bill, it has become increasingly apparent that there is a whole subtext in this debate about which most of the bill’s opponents are either oblivious or deliberately obtuse—that is, the situation that faces people with a major physical, mental, or intellectual disability. For those people, sex with a prostitute is the only way they will ever find physical closeness or release, for the rest of their lives, or for a major part of their lives. It is all very well to moralise about the so-called evils of prostitution, but I believe that the real evil comes when, as a society, we ignore the real needs of those less fortunate than most of us, at the same time as we condemn those who provide what is, in essence, a much-needed social service.

I would like to commend, in particular, IHC New Zealand for having the courage, as an organisation, to come out in support of this bill in the last couple of days. IHC is all too aware of the real needs of the many people it does its best to serve. On a broader front, I would also like to acknowledge Tim Barnett, the Prostitutes Collective, and all the MPs and church and community group representatives who have worked so hard for decriminalisation over recent months and years. They are the people who have had the nerve to step forward, in the face of a classic wave of moral outrage, to fight for a much-needed reform, which I am sure will happen whatever the vote tonight. Finally, I would like to say how honoured I am to have been the Green Party’s representative throughout this debate. We are the only party in Parliament to have taken a clear position throughout in support of this bill, because we recognise that old union saying: “A harm to one is a harm to all.” Until that harm is removed, none of us can be truly free.