The other 51 MPs are selected from the party lists. Parliament's decisions affect all New Zealanders. Have your say and influence the laws passed by Parliament.
You can get involved by voting in elections, contacting an MP, making a submission or petitioning Parliament. I will endeavour to give all parties at least one speech. Many thought that this day would never come. Those who 20 years ago started to make the link between public law and public health, and concluded that making criminals out of prostitutes was simply the wrong policy, seemed out on the edge of debate. Those who fought against this bill even getting to a select committee certainly hoped that this day would never come.
This bill was last debated here over 2 years ago at its first reading on 8 November By 87 votes to 21 the House agreed to send it to the Justice and Electoral Committee. The committee took two messages from that vote: first, there was something wrong with the current law that needed to be sorted; second, the model of law reform proposed in the bill, decriminalisation, was a good starting point for rigorous committee examination.
In summary, the committee took that brief, and in the report before us today has delivered on it handsomely. First, we looked to the sex industry in New Zealand as it is now. Then we examined the current law, its relevance to that industry, and how the proposed law would improve or worsen things.
We agreed that the current law was untenable. It is based on a nonsense, rewarding the strong and punishing the weak. It inflates the risks of prostitution while punishing those who seek positive solutions. Thus, only 2 months ago, the police raided a brothel in Wellington and used the presence of condoms, there to prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, in order to prove a brothel-keeping charge.
