Government urged to amend sex law

Hamilton City Council's bylaw currently restricts sex workers to non-residential areas.

The Government must step in to back local councils trying to stop a proliferation of home-based brothels in suburban neighbourhoods, says an alliance of community groups.

A civil hearing began yesterday in the High Court at Hamilton into a bid by Marama St brothel Toni's to overturn the city council's bylaw which restricts sex workers to non-residential areas and bans them from operating within 100m of schools, marae, childcare centres and churches.

A spokesman for the Family First lobby group, Bob McCroskie, who organised a protest outside the court yesterday, said he was not optimistic about the council's chances in light of previous cases in Christchurch and Auckland.

"Unfortunately the precedent has been set," he said. "Hamilton City Council will find it pretty tough - that's why we're calling on the Government to back up the council and amend the law so councils can enforce these bylaws, which people want and which are needed to protect families."

Under the Prostitution Reform Act, which legalised prostitution in 2003, councils supposedly have the power to decide where brothels are located.

But both Christchurch and Auckland City Councils have had their bylaws overturned in court, which found them to be not legally enforceable.

Last year, Christchurch sex industry's Terry Brown won a landmark High Court ruling, which struck out the Christchurch City Council's prostitution bylaw.

And in March, the High Court in Auckland quashed Auckland City Council's brothels bylaw, which listed many restrictions on their location.

The judge said that although it was understandable that many ratepayers did not want to live close to a brothel, the council's bylaws must be made on legal, not moral, grounds.

Mr McCroskie said New Zealanders had made it clear they did not want brothels operating in residential areas.

Hamilton City Council alone had received 1300 public submissions on the issue during the drafting of the bylaw, he said.

"We are calling on politicians to amend the legislation, to back up local councils to enforce what councils have decided.

"The people of New Zealand have said they don't want residential-based brothels, yet for some reason we're putting the human rights of the pimp ahead of that of families - kids have the right to be protected."

Some families living in the neighbourhood had been bothered by sex clients and were disturbed by the nuisance factors associated with them, such as drug and alcohol use.

"I've got two daughters and a son, and I don't want someone who is in the market for sex knocking on my door looking for a brothel."

Mr McCroskie said the law was flawed and had failed in a number of areas. "It was supposed to keep prostitutes safe. It hasn't, there have been two murders in Christchurch."

There had also been "turf wars" in many places, illegal brothels had multiplied, street prostitution had increased, the number of foreign sex workers had increased by 25 per cent, and child prostitution was on the rise.

"In Manukau, Gordon Copeland from United Future says teen prostitution has increased 400 per cent."

Mr McCroskie said legalisation had not worked and he wanted New Zealand to adopt the Swedish model, in which the client is prosecuted.

"Prostitution is a form of abuse."

- NZPA