Brian Rudman: Brothel quick to embrace past it once spurned

COMMENT

Last November, brothel-keeper Suzanne Carter was insistent that Club 574, her "massage parlour" at Greenwoods Corner in Epsom, was a mere seven months old.

In submissions opposing Auckland City's new brothel and commercial sex premises bylaw, she went out of her way to emphasise that "the business I operate has absolutely no association with any previous business operated from this site, and chooses not to be discriminated against for any possible past activities at this site".

Less than a year later, it is a very different story. Her business partner Anthony Howard Grant is now seeking dispensation from the new bylaw for Club 574 on the grounds that a brothel has been operating on the site for five years.

With 19 other massage parlour/gentlemen's establishments around town, Club 574 is now desperately keen to embrace the past. Because by proving a long history of on-site funny business, Club 574 opens up the opportunity to seek an "existing use" dispensation from the stringent restrictions of the new bylaw, in its case the ban against operating within a residential zone or within 250m of a place of worship.

Indeed the sudden rush by Auckland's "massage parlours" to prove a murky ancestry is like rich Americans trying to blue up their blood by buying obscure European aristocratic titles. In recent weeks, the public notices in Auckland City's official City Scene have read like a parody of the court bulletin.

The Pelican Club, Eden Tce - " brothel ... operating for eight years". Flora's, Pitt St - "brothel ... operating for 26 years". Nana Thai Traditional Massage, Hobson St - "brothel ... operating for about three years". Club 574, Epsom - "brothel ... operating for five years".

Remember, prostitution and brothel keeping were decriminalised only in June last year.

Don't get me wrong, the law change was long overdue. However, the thought that Club 574 is now trying to take advantage of years of law-flouting by its predecessors in a bid to survive in its residential setting seems unjust. Particularly to residential neighbours who have been crying "brothel" for the past decade and been ignored.

Three years ago I wrote how the neighbours were fighting expansion plans at 574 Manukau Rd, then known as Casablanca, and that the battle went back a decade or more.

Council files revealed how slack the bureaucrats had been going back at least a decade. From October 1991, there are notes of planners threatening legal action over illegal alterations and unpermitted plumbing, for what the owners said was a private gentlemen's club/escort agency.

A planner's note records a drainlayer's earthy aside that it was to be "a knocking shop".

It became an "escort agency" then "a massage parlour" without any attempt to acquire council permits.

Officials balked at city lawyers' request for "first-hand evidence" in order to prosecute. It wasn't until March 1999, following an application for a liquor licence, that the council finally ordered the parlour to close within a month.

The owner then pleaded for a retrospective permit for an "existing non-complying massage parlour" on the grounds that when she bought the business in 1993 she didn't realise it was unpermitted. Unbelievably, Auckland City agreed, without consulting the local community.

In May 2002, the Liquor Licensing Authority heard an application for an on-licence for "massage parlour" Club 574. Owner Suzanne Wendy Carter gave evidence that her family trust bought the property the previous year. (This seems at odds with her submission to Auckland City more than two years later that "the massage parlour I own is Club 574, and this business commenced operation on 03 April 2003".)

In his decision granting a liquor licence, Judge Unwin noted some objectors had alleged, without proof, that it was a brothel. "Ms Carter's response is that she has invested too much money on the premises and the business to jeopardise that situation." He later added that "although an inference of illegality could be drawn from the evidence ... we are not prepared to do so".

Now, it seems, the more people who infer the place has always been a brothel the better, as far as Club 574's chances of getting an "existing use" dispensation go. Somehow that doesn't seem very fair.