Petition for referendum on prostitution reforms

A petition seeking a referendum on the Prostitution Reform Act was launched in front of about 100 people in central Auckland yesterday.

The event in Aotea Square, associated with the Christian-based Maxim Institute and United Future party, announced a repeal week timed to coincide with the first anniversary of the act's passing.

United Future MP Larry Baldock said they hoped to repeal the prostitution legislation, which was passed last year on a conscience vote by a 60 to 59 margin after Labour's Muslim MP Dr Ashraf Choudhary abstained.

"But it is not a hate prostitutes campaign," he said. "It does not want to see harm to prostitutes - we don't want to see them underground or pushed into back alleys - we think repealing this law will help prostitutes."

Mr Baldock said laws concerning rape, incest, molestation and the sexual age of consent showed parliament is willing to determine morality issues.

She said they were now more prepared to approach police for help and were better able to ensure their clients practised safe sex.

Adopting Maxim's proposal to make it illegal to seek paid sex would force prostitutes underground to protect their incomes, Ms Healey said.

"Their grand solution will not work, but then the whole issue is so much removed from the reality of their lives," she said.

Ms Healey said surveys of newspaper advertisements seeking sex workers have showed the number of prostitutes has not risen since the act was passed last year.

She said the number of sex workers on New Zealand streets rose and fell according to economic trends not prostitutes' legal status.

Petition co-ordinator Daniel Goldie-Anderson said prostitution was a "career option like no other. It is not normal, it is slavery."

He planned to gather 310,000 signatures by October to call a referendum in 2005.

Under previous laws, prostitution was not illegal but acts associated with it, such as soliciting, pimping and brothel-keeping, were.

The reform act makes it illegal for under-18s to work as prostitutes.

It allows court-approved people to operate brothels and to live off the earnings of sex workers, and requires brothels, clients and prostitutes to practise safe sex to reduce the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.

Prostitutes can also ask for an employment contract, and are protected by health and safety laws.