Prostitution bill stirs passions

Manukau residents say prostitutes are disrupting their sleep and their businesses. Picture / Greg Bowker

"You have no idea of the depths of depravity these people practise," thundered Edwin Fallon from the guest speaker's chair at select committee hearings in Manukau City yesterday.

The committee was hearing submissions on a Manukau-specific bill to curb street prostitution, and Mr Fallon gave his with both barrels.

He told the committee of MPs - which included former Wellington Mayor Mark Blumsky and transsexual former prostitute Georgina Beyer - that licentious behaviour by sex workers and their clients was going on at all hours of the night. And it was affecting his work.

"I can't do a 10-hour day because I only get four hours' sleep."

At one point, he was told by committee chairwoman Steve Chadwick to tone down his language.

"My language is beautiful compared to theirs," Mr Fallon replied.

Submissions from other Manukau residents were no less impassioned.

A former Tamaki College teacher said he was concerned about claims of school-age prostitutes working the shopping precincts of South Auckland.

"When I see school pupils in school uniforms ... the whole of society needs to do something. I think those of you who are in Parliament, please do something about it."

John McCracken - who owns a Professionals real estate office at Hunters Corner, a notorious hangout for sex workers - said he risked losing his business, and prostitutes used the business carpark "every night".

Ian McGechie of the Hunters Corner Town Centre Society asked the MPs how they would feel if their young children were asking about "the balloon-shaped thing in the gutter".

"If you really have a social conscience, you will support this [bill]."

The hearings also attracted submissions from the Destiny Church and the normally reclusive Exclusive Brethren.

The bill would help restore "the very fabric of New Zealand society", said Destiny member Turuwhenua Timutimu, referring at one point to biblical favourites Sodom and Gomorrah, then quoting scripture from the Book of Leviticus about allowing one's daughter to become a prostitute.

Mr Timutimu believed God needed to be "brought back in to the equation".

Allan Newman of Exclusive Brethren said his family had lived in Papatoetoe for 85 years but he felt it was no longer safe to bring up children there.

But not everyone supported the bill.

Maori warden Diane Black believed it should, at the very least, apply to the sex workers' "pimps" too.

Denise Ritchie of Stop Demand, a group fighting the sexual exploitation of children, said the bill should target men who pick up underage sex workers.

Debbie Baker of the Lifecentre Trust said the bill would make young sex workers "more enslaved to the industry".

Sex workers had to be taught self esteem and job skills, and offered counselling in drug and alcohol abuse, rather than persecuted, she said.

The Aids Foundation was confident the bill would drive many sex workers underground and increase instances of unsafe sex.

The national Prostitutes' Collective had the last word on the matter.

Karen Ritchie, a former sex worker of 25 years, said prostitution was merely "a name to blame" for authorities.

"To attempt to stamp out sex workers ... is wrong and will not work. It is my experience that people continue to work, but will be forced to work in underground situations."

She said council estimates putting the number of sex workers in South Auckland in the hundreds were exaggerated, with "between 15 and 20" prostitutes on duty in the city "on any one night".

Kate Dickie, also of the collective, said all the legislative tools were already in place to control prostitution, "so why isn't it being enforced?"

Forcing the problem underground would only increase the size of South Auckland's red-light area, she said.

The select committee - which also heard submissions on a graffiti control bill for Manukau City - heard more than 50 prostitution submissions at yesterday's one-day hearing. It is due to report to Parliament on June 6.