Tauranga to ban brothels near homes

By ROSALEEN MacBRAYNE

The Tauranga District Council is to draft a bylaw banning brothels from residential areas.

Councillors at a policy and strategy committee meeting yesterday recommended the move in response to the Prostitution Reform Act, passed by members of Parliament five weeks ago by one votem.

Its regulation was left to local authorities but other councils are waiting for their professional body, Local Government New Zealand, to come up with a model bylaw.

A working party had been set up but was not expected to have firm guidelines before September, a spokeswoman said from the organisation's annual conference in Queenstown.

Kapiti Coast Council voted to ban brothels outright in its district, but was told that could not legally be done because it would go against central Government.

Councils can either pass a bylaw restricting the location and signage of the establishments or go through the more complicated and costly process of a district plan change, making brothels non-compliant.

A resource consent application would then be needed to establish a brothel in a residential neighbourhood.

The new law puts a legal framework around the sex industry. Licensed brothels will now operate under public health and employment laws.

Like Tauranga, other councils wanting to put constraints on prostitution have found it cannot be done in a single, speedy step. Any local regulation changes have to go through a public consultation process.

Tauranga council staff will now word a bylaw which will go back to the committee for discussion. Councillors want to spell out, for instance, how close brothels can come to residential zones.

"This is going to be a minefield of expense," said one councillor, Bill Faulkner. "We have fallen right into the hole the Government has made for us."

He predicted already overworked staff would be swamped with complaints from "the moral high-grounders".

Councillors want the matter of recovering expenses raised with Local Government NZ and the Government.

Said Brad Shipton: "Like it or not, we have got this legislation and we have to deal with it." The best way was a bylaw keeping brothels out of residential areas "and the rest will fall into place".