NZ may fine clients to get hookers off the street

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NZ may fine clients to get hookers off the street

Postby sam » Wed May 09, 2007 9:59 am

Pay attention to what the strip club owner says despite "Firecats" being an awful choice for a strip club name. -sam

http://www.stuff. co.nz/stuff/thepress/westcoast/4050168a11.html

Fine clients to get hookers off the street
By IRENE CHAPPLE - Sunday Star Times
Sunday, 6 May 2007

A review of prostitution laws will propose fining clients who buy sex off street workers in an effort to limit the industry to brothels.

The prostitution industry has been under review by a United Future-led group and the Ministry of Justice since it was legalised in 2003. Both reports have considered numbers of prostitutes now working, health and safety issues, and anecdotal stories around women being brought into New Zealand specifically to work in the industry.

Inland Revenue figures on the number of prostitutes are not available because there is no industry tax code, but there are believed to be around 6000 in New Zealand.

The Prostitution Working Group, made up of United Future MP Gordon Copeland, former United Future MP Larry Baldock, and Labour MP Marian Hobbs, was part of United Future's confidence and supply agreement with Labour. The report will be released next month and will contain at least three major recommendations.

Copeland said the review group - which had met with around 243 people representing city councils, residents, and prostitution and welfare groups - had pinpointed several legal issues for improvement.

Copeland said legalised brothels meant there was no need for street prostitution, which carried more dangers than working in a brothel.

"We would look to bring in sanctions for buyers on the street... there are people as young as 12 out there ."

Copeland, who voted against the act when it passed by just one vote, said the group's aim was to get rid of street prostitution.

He said Christchurch people, in particular, had raised concerns about the number of prostitutes working there.

"People living in Manchester Street came to us in big numbers."

Penalties for buyers would be "an absolute key recommendation" of the report, which had "huge support" from women's groups. It would also re-introduce policing of the industry to crack down on underage prostitution and violent behaviour by clients.

Copeland said the report would also recommend halving the number of prostitutes who can work in suburban brothels from four to two, and cracking down on underage prostitutes by getting at least two forms of identification for brothel workers.

However, the Prostitution Law Review Committee chair Paul Fitzharris - a former police assistant commissioner - said punishing clients was not necessarily a deterrent and some prostitutes wanted to work on the streets.

Fitzharris also rejected Copeland's claim that prostitute numbers had increased four-fold. He said research conducted by his committee - which will make its final report next year - showed numbers had stayed steady or decreased.

Copeland said he believed young people dressed in "hoodies" - rather than mini- skirts - were operating as prostitutes and had not been counted.

However, Fitzharris said his committee's figures, collated by police and the Prostitutes' Collective, was the most accurate count ever done.

Both had heard anecdotal evidence of more Asian sex workers, some brought into the country specifically for the job.

Fitzharris warned against reading too much into anecdotal evidence, but one strip club owner, Tony Garraway of Firecats in Hamilton, said the phenomena had ruined conditions for New Zealand prostitutes.

Garraway said women from countries such as Thailand and China were charging as little as $50 a job and undercutting the locals. He said there were also health issues because the industry was no longer being closely monitored.

"I blame it on the fact they legalised it and nobody did any research on what was going to happen, they left it wide open."
"Your orgasm can no longer dictate my oppression"

Trisha Baptie
sam
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Re: NZ may fine clients to get hookers off the street

Postby sam » Tue Feb 14, 2012 10:49 am

Five years later and they've added penalties for prostituted women to their original idea of penalties for johns. This is what happens when blame for the problems of prostitution are distributed on a mistaken 50/50 basis between victims and victimizers because sex TRANSACTION, sex TRADE, sex BUSINESS.

Prostitute ban could end residents' woes
Tuesday February 14, 2012 Source: ONE News

http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/prostit ... es-4720670

It is hoped a Bill before Parliament will bring an end to years of torment for residents affected by prostitution in south Auckland.

The Local Government and Environment Committee is considering the Bill which would see prostitution banned from certain areas of Manukau, like Hunter's Corner.

"We want to impose what is similar to a liquor ban, to ban sex workers from those areas," George Wood from Auckland Council told TV ONE's Breakfast.

"The problem has gone on for years, these people have been there 30 or 40 years, elderly people living in a residential street who have prostitutes sitting on their front fence at night raucously calling out to clients."

If the Bill is passed it would mean fines of up to $2000 for prostitutes caught soliciting in banned areas, and the police would have the power to stop their clients' cars and arrest them too.

"The police tell us they've got no power to stop the cars and deal with them, this gives them the powers they need to be effective," Wood said.

Prostitution was made legal in 2003 and supporters of the Bill say it simply needs to be better regulated.

However, Annah Pickering from New Zealand Prostitutes Collective told Breakfast the move would just force prostitutes to solicit work elsewhere.

She said street prostitutes do not have the money to set up their own brothels and would be unfairly victimised by the changes.

"They'll end up having to go to prison and then they'll end back up on the streets again, it's a revolving door," she said.

"There are laws in place to deal with littering, as well as public nuisance and noise control, so we don't need any more laws to deal with regulating vulnerable people who are poor."

The Local Government and Environment Committee will consider the Bill and submissions close on February 29.
sam
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