Prostitution funded by the Government

Not an unintended consequence, says Stephen Franks on WhaleOils's blog. Stephen Franks was on the select committee of the Prostitution Law Reform Bill.

This outcome was neither unforeseen, nor (in my opinion) unintended. As Chair of the Select Committee that considered tim Barnett's Bill on prostitution I can assure you that the possibilities were well explored by the committee, at my insistence. I wanted a provision to ensure that the removal of illegality did not convert prostitution into an activity benefitting from the State's positive discrimination or patronage. I drafted amendments to provide that absence of criminality did not interfere with the freedom of people and organisations to criticise prostitution and to discourage it. The Prostitutes Collective hostility to that kind of provision was strongly supported by Sue Bradford. She did not even want officials to advise on the risks of mandatory positive discrimination. She said it was scaremongerinig when we asked officials to advise how school career guidance counsellors could avoid being forced to steer kids toward prostitution as a career if the industry alleged prejudice or discrimination in a refusal to do so, how WINZ could avoid denying or terminating unemployment benefits because of a refusal to accept a job opening at the local brothel, how training grants etc could be withheld for an employer or pimp who wanted to use them for recruitment and training.

The committee got no clear answer and the Labour/Green majority, with the liberals on our side of the table, ensured that those embarrassing issues were not followed up, and my amendments failed.