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Government answer to NZ’s productivity problem- upgraded prostitute training

  • July 19th, 2007

Funding for tertiary courses in prostitution could be considered under changes aimed at boosting quality and relevance in the sector, education officials say.

This outcome was neither unforeseen, nor (in my opinion) unintended. I Chaired the Select Committee that considered Tim Barnett's Bill on prostitution. At my insistence the committee explored the risk that the removal of criminality would be converted by anti-discrimination law, to a duty to favour prostitution.
I drafted amendments to provide that absence of criminality did not interfere with individuals' freedom to criticise prostitution and to discourage it. The position of the State was more problematic. It is risky to allow the State complete freedom to discriminate against a lawful activity, though that does not stop the socialists from using the law to attack anything they do not like, including smoking. The Prostitutes Collective hostility to any provision guarding the freedom to criticise prostitution was strongly supported by Sue Bradford and Tim Barnett. She did not even want officials to advise on the risks of mandatory positive discrimination. She said it was scaremongering 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. 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 were not accepted.

Comments

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  • Porcupine
  • July 20th, 2007
  • 12:23 pm

Well they’ve already funded pet homeopathy courses, and no doubt Winz still gives supplementary benefit payments to have pets treated.

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  • Neil Johnson
  • November 22nd, 2007
  • 7:30 pm

‘Mr’ Barnett’s views on social policy seem to be guided wholly by self-interest and fuelled by a mistaken sense of persecution.

The implications, as you rightly point out, of decriminalising prostitution are only now becoming apparent and those of us who have daughters shudder to think at what these changes mean in the long-term.

A final point: one wonders what the old Labour Party members – workers in the traditional sense – would make of their party and its adoption of such a pro-homosexual and pro-prostitution policies.

Why am I reminded of Ancient Rome?

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