GEORGINA BEYER (Labour-Wairarapa): I support the title of the Prostitution Reform Bill—“reform”, as my colleague Mr Fairbrother mentioned before, being the operative word. Any reform of this particular industry has been a long time coming. I will speak on a quite narrow aspect and perspective that I have had in my experience in this industry.

This evening I have heard people talk of coercion, of gangs and their relationship with prostitution, and so on. People might be interested to know that I would say that in my day, in the late 1970s—in 1976—the State inadvertently coerced a person such as me into becoming a prostitute. That was because I was a transsexual. In those days society’s attitudes towards people like me were certainly not as kind as they are now, or as considerate, I might add. In that time, when I applied for the unemployment benefit I was told to take my skirt off, put my trousers back on, and go out there and get a job. I refused to do that. I stood up for my own human rights and said: “No, I am a transsexual. This is me.”

No employer would take me on in that particular mode. I found that if I wanted to earn a living as the person I wanted to be, I had to go into the sex industry. It seemed about the only job that was available to me to earn a so-called honest dollar. I started off in the strip clubs. Because of the lousy pay that our boss paid us at the time—something like $35 a week—we were expected to supplement our income by picking up clients in the strip club itself, and to increase our income in that way. That was my first taste of it. It was not a very pleasant affair, at all. I soon came to realise that that would be my lot for some time. It was the only area of society where I could participate, and feel like I was part of a group of people who were, in a “like minority” kind of way, marginalised by society. We bonded, in some respects, in order to support ourselves.

If I were to have that choice over again, I would say that this country would not tolerate the inhumanity of enabling someone like me at that particular time to have no particular choice in the matter. It was wrong. “Reform” is the operative word. I never want to see that happen again to anybody. I might add that I was about 17 years old when all of this started to happen—under the age limit, in terms of the protections we want to put in this bill, and I fully support them. It is strange that the State in its own way at that time, inadvertently and unknowingly, helped a person like me into the sex industry. It was wrong. I never wanted to go into it, but there I was.

What did I find there? I found a marginalised society that cared about a person like me, and we had to stick together because the rest of society abhorred us. Yet, strangely enough, the clientele who came along to seek our services were ordinary men, predominantly, but women sometimes, who sought the services of a person such as myself at that time. These were fathers, uncles, and grandfathers—ordinary New Zealand citizens who felt the need to access this kind of service. I know I will hear somebody say that this is outrageous, but I expect that in some cases our service protected family relationships, because some people have slightly different preferences, in terms of their sexual activity, from what they might find acceptable within their home. They found an outlet for it through the sex industry.

I support the fact that the industry must be made much more healthy and much more appropriate. If that kind of activity is to proceed—and it does, and it always will—then we have to give people, both the client and the prostitute, the best chance of health and safety.