Introduction

The successful campaign for the reform of New Zealand's sex work laws took nearly two decades. Inevitably for a law reform campaign in a vigorous parliamentary democracy, the process of law reform went through a series of largely predictable stages. Early on, the people who stood to gain most from law reform became aware of the injustices of the old laws and began networking to build the New Zealand Prostitutes’ Collective (NZPC), a nationwide sex worker organisation. Through the NZPC, sex workers began building awareness and support for their cause, creating a space to look to the long term.

Flowing from that, a decision-making and conceptualisation process was carried out to decide which model of law reform was best suited to New Zealand, based on the impact it would have on sex workers. Following this conceptualisation phase was the pragmatic process of drafting law, which involved moulding the decriminalisation model into something meaningful and politically feasible for the New Zealand parliamentary process. The Prostitution Reform Bill (PRB) was written and submitted to parliament at the end of this drafting period.

There was a great deal of overlap between the networking, conceptualisation and drafting stages and, throughout all of these stages, campaign building was also taking place. Campaign building was critical to raising awareness and understanding, not only within the sex industry, but also outside it, with government and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), political parties, politicians, the media and others.

The parliamentary process eventually brought all of these various stages together in what became the most public and memorable element of the process of law reform. As the PRB began its long journey through parliament, the thinking behind it needed to be communicated and explained publicly. This chapter follows the networking, conceptualisation, drafting and campaign-building stages of the law reform, before describing the process of further explanation of the law to the public and outlining the parliamentary process through which the law passed. The chapter ends with reflections on the campaign and its outcome from the perspective of Tim Barnett, the Member of Parliament (MP) who sponsored and introduced the Bill in parliament, as well as the perspective of members of NZPC.