Ministers sleep walk while breast feeding mum sells sex legally

Comments by Women's Affairs Minister Ruth Dyson to a United Nations committee show the Government has no intention of reviewing the decriminalisation of prostitution for at least five years, National says.

"It is bad enough that members of a key women's committee at the United Nations asked the New Zealand Government to overturn the law, but it is worse when Ruth Dyson effectively told the committee not to worry "the new law allowed for a review of the policy in five years", says National MP Dr Paul Hutchison.

"If the public health, human rights and so-called safety features of this Act are to be effective, it requires substantial government resourcing, monitoring and enforcement immediately.

"New Zealand has just witnessed the bizarre story of a breast feeding mother of a six-week-old baby, advertising her milk as a marketing ploy to attract customers at a Hawera brothel.

"This has frightening health, moral and ethical implications, yet neither the Minister of Health or Women's Affairs seem concerned," Dr Hutchison, a former gynaecologist, says.

"There is a requirement that this law must be reviewed between three and five years after being passed. Ruth Dyson is already pushing that out to the limit.

"This Act has set signals for normalising prostitution - especially to the most vulnerable (those working on the streets). The potential for exploitation by gangs is immense, yet we have to wait another five years to examine this.

"Once again the Labour government presides on a liberalising law but is not committed to take on the consequences," says Dr Hutchison.

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