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To get to your questions, 07-Oct-13 23:51:58 which was to explain what I meant when I said in NZ the prostitutes have rights against exploitation and secondly Wed 09-Oct-13 01:01:06 -how would such rights help the women exploited in the film.
The act Legalizing prostitution in NZ (the Prostitution reform act 2003 The act means that prostitution is laid out in section 3-two of the stated purposes is (a) safeguard(s) the human rights of sex workers and protects them from exploitation (b) promotes the welfare and occupational health and safety of sex workers.
The human rights are the right to engage in sex work if they choose (so that is it is not illegal see article 7)-whereas in the UK while not technically illegal everything around sex work-such as advertising, working with another person (i.e. in a brothel)) soliciting makes sex work extremely difficult-so much so that in Canada sex workers took successful action in the Ontario court saying similar laws breached their human rights (Bedford v Canada-which said such restrictions were unconstitutional, this is currently under appeal in the Canadian Supreme Court).
They also have rights not to be coerced into sex work either in general or with a client who they don’t want to have sex with (sections 16 &17) and an explicit statement that a refusal to be a sex worker will not affect any rights (like unemployment benefit section 18).
The welfare and occupational health and safety are covered in sections 8.9 &10 which specifies that safe sex must be adhered to by brothels, individual sex works and clients and that sex workers are covered by the Health and Safety in Employment act 1992 Health and Safety act.
Both the Prostitution reform Act and the Health and Safety act provide for the inspection of brothels and entry by the Police (sections 24-29 of legalization legislation) to ensure that the conditions of the act are adhered to. There are provisions in the act to prevent anyone who does not have the appropriate immigration status from working in brothels (section 19). Brothel owners or managers must hold an operators certificate (sections 34-41).
Now as with all acts the problems arise in practice. For instance we know that in this country there are illegal immigrants working in agriculture, catering and in prostitution. We know that there are many places, restaurants, factories building sites where Health and safety regulations are not properly adhered to and that the inspectorates are usually underfunded for the tasks they are set. Experience in Australia (don’t know the situation in NZ but suspect it is the same) that there are illegal brothels and workers that evade the legislation-again this is usually as the inspectorates are underfunded (and sometimes corrupt-and this applies not just to prostitution, but things like planning consents, or being paid to ignore breaches of the law). There are also good and bad brothel operators .(a recent summary of the working of the act in practice was prepared by Parliamentary Library research service in NZ in July 2012 Parliamentary Research paper
As far as the brothel in film was concerned under NZ legislation it would be illegal unless the Manager had a certificate (since we don’t know her immigration of criminal status we don’t know if she would be even eligible-let alone if she could pass the character test). Whether illegal or not it could under NZ legislation be inspected by the Police or the Health and Safety , the same would apply here-but in NZ if the brothel were legal it would be routinely inspected-here as in NZ if illegal (and in UK all brothels are illegal) it would have to be raided.
In the brothel in the film the prostitutes had no rights-in NZ they have the right to refuse clients, and refuse to be forced by the owner to engage in sex work if they don’t wish it-no such rights here. However given the illegal immigrant status of some of the sex workers in the film it would be unlikely that they would move to get their rights enforced.
So in NZ those in well run legal brothels do have rights-those in hell-holes such as depicted in the film would be outside the law in both countries.
But how would such a brothel fare in Sweden? Probably no different from here or in NZ (as it would be most likely to be illegal in all these jurisdictions). But in Sweden the clients would be open to prosecution-which would deprive the workers of their income, push the poor illegals into greater poverty –is that really the satisfactory outcome?