Firstly, it is a little odd that you can wake up one day and find sex being sold next door.
Not a great look for your home, awkward for you and your kids, and in general, as one person observed, a bit "yuck".
As the Happy House owner pointed out, it is a legal operation, subject to stringent noise-related operating hours that allow a late-night service station across the road, but not an, er, late service of other sorts just metres away.
If I woke up one morning and a brothel was operating next door, I wouldn't be impressed.
Yes, they are legal. But so are car wrecking yards. And pet food processing plants.
I would not be impressed with either of those examples.
When central government legalised brothels, Wellington quite conveniently handed a hospital pass to local government by making district councils responsible for their regulation.
A law and social change of that magnitude should have come with a ready-made set of rules. Instead, local government are applying current business regulations to brothels and those rules don't seem to allow for their categorisation as a discretionary operation.
No one would deny any person the right to work in a safe, regulated industry. But it needs to be in the right place. In legalising prostitution, central government only got the job half done.
The social clash we highlighted on Saturday will only continue until central government finishes what it started.
