Council accepts brothel ruling

Auckland City Council says it will not appeal a High Court judgment that quashed its prostitution bylaw restricting the siting of brothels.

Justice Paul Heath's March 14 ruling said the council's December 2003 bylaw, which stopped brothels setting up in a residential area or close to a place of worship, school, or community facility, was invalid.

The ruling followed a challenge from an Epsom brothel, Club 574, which had been declined dispensation from the bylaw in March 2005.

The council said at the time it would consider whether to appeal the decision, but announced yesterday that no appeal would be made.

However, it has sought clarification from Justice Heath as to whether the ruling applies to the entire bylaw or only to the location controls on brothels.

The two parties in the decision believed the judgment only quashed the location controls on brothels, the council said.

It will now investigate whether it should reconsider the whole bylaw, redraft the portion dealing with the location of brothels, or use the provisions of the district plan to have some control over location of brothels.

The district plan provisions allow brothels to operate in some business zones and the mixed-use zone. Large brothels cannot operate in residential zones, but small owner-operated brothels can, provided they comply with home occupation rules.

Justice Heath said in his ruling that the bylaw conflicted with and undermined the purposes of the Prostitution Law Reform Act.

"It is scarcely conceivable that Parliament intended virtually no brothels, whether small or large, to operate on the Auckland isthmus," Justice Heath said in his finding.

Christchurch city councillors opted late last month to abandon the council's appeal against a similar High Court judgment last July.

Justice Graham Panckhurst ruled then that the Christchurch bylaw made prostitution "practically extinct", which had not been the intention of prostitution law reform.

New Zealand Prostitutes' Collective Auckland regional co-ordinator Kate Dickie hoped the council would not wait for the judge's clarification.

"We hope that the whole bylaw is quashed and not that Auckland City Council try and wriggle out on just the location part."

Ms Dickie said Auckland City should have gone the same way as Waitakere City and dealt with brothel licensing through existing resource consent procedures.

"It's a shame they didn't do that right from the beginning and save the ratepayers a lot of money."

- NZPA