New Zealand Prostitutes' Collective

The New Zealand Prostitutes' Collective was founded in 1987 by Catherine Healy and others. Funding was received from a contract in 1988 for HIV/AIDS prevention from the Department of Health.[1] Offices were established in Auckland, Wellington and Dunedin, and a phone support service operated for Christchurch, these were all mostly run by approximately 40 volunteers, as the Collective had only 1.5 staff members.[1][2] Advocacy was a big part of the work of the Collective, and they promoted legislative reform of the Crimes Bill which contained a legal double standard, which censured the prostitute while condoning the client. The first submission they made to this bill was in 1989.[1] They continued to play an active role in the New Zealand Labour Party-led Helen Clark administration passing the Prostitution Reform Act 2003, which decriminalised most forms of adult prostitution in New Zealand. The Prostitution Law Review Committee published in their final report in 2008 that there was no increase in prostitution and that sex workers were safer.[1]

During the early 1990s the New Zealand Prostitutes' Collective faced a lot of opposition because of the stigma of sex work and attention around the legislative reform. An example written about by Jan Jordan is: "Even the supposedly simple task of having their phone number listed in the telephone directory had been a battle, with Telecom objecting to having the word ‘prostitutes’ printed in their phone book."[1]

Catherine Healy receiving her damehood in 2018

By 2018 the Collective employed more people as well as using volunteers. Part of the success of NZPC is that is staffed by sex workers – there are only two staff members who are not sex workers – a lawyer, and an accountant. There is a board of trustees and they are all current or former sex workers.[3] In 2018 NZPC founder Catherine Healy received a Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to the rights of sex workers, which is a turn-around in the acknowledgement and acceptance of sex work and the part that NZPC played in that.[4]

NZPC receives funding from the Ministry of Health for sexual and reproductive health services.[5] There are branches in Auckland, Tauranga, Manawatu, Hawkes Bay, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin and a helpline for other regions.[6] A current advocacy focus is the discrimination faced by migrant sex workers in New Zealand because under the Prostitution Reform Act of 2003 migrant sex work is illegal.[3] Ongoing outreach programmes are run to support sex workers to be safe.[6] In 2020 during New Zealand's strict level 4 lockdown as a response to the global Covid-19 pandemic the collective's Auckland manager Annah Pickering said "Covid-19 hit sex workers particularly hard because of the nature of the job, and also because a big bulk of their clientele comes from overseas — many who book months in advance."[7]

• Abel, G., Fitzgerald, L., & Healy, C., (Eds), (2010). Taking the crime out of sex work: New Zealand sex workers' fight for decriminalisation. Bristol: Policy Press.
• Jordan, J (1991) Working Girls: Women in the New Zealand Sex Industry talk to Jan Jordan, Auckland: Penguin
• Catherine Healy and Anna Reed, The Healthy Hooker, The New Internationalist, 252: 16-17, 1994
• Chetwynd J. The Prostitutes' Collective: A uniquely New Zealand institution, in Intimate Details and Vital Statistics: AIDS, sexuality and the social order in New Zealand. Auckland University Press 1996
• Bronwen Lichtenstein, Tradition and experiment in New Zealand AIDS policy, AIDS and Public Policy, 12 (3): 79–88, 1997
• Lichtenstein, B: Reframing "Eve" in the AIDS era, in Sex Work and Sex Workers, BM Dank and R Refinetti eds. Transaction, New Brunswick NJ 1998
• Laverack, G., Whipple, A. 2010. The sirens’ song of empowerment: a case study of health promotion and the New Zealand Prostitutes Collective. Glob Health Prom 17(1) 33–8.

• Official website