Auckland City Council - City Scene

Council's working group on prostitution is making progress on its review of Auckland's sex businesses. Its City Advocacy Committee has voted to support ongoing consultation and a review into the legal, regulatory and planning implications of the industry.

Committee chairperson, Councillor Richard Northey says the group is in consultation with representatives of the Police, Prostitutes Collective, Aids Foundation, Sexual Health Clinic, strip clubs and massage parlour operators. It will meet again soon to consider more specific approaches.

"The consultations have taken the approach that it is better to work towards a fair regulatory system for the whole sex industry rather than just to concentrate on massage parlours," Councillor Northey says.

The Committee will also consider seeking amendments to the Massage Parlours Act 1978 in response to concerns about the activities of unlicensed massage parlours and other sex industry activities, including those where women from overseas are working illegally.

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Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>