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Last minute fight to stop Barnett's prostitute bill

Sat 21 Jun 2003 In: New Zealand Daily News

Opponents are mounting a final campaign to stop the decriminalisation of prostitution, detailed in a new parliamentary bill sponsored by Labour MP Tim Barnett. Parliament yesterday received an open letter signed by more than 30 church leaders condemning the bill, and MPs are being bombarded with hundreds of letters and emails in the countdown to Wednesday's vote. Barnett says the fate of the bill, which has survived by an extremely narrow margin of votes thus far, is in the hands of a few people. “If we lose this, it's lost for a generation. It's not as though we can come back next year.” National MP and bill supporter Katherine Rich said she was receiving between four and five e-mails every 30 minutes urging her to change her vote, an unprecedented response in her experience. “[But] it isn't a patch on the experience that members had when it came to homosexual law reform,” Rich says.    

Credit: GayNZ.com News Staff

First published: Saturday, 21st June 2003 - 12:00pm

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