Prostitution in New Zealand , brothel-keeping, living off the proceeds of someone else's prostitution, and street solicitation are legal in New Zealand and have been since the Prostitution Reform Act came into effect. Coercion of sex workers is illegal. Until , indoor prostitution in New Zealand was governed by the Massage Parlours Act , which allowed brothels to operate in the guise of massage parlours. However, the act defined massage parlours as public places, so laws against soliciting in a public place applied to workers in parlours, and they were sometimes raided by police posing as clients.
Advertising the sale of sex "soliciting" , running a brothel, and living off the earnings of prostitution were illegal. Despite the Massage Parlours Act and other laws meant to suppress prostitution, there was considerable toleration of sex work in practice in the last decades of the 20th century. These laws were all changed by the Prostitution Reform Act in June The Bay of Islands and in particular the town of Kororareka was notorious for this and brothels proliferated.
In some cases, the sex may have been part of a wider partnership between a tribe and a ship's crew, akin to a temporary marriage alliance. The amount of choice women had about their participation seems to have varied. Throughout this period there was a severe gender imbalance in the settler population and women were in short supply. In the nineteenth century, prostitution was generally referred to as the "Social Evil". New Zealand was also amongst those dependencies that British authorities pressured into passing Contagious Diseases Acts ; New Zealand's was in force from β The gendered rationale and practice of venereal disease policy formed a focus for early feminist activism.
Prostitution-related statute law passed in the second half of the 20th century included the Crimes Act , the Massage Parlours Act , and the Summary Offences Act Section 26 of the Summary Offences Act prohibited soliciting, S of the Crimes Act prohibited brothel-keeping, and S living on the earnings of prostitution, and S procuring. In , the Crimes Act was amended to criminalise both clients and operators where workers were aged under 18 the age of consent for sexual activity is Young people under 18 were still classed as offenders after this came into force, until the passage of the Prostitution Reform Act The Massage Parlours Act effectively allowed indoor commercial sex under a facade.
Prostitutes advertised their services as "escorts", and brothels advertised themselves as "massage parlours". Workers in "massage parlours" were required to be registered with the police from the time the Massage Parlours Act came into force.
