From horny colonisers to online censorship:

The phone rings in an inner-city massage parlour. The receptionist picks up, uttering a few words before putting it back down again.

“The police are out doing a sweep,” she warns. 

There are sex workers in the parlour working there in secret. 

They lower their voices and dim the lights in an already dimly lit room.

The lights were usually on just bright enough so you could read a Women’s Weekly on the couch while you waited for your next client.

Dressed in regular clothes, police officers come in and ask to see the records of people working there before plopping down on the worn couches.

Some sex workers are bold, and sit with them. Others scarper off and busy themselves in the private rooms and those who have criminal charges disappear from the building completely. 

Under the Massage Parlours Act 1978, anyone with a drug or sex work conviction could not work in a massage parlour. Anyone caught soliciting sex could be fined and prosecuted. And any caught operating a brothel, or helping to operate one, could be imprisoned for up to five years.

Dame Catherine Healy, who worked in massage parlours when they were raided, says sometimes police would pose as clients and get massages - and a week later, they would come back and round people up and arrest them. 

“It was incredibly tense. There was always a feeling of being on edge with a client. The suspicion, the not knowing. It was nerve-racking.”

The police were mean and the law demanded they be mean, she says. 

A lot has changed since then. 

For 20 years, sex work has been decriminalised in New Zealand - the first country in the world to do so.

And on its 20th anniversary, Healy has invited sex workers from around the country to sit in a room with a police officer and speak openly about their experiences in the industry. 

It’s an invitation many couldn’t imagine accepting before the law changed. 

But in 2023, in a bright room lined with large windows that look out onto Auckland’s city centre, they feel safe. 

“We now have the absolute right to demand attention from the police. But just having that as a right is significant,” Healy says.

This is the history of sex work in Aotearoa.

The massage parlour raids

People from all walks of life would visit massage parlours that were brothels operating in secret. Some people stumbled upon them by accident, not realising the ‘extras’ on offer. Some were there for one thing. And some were undercover police officers pretending to be clients waiting to entrap and arrest workers for soliciting sex. 

Sex workers would scan the men from head to toe looking for clues or signs they couldn’t be trusted. 

Some sex workers were adamant it was their shoes that gave them away, others said it was they way moved. 

Catherine Healy, a former sex worker and founder of Aotearoa New Zealand Sex Workers' Collective, says there were a lot of hopeless myths but you never really knew until it was too late.

The police would come in and say anything to trap you, she says, asking the people working what else they offered.

“As a sex worker, I wasn’t allowed to say ‘I can offer you this’. It was against the law to ask and offer any sex for sale. So I would say things like ‘is there anything else I can offer you?’”

Healy would go back and forth, almost speaking in riddles, dancing around their questions, to work out if they were just a client. 

“Every day was stressful.”

The threat of arrest felt inescapable, she says. Even rooms behind closed doors where it was just you and client were considered public places and police roamed free.

The Massage Parlours Act 1978

The Massage Parlours Act 1978 was introduced to regulate licensed massage parlours and prohibit operators from hiring people with drug or prostitution-related convictions.

Years after it was passed, the Act became controversial because police said it was allowing sex work to occur under the facade of legal businesses. 

Brothels advertised themselves as "massage parlours" and sex workers as “escorts” and “masseuses” so they could work in secret.

In retaliation, undercover police would pretend to be clients and visit parlours. They would charge women with soliciting if they offered sexual services for money.

Healy says this was devastating for sex workers because an arrest would not only mean you could be convicted and couldn’t work at a massage parlour for ten years, but you could lose your legal day job too.

She remembers how that happened to a woman she worked with. 

The woman worked at a bank and topped up her income by working one night a week in the massage parlour. 

“She was entrapped one night by police and was arrested for soliciting. She lost her job in the masseuse parlour, and she lost her job at the bank too.”

Decades later, there are still people who have this on their record. 

“Even if you have it expunged, if you are travelling and are asked if you have ever been charged with a crime - you have to say yes.”

Under the law, every worker at a massage parlour had to register with the police.

The register was sold as something positive - a way for police to keep workers safe by knowing who worked where.

But in reality, it was a way to monitor and control sex workers - especially ones who had any drug convictions because the law barred them from working in any massage parlour.

Police would barge into massage parlours and ask for the details of everyone who worked there so they could search them up in the register.

Healy says she worked with a woman who was busted with a “roach of marijuana”. 

“They didn’t even wait to process her case, they just said, ‘she’s out.’”

To keep her from being kicked out of the parlour, Healy and other sex workers would keep the woman hidden when police came and confuse them by saying they all had her name so police wouldn't know who to throw out.

Sex work during the HIV epidemic

New Zealand was hit hard by the HIV and AIDs epidemic during the 1980s and 1990s.

While sex workers were aware of how HIV was transmitted, clients often weren’t, Healy says.

Condoms became a vital part of a sex worker's survival kit but these life-saving objects were also what could put you in harm's way.

Sex workers would be careful about carrying too many condoms and would hide them because police could use them as circumstantial evidence, Healy says. 

“We would take the bins out each night to hide the condoms because if push came to shove, those condoms would be lined up and presented in court - and you could be jailed for five years for running or being part of a brothel.”

If clients pressured sex workers to have sex without condoms or if sexual assault or abuse happened - sex workers felt they couldn’t report it to the police for fear they would be arrested instead.

For Healy, this was one of the most fearful times to be a sex worker. 

“Meanwhile, we saw good friends die [of HIV]. It was just a terrible time. It is unbelievable when you think about it.”