ABSTRACT
New Zealanders have traditionally been 'wired' by a cultural preoccupation with fairness and the need for everyone to be able to have a 'fair go'. In an interesting comparison of the history of New Zealand (NZ) and the United States of America, Fischer wrote, amongst other things, of the issue of women's rights. The principle of fairness set the scene for the introduction of the Prostitution Reform Bill to parliament, but it was not enough to sustain its passage through the three readings. In a neoliberal environment like NZ, in which government seeks to deregulate and achieve government from a distance, emphasis is put on self-regulation and self-surveillance. Ultimately, the neoliberal argument of freedom of choice, the sex workers' rights and feminist positions of the right of women to choose, and the harm minimisation argument of protecting women who choose to work in the sex industry were all framed as issues of fairness.
