The Summary Offences Act remains in force in relation to soliciting, which may be classed as offensive behaviour.

It also adds a condition to all temporary visas that the holder may not provide or invest in commercial sexual services while in New Zealand.

In 2000, the Crimes Act was amended to criminalise both clients and operators where workers were under 18 (the age of consent for sexual activity is 16).

Young people under 18 were still classified as offenders after this came into force, until the passage of the Prostitution Reform Act 2003.

However, because the act designated massage parlours as public venues, laws prohibiting soliciting in a public place extended to parlour workers, and they were occasionally searched by police acting as clients.

It was prohibited to advertise the selling of sex ("soliciting"), establish a brothel, or live off the proceeds of prostitution.

[10] The Prostitution Reform Act was debated for the first time in the House of Representatives on 8 November 2000 as Bill 66-1.

On 25 June 2003, the Prostitution Reform Act passed its third reading narrowly by a margin of 60 to 59, while one politician, Labour's Ashraf Choudhary, the country's only Muslim MP, abstained.

Georgina Beyer, the world's first openly transgender woman MP, delivered an impassioned speech during the debate, identifying herself as a former sex worker and mentioning that she was assaulted while on sex work and was unable to report it to the police.