Yes, and it's important to note that in the prior regime that the witnesses were referring to there was criminal prosecution against the prostitutes themselves, and in fact that's where the enforcement priority was. New Zealand has not had experience with an asymmetrical model of criminalization.
I would note that in jurisdictions such as Germany and the Netherlands, there does seem to be increasing acknowledgement, even by those who were advocates for the sex trade, that those models have largely failed. It's really become a containment exercise in shifting the sex trade around to more isolated areas of town, setting up, for example, concrete stalls on the outskirts of Utrecht where people can drive in and conduct transactions in cars.
Germany is acting to try to curb some of the worst excesses of the market. For example, there was a vibrant trade there in brothels where you could pay a flat fee to have an unlimited amount of sex with the women there—men would take erectile dysfunction medication—over a certain period of time.
We keep hearing about these outrages that the commercial market produces. There are attempts made to dial them back, but ultimately the fundamental condition of men buying women for sex simply remains. I think even those who are arguing in favour of decriminalization would say that there are serious human rights abuses in places like Germany and the Netherlands. Denmark's sex market is 10 times the size of Sweden, by population. We know that demand increases and along with it all of the abuses of women's human rights that come along with that.