Legalisation of brothels has had some revolting consequences. In Victoria, employment conditions in brothels are the most traditional employer-employee relations of command and submission, with practices routine that would be considered outrageous in almost any other industry in Australia. Brothel management is a never-ending war for control of sex-workers. In part, therefore, a neverending war against the lumpen proletariat. And along with it is a neverending war of legal sex-industry capital against any competition, whether illegal brothels or other sex-workers; there does nt appear to be the kind of patterns of ownership which might obviate such conflicts eg. simultaneous ownership of both legal and illegal brothels. Local councils have formed alliances with legal capital, hiring private investigators to find illegal brothels in their areas so that they can be closed down. And now this in the Sydney Moring Herald:

Brothel cheats face red light
Michael Blaxland
July 15, 2007

INVESTIGATIONS have been launched into statewide social security fraud by the illegal sex trade. Details of more than 700 illegal operations have been demanded from the Adult Business Association of NSW (ABA), which represents the licensed brothel industry.

ABA spokesman Chris Seage said Centrelink’s fraud investigation team, based at Lake Macquarie, had been given a list of 775 illegal brothels, massage parlours and home prostitution businesses.

Mr Seage said private investigators had compiled the list from adult advertising in metropolitan and suburban newspapers.

The list shows there are 628 illegal operations in Sydney, 42 in the Hunter Valley, 34 on the Central Coast and 16 in Wollongong with the remaining 55 spread around the rest of the state.

Names and addresses of the owners or managers of brothels and of individuals have been handed over. “It is good to see federal authorities are interested in pursuing the shonks that make up the illegal brothel trade in NSW,” Mr Seage said.

“The Tax Office has also been provided with the list.” He said the Tax Office had concentrated its audit efforts on the “already (in the main) tax compliant legal industry while an enormous illegal trade has been allowed to go unchecked and untaxed”.

Adult Business Association of NSW has as its central aim “to ensure that establishments are licensed and approved by relevant government bodies and authorities”. What this means is effectively illustrated by the above.