Churches oppose legal brothels

WA's church leaders have weighed into the debate over the Barnett Government's plan to legalise brothels, warning that the new laws are morally dangerous and risked normalising prostitution as a profession.

Public submissions on the new regime, which will see prostitutes licensed and fingerprinted and police given expanded powers to regulate the sex trade, closed yesterday, with 164 responses. The Government wants the Department of Racing, Gaming and Liquor to determine who is allowed to operate brothels or work as prostitutes and local councils to dictate where brothels can open, with a legislated ban within 100m of homes and 200m of schools and churches.

Under current laws prostitution is legal but living off the earnings of a prostitute, as brothel owners do, is not. However, this has failed to stop an estimated 38 brothels from operating openly across the State.

Catholic Archbishop Barry Hickey said legalising brothels sent the wrong moral signal and would create practical difficulties for police.

"This sends the message that going to a prostitute is socially and morally acceptable, and creates a belief that women especially, are only sex objects for personal gratification," he said.

"With a system of legal and illegal brothels, the police will have even more work than before legalisation as they will have to monitor the legal ones too for compliance with the law." Archbishop Hickey said the church wanted prostitution eliminated but realised it would survive.

"Therefore, the law should reduce prostitution as much as possible," he said.

Anglican Archbishop Roger Herft said the challenge would be to ensure laws reduced the trafficking of women, organised crime and illicit drugs but did not normalise what he described as a "destructive and negative practice within our society".

"We trade and barter our bodies and emotions - we lose the integrity of personhood and intimacy becomes a consumer driven product," he said.

Attorney-General Christian Porter said the issue was divisive but action was needed.

"By allowing some moderate level of highly regulated prostitution in areas away from the suburbs we stand the best chance of ring-fencing what we know will always exist and driving it out of residential WA," he said.