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Tavern to challenge ban on skimpies

On show: Natalie Baker, owner of Perth’s Best Girls, is helping Merriwa Tavern with its legal challenge over a ban on skimpies. Picture: Michael O’Brien/The West Australian

A northern suburbs tavern has launched a fundraising campaign featuring bikini car washes in a bid to overturn a ruling banning it employing topless skimpies.

Nearly two years after the Liquor Commission rejected Merriwa Tavern's bid for an amended licence, the tavern has joined forces with skimpy agency Perth's Best Girls.

The agency's bikini carwashes are to raise funds for legal fees for a fresh application to the commission.

Agency owner Natalie Baker said the Department of Racing, Gaming and Liquor was out of touch with society on partial nudity.

If the Merriwa application succeeded, another 11 city taverns would be interested in applying for varied entertainment licences.

Most Perth taverns and pubs are banned from staging risque performances because of conditions that prohibit immodestly or indecently dressed employees.

Women can be scantily clad in a bra and French knickers but are prohibited from showing any more skin.

Ms Baker said tours to WA by revues with male strippers left nothing to the imagination and received no objections but her contractors were treated with a sexist double standard.

"If people think this is about protecting young women from being exploited and objectified, why is nobody making the same stink when guys do it," she said.

"The women don't need saving. They like doing it."

Ms Baker said the Liquor Commission's suggestion there was no public interest for topless entertainment was wrong and the success of the car washes would prove that wrong.

Owner Ian Strover said Merriwa Tavern was a "worker's pub", with about 80 to 85 per cent of patrons men aged 40 and older.

Staff would be trained to ensure there was no drunken or rowdy behaviour, a concern of local residents.