Illegal brothels and adverising

Those wonderful folks at the Daily Telegraph tell us that illegal brothels are blloming across Sydney. In the article they suggest tough new laws are having no impact.

Meanwhile further back in the paper there are one and a half pages of ads for "adult services". This number is matched in all their sister publications in the Cumberland Press stable of local newspapers. This level of advertising suggests this is a very important part of the brothel eco-system. How else do you find a brothel (which, of course, is different to the streert walkers used to add visual colour to the story).

How about the Tele suggests an obvious law change. Make it illegal to advertise "adult services" unless the business has a "licence" - the structure of such licencing needs to be worked out but from my view it is something that would be issued by the State Government and require the endorsement of the relevant local council. To avoid the obvious concerns about the State Government endorsing brothels, rather than merely not prohibitting them, the "licence" need only be a licence to advertise an adult service.

I wonder how the sales and marketing (of ads) department of News Corp would react to that? At least it is good to see a clear separation of editorial content from adverising policy. Pity that the separation occurs in a field of moralising in which the Tele and the rest of News could provide their own moral lead.