Copy of my Letter to the Police Minister
Mary-Anne Ken worthy
71 Burwood Drive
BURSWOOD WA 6100
February 7, 2006
Hon. John Biase D'Orazio, BSc, MPS
Minister of Police
9th Floor,
Dumas House,
2 Havelock Street
West Perth WA 6005
Dear Mr D’Orazio
Hope you have had time to settle into your new job and the system isn’t tearing your hair out too much.
(This letter is a copy that I have also sent to the premier Mr Carpenter)
With regards to the latest publicity in relation to legislation of prostitution, I was horrified to hear that some still want to resurrect Michelle Roberts Bill.
This bill was totally unworkable, mostly from the fact that it was so complicated and as I said at the time, the point of a bill was to get prostitution out of suburbia, and the way it was written no brothel would have been able to operate legally just from a cost point of view.
By making the ladies employees there would have been less than 20 cents in the dollar to give them at the end of shift and no lady would work for that percentage, so therefore we would have forced it back into suburbia.
Since the bill was raised the Australian Taxation Office Cash Economy Task Force has been working with the sex industry for two years trying to bring the industry into mainstream.
As you could imagine this will not be an easy task for them. Last November, I was invited to a meeting in Melbourne with over 100 Melbourne, Sydney, & Queensland owners to discuss this issue.
I was horrified to learn that the owners had found ways to dump the tax burden on the working ladies without offering any real assistance to them to understand their responsibility for compliance once they had their ABN numbers registered.
The Cash Compliance Department of the Taxation Department explained that they appreciated because of the nature of the business that the ladies were sole traders and that they would need ABN numbers from all ladies and that they wanted businesses to assist collecting these or otherwise supply phone details of the ladies and they would approach them directly.
As a owner I realised that we would have no problems gaining ABN numbers, because of the nature of the business a lady only starts working because she is in desperate financial trouble, so therefore most would fill in the forms and this is where the problems would start. Would they say they earn over $50,000 and have to collect GST or under $50,000 and just pay their tax proportion?
For a little humour I asked the taxation department, would not the ladies be GST free as they provided a natural product and all natural products are GST free, whereas the business was a service so therefore GST payable, needless to say it is a interesting thought.
I stood at this meeting and called every owner that had discussions with the Taxation Department liars as they had informed the department that they did not know what their ladies earn. As I pointed out this simply isn’t true, every house has a percentage and by taking one’s own turnover and dividing it by the number of ladies on for that shift, one knows the minimum average of all ladies, and that even in the lowest class of brothel the average they earn exceeds over $1000 per week.
My point is that since then I have had many discussions with the Taxation Department and they are coming to Western Australia on the 16th of February, at my invitation to update brothel owners and also to have a public meeting with the “Langtrees Ladies” to advise them of their liabilities and responsibilities.
The Cash Compliance Branch of the ATO at the original meeting was offering an five year no history for all sex workers if they started to comply .As you will see from my other letter that I feel this is too great a point to deny the ladies and if the owners could assist with education and introduction to the right accountants I believe that we could get a large percentage of the sex workers Australia wide into tax compliance.
I would encourage the West Australian Government to open discussion with the Cash Economy Task force to help assist sex workers to take advantage of this time frame, and I would encourage the government of Western Australia to look at decriminalising prostitution whilst this is happening to help encourage the workers.
The old bill needs to be scrapped, but new law has only to replace keeping premises for the purposes of prostitution with a fair an equitable licensing system that could be written over a weekend of debate.
To date I have estimated the Western Australian government has spent $20 million plus on this issue, luckily our new Minister for Police was on many of these committees, and also being one of the first late night chemists 25 years ago has had lots of contact with industry workers and understands the health issues and the disadvantages that many of them have.
I believe that with taxation compliance, West Australian Workers will be the leaders in this respect for Australia, simple law that is not discriminatory to the sex workers that any government that dealt with this issue quickly, and fairly would gain the respect of the majority of voters.
From my 25 years experience within the sex industry I have found the general public are supportive of a decriminalised sex industry.
Lastly the sex industry is starting to have a problem with organised crime moving onto the fringes of the industry and the quickest, cheapest and safest way to move them along is to protect the workers with taxation compliance. By this I mean that if all workers were tax compliant, and social security compliant then no-one can use undue influence or threaten them with exposure, therefore this element will turn their heads elsewhere.
Yours faithfully
Mary-Anne Ken worthy
Brothel Owner
