‘Powerless to stop a pop-up brothel’: Hoteliers warn over planned overhaul of Queensland’s sex work laws

Brothels could be set up in hotels and suburban streets under a planned overhaul of Queensland’s sex work laws.

Hoteliers have warned a planned overhaul of Queensland prostitution laws will strip business owners of their right to deny rooms to sex workers and allow pop-up brothels in the state’s ­hotels and motels.

Reforms to decriminalise the state’s sex work industry, recommended by the Queensland Law Reform Commission last year, are aimed at reducing violence and exploitation of workers but critics have warned they would erode rights of accommodation providers and ban local councils from regulating where businesses can set up.

Law changes would repeal a section of the Anti-Discrimination Act that allows accommodation to lawfully evict sex workers, refuse them a room or treat them “unfavourably”, including by requiring them to pay higher fees.

Queensland Hotels Association chief Bernie Hogan said businesses should retain the right to “determine what kind of establishment they are running”.

“What we don’t want is our members to be powerless to stop a pop-up brothel,” he told The Australian. “In a lot of local communities, a hotel will be targeting the family diners … so that is not necessarily the image that they want to have, where it’s also known that sex work is being conducted in the accommodation.

“It just doesn’t gel with how that business wants to operate, and to have it inflicted upon them is unfair.”

Queensland Hotels Association CEO Bernie Hogan. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Dan Peled

Under the QLRC recommendations, accommodation providers would still be able to “control the use of their premises” under state planning laws. “The issue would be that the person was using the room to conduct a business that attracts clients to the room, not that they were a sex worker or were engaging in sex work,” the QLRC report reads.

Councils would also be banned from making local laws to regulate the industry, including where sex work businesses can operate and the size of advertising signage that can be used.

In a public submission to a parliamentary inquiry examining the reforms, Local Government Association of Queensland chief Alison Smith said councils should be able to control where business activity is allowed. “If the ability of local governments to differentiate between a ‘shop’ and a ‘brothel’ were removed, councils may seek to remove the ability for all shops to locate in certain locations (e.g. adjoining schools and childcare centres),” she wrote.

“At present, councils typically seek to support the liveability, amenity and convenience of communities by supporting co-location of certain uses (e.g. a corner store next to a daycare). Councils may seek to remove their facilitation of this … if there were a risk that sex work businesses were able to locate as a ‘shop’, in certain locations.”

Under existing law, sex can be sold only in one of the state’s 20 ­licensed brothels or by sole operators working in their own home.

Escort agencies, massage parlours, street workers and two or more sex workers operating from one place are considered illegal.

The industry is currently regulated by the Prostitution Licencing Authority, which would be abolished under the reforms and there would be no requirement for brothels to be licensed.

A government spokesman said sex-work businesses would be treated like any other business when decriminalisation started.

“The Queensland government in currently preparing a draft amendment regulation and explanatory notes which will be consulted on,” he said.

(L to R) Dr Elena Jeffreys and Janelle Fawkes from the Scarlet Alliance, QCU General Secretary Jacqueline King and Lulu Holiday from Respect Inc pose with the Sex Work Decriminalisation bill after it was introduced to state parliament last month. Picture: Dan Peled / NCA NewsWire

Sex workers and their advocates insist reforms are necessary to reduce stigma, improve safety and bring Queensland into line with other jurisdictions.

They also supported restrictions on councils from making local laws that ban or regulate sex industry businesses, which is similar to Victoria’s model.