This week the organisation I represent, the Adult Business Association NSW, received a bizarre letter from a government funded group called Scarlet Alliance a national body who purport to represent Australian s-x workers.

The group attacks the ABA for attempting to close down illegal brothels and then expresses support for the seedy underworld trade of illegal brothels. The big problem for them is that they are partly funded by taxpayers and in turn the government so they clearly have a conflict of interest because the Iemma Government in NSW has flagged new laws to crack down on illegal brothels.

Crikey revealed last month there are 775 illegal brothels, massage parlours and home prostitution businesses operating under Mr Iemma’s radar in NSW so someone in the government needs to ask the author of the letter, Scarlet Alliance President Elena Jeffreys, what the hell is going on when she says in the letter: “We do not ‘support the illegal industry’, nor do we support the ‘legal industry’. We consider both to be artifacts of law.”

I have been concerned for some time about the link between local council officers, town planning and health consultants and illegal brothels. My investigations reveal an unholy alliance between the parties and I’m getting close to revealing the whale in the bay that is corruption in the illegal brothel trade.

This week the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) commenced hearings into a Western Sydney council official for allegedly trading s-x and money in return for not reporting the operation of an illegal brothel.

As The Oz reports today, Wade Fryar, a former team leader with the Parramatta City Council Compliance Services Unit, told a hearing of ICAC yesterday that he had received complimentary s-x and “nude massages…with happy endings” over a period of more than three years.

Fryar received thousand of dollars in cash payments in return for turning a blind eye to the operation of illegal brothels in Western Sydney. So how can Scarlet Alliance responsibly claim that no distinction between the legal and illegal industry should be made?

Last week the reverend Fred Nile raised the subject of the illegal brothel situated opposite Clovelly Primary School in parliament, as revealed in Crikey.

This brothel was allowed to trade freely for eight years by Waverley Council despite residents’ complaints and a raid by the Immigration Department where they netted illegal immigrants working as prostitutes.

Why isn’t ICAC investigating this council? I can now reveal that days after the Iemma government shut down this illegal brothel they recommenced trade at Enmore Road Enmore. NSW – shut one day … open the next.

I have also passed the list of 775 illegal brothels to Andrew Stoner, leader of the National Party and shadow minister for Education after he requested it yesterday. The Opposition is most concerned about the situation, particularly those placed near schools.

From humble beginnings in 1989 dispensing condoms and lubrication to s-x workers, Scarlet Alliance now want to be major players in the regulation of the s-x industry. They declare: “In particular, the calls for shut-down of ‘illegal’ brothels are unhelpful, especially if those calls are accompanied by claims of unsafe s-x, dirt, annoyance of neighbours, and so on. The current news and other reports about the s-x industry being dirty, unsafe, illegal, and so on is not going to help anyone in the industry.”

This is the nature of illegal brothel trade — they are impossible to monitor and corruption is rife. But don’t try to tell Scarlet Alliance that.