WESTERN Australia will legalise brothels next year.

The state Government would to certify brothels in a pragmatic bid to put law and order, taxation and health and occupational health and safety issues in the sex industry on a sound regulatory basis, Attorney-General Jim McGinty said today.

"We all know that prostitution is the oldest profession, attempts at prohibition have always failed, everywhere in the world, and so there is now a recognition that we need to regulate something that we cannot prohibit," Mr McGinty said on ABC radio.

Prostitution is legal in WA but running a brothel is not and neither is living off the earnings of prostitution.

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