'Top-end' brothel is just what the doctor ordered

Neil Benson at his medical rooms last April. Picture / Michael Cunningham

A disgruntled doctor plans to open the first licensed brothel in the Far North.

Neil Benson aims to base his new venture in his former medical centre at Coopers Beach.

In the switch from medical practice to the world's oldest profession, it will be called Whalers.

The plan has annoyed some residents, and a local minister fears the brothel might lead local women into prostitution.

Dr Benson closed his Coopers Beach Medical Centre in April last year after a bitter dispute with the Te Tai Tokerau Primary Health Organisation (PHO) over a GP roster covering after-hours care in the Kaitaia and Coopers Beach area.

"The medical centre was a wonderful facility that should have always stayed as a medical practice," Dr Benson said.

"I did everything humanly possible to keep it open, but it wasn't possible because of the lack of support from the PHO, lack of collegial support and community support," he said.

He reopened his medical centre in September but had to close it again because of a lack of funding.

Yesterday, he was granted a brothel operator's certificate for what he says will be an up-market bordello.

He hopes to open the brothel next month but believes an escort service might be running before that.

An industry consultant is helping plan the business. It would employ "beautiful, experienced professional girls" from outside the region and would cater for locals as well as visiting tourists, says Dr Benson.

The idea came after plans to buy a medical practice in Dunedin fell through.

A person in the sex industry had looked at renting the unused medical centre and said it would be a perfect brothel.

'I thought, why don't we run it ourselves? It would be a viable business and I was unemployed."

While he had never considered working in the sex industry, Dr Benson sees similarities between the world's oldest profession and medicine.

"It's about providing a private service and maintaining confidentiality, which is what my medical practice was about - so it's not a big leap, really.

"Everything I have ever done is high quality. The standards of my medical practice were high and that will cross over to the brothel environment."