A woman who claims Australia’s longest-running career as a madam will open a new brothel in Canberra next week because, she says, “demand for sex in the nation’s capital is outstripping supply”.

Mary-Anne Kenworthy has run Western Australia’s largest brothel, Langtrees of Perth, for the past 20 years and is opening Langtrees of Canberra in Mitchell this coming Monday. She says “no expense has been spared” in decking out its seven rooms.

In a colourful statement emailed to journalists today ahead of the opening, the experienced madam and former sex worker says Canberra’s clients are “easily the most discerning in the country”, singling out the federal politicians, lobbyists and others who inhabit Canberra while Parliament is in session.

“In many ways, they’re like the fly-in, fly-out miners we entertain over in Perth,” Kenworthy says in the bizarre announcement, going on to say she chose the block in our “light-industrial heartland” after “an exacting search” and suggests that men who usually buy hardware in Fyshwick now have a reason to visit the other side of town.

The annoucement comes on the same day as Liberal MLAs Giulia Jones and Vicki Dunne held a public forum at the Legislative Assembly on their upcoming study tour of countries where anti-prostitution laws target clients rather than sex workers.

Canberra’s newest madam says locals she has met have a “brilliant” attitude towards the sex industry and that ACT Government employees have all been “helpful and open-minded”. Just as well, with Kenworthy proudly stating she has been “a thorn in the side of various state governments” in WA for the past two decades.

The serial source of offbeat news stories signs off with an odd attempt to entice journalists: “I make a damn good cup of tea”.