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It helps being a big, rich island.
I did a deep dive into Germany's handling of prostitution once. Specifically, the legendary Pasha brothel. The crux of the issue is that it becomes really, really hard to differentiate between actually self-motivated legal prostitution and coerced human trafficking without getting into constant surveillance of the prostitutes themselves. It would be impossible in the U.S. with our privacy laws.
As I remember it, German cops would come into the Pasha brothel from time to time and check on all of the compliance features (paperwork, record keeping, and STI screening etc.) Then, they'd ask each girl a series of questions along the lines of "are you here of your own accord and do you want to keep doing this?" The problem is that a scared girl being trafficked from eastern europe has no problem lying to the German cops, but a big problem telling the truth, missing a check-in with her pimp, and possibly risking not only her physical safety, but potentially repercussions to her family back home. It's that last part that kept a lot of girls from telling the cops the truth and then hoping for some level of state protection.
Cross-border arbitrage of prostitution laws give up the real situation - which is human trafficking. Australia can manage this much better because of its island status and, therefore, the upfront cost of trafficking in prostitutes is so much higher that it dissuades the activity. I also think that the Wild West situation of prostitution in the global neighborhood - Thailand etc. - creates some interesting market dynamics.
I'm anti-prostitution (legal or otherwise) but also acknowledge its impossible to eradicate without, as mentioned before, something like omni-surveilance. Still, I don't buy into the argument of harm-reduction. Exploitation of the person and the physical body is bad all the way around and I don't think you can make something immoral "diet-immoral" with some extra bureaucracy behind it.
I do take a silver lining comfort in the fact that places like Australia, Canada, and some European countries create those weird legal situations where it's illegal to buy/solicit/advertise even if its close to never enforced (I feel like that's the situation in France?). It's still a clear signal that, "hey, this isn't a great thing to do."
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