Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

On behalf of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Law Enforcement, I present the committee's report, incorporating a dissenting report, on an inquiry into human trafficking, slavery and slavery-like practices.

Report made a parliamentary paper in accordance with standing order 39(e).

I ask leave of the House to make a short statement in connection with the report.

Leave granted.

I move:

That the House take note of the report.

Deputy Speaker—I am sorry, Speaker. My humblest apologies. I would like to make a few comments on the committee. Firstly, I would like to congratulate all committee members from both sides of the House and also from the Independents, the crossbenchers, on the way that we have all worked together cooperatively to try to get out the best report for the country rather than having political partisanship in this report.

A couple of things I would note. We have a few areas where we talk about modern slavery. You could divide it into three separate areas. One is forced labour; the second would be sexual servitude; and the third would be forced marriage. On the issue of forced labour, you could break that down to two sections. One is the migrant workers that we have coming into our country. There were some quite disturbing reports of mistreatment of migrant workers, simply because a lot of these workers were not actually informed of their rights. I believe this is a problem that can be addressed if we can give those migrant workers access, when they come to Australia, to information about what their employment rights actually are. Otherwise, we have the law enforcement facilities in place and we have the regulatory facilities in place, but we just need to work on, perhaps, the informational remedies to make sure that those people coming into the country fully know their rights so they are not at risk of exploitation.

On the issue of sexual servitude, the committee didn't find many problems in this area. There are a few minor reports, but that didn't seem to be something that needed more regulatory reach.

Forced marriage was an issue that was of particular concern to me and also to other members of the committee. We did find that the evidence is that this is a growing problem in our society. Again, I think the best way to tackle this is through information rather than through further legislation. The legislation is there and the enforcement procedures are there. It gets back to making sure that we inform Australians of exactly what the law is. One area where I think that we could particularly improve is when new migrants come to this country, because the reality is that, for migrants from some parts of the world, what we call underage marriage in Australia is something that is customary in their countries. Without defending the people who have been engaged in underage marriages, I am sure that they did not actually realise that they were doing something wrong and in breach of Australian law. If this is something that's been common throughout their culture—it may have been their parents', grandparents' or great grandparents' culture—and underage marriage was the way things were done back in their homeland then, when they come to Australia, unless they are specifically informed that the laws we have in Australia are substantially different from what the laws may be in their home country or the customs may be in part of their home country, this problem is something that is likely to continue. Therefore, the recommendations we have made in respect of that are for greater education of migrants who come to this country so that they are aware of Australia's laws in relation to underage and forced marriages.

The UK's Modern Slavery Act 2015 was brought to our attention and we looked at it closely. Our concern was that a lot of steps in it create a great deal of regulatory and red tape burden for business, and it is not clear that it actually has any practical effect. One of the concerns we particularly had was the way it would require businesses to almost certify that their supply chain was free of slavery-like practices. I can tell you from my own experiences of sourcing components and products throughout South-East Asia that it is very difficult. When you go to a certain place, you have subcontractors who are subcontracting to subcontractors who are subcontracting to other subcontractors. It is very difficult for any small or medium-sized business when they are dealing with an overseas supplier. They may be able to guarantee that supplier, but to go back through that supplier's production chain all the way back to the raw materials is virtually impossible. It may be possible for some very large companies to do this, but for small and medium-sized businesses I do not think it is practical. I think the costs of doing it are actually likely to be counterproductive. The thing that business want most from an overseas supplier is a supplier who can supply them with goods that are of high quality and deliver them on time. Any business or supply chain that is relying on slavery-like practices will simply not be able to deliver that.

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