Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Before coming to this place, I had the immense privilege of working as a lawyer representing a number of low-paid workers and their unions across this country. One sector in particular that we spent a lot of time on was in the textile and clothing sector. Many people hear reports about sweatshops and Third World conditions, and what they probably don't realise is that, in many cases here in our backyards, we have people working on a similar basis. The people who are making clothes might be getting paid as little as $3 or $4 an hour in Australia, in flats in Richmond in my electorate or out in Springvale or elsewhere around the country, and those are clothes that go on to sell for a few hundred dollars. They're often some big brand names and they're often sold right here in Australia.

The companies who sell those clothes for enormous profit, paying very, very low wages—clothes usually made by older women, but not exclusively, who speak a language other than English as their first language—get away with this through things called contracting chains. The companies at the top, big brand names, will say to a middle company, 'We want you to make us some clothes.' Of course, you've got to abide by all the relevant legal requirements, but they then turn a blind eye to whether those things actually happen or not. The companies in the middle go off and then may, in turn, contract someone else. There could be two or three steps before you actually get to the worker at the end. The worker at the end, who will be sewing the brand name onto the garment, may have no legal relationship with that label. There are two or three intermediary steps—sometimes four or five—in between that allow the big company at the top to wash its hands of what's happening but that result in the person down the bottom working for below award wages and conditions and often under a significant threat. The companies in the middle say to them: 'You can complain if you like. You can try and organise or try and demand the basic things that you're entitled to under the law, but, if you do that, we'll just go and get someone else to do the work.' So, as a result, you end up in an extraordinarily vulnerable position and you will get paid below award wages. That happens here in Australia.

The Textile Clothing and Footwear Union has done enormous work not only in organising those people and taking those companies to court but also in changing the law, saying: 'No. If you're sitting at the top of the chain making a lot of money out of this, you bear some responsibility. There will now be the ability to take you to court if it turns out that the person who's doing the work is doing it in conditions that Australia wouldn't agree with.' That is a good principle. What we know is that that same system that leads to exploitation here in Australia applies now across the whole world, because, of course, capital is quite mobile and is able to go and engage in contracts overseas. And, in many instances, where wages are much lower even than you can get away with paying under those extraordinary arrangements I've just spoken about in Australia, they will go and do it.

We also know that a problem in Australia that is an especially big problem overseas is that many people work in what could only be described as slave-like conditions. That touches Australia very, very deeply. For example, in my electorate we have a very large representation from the Eritrean community. There have been some significant changes in Eritrea and Ethiopia during the course of this year, and a lot of people are looking at that with great hope and hoping that some of those changes, including around conscription but also around border disputes, will lead to some long-lasting peace and an improvement in human rights in the region. People have such hope because, in the many years before that, some horrific stories have come out of these regions. What is said systematically is that people are forced into slave labour and forced labour arrangements.

This happens when you've got an extraordinarily vulnerable population where you have wars. In many instances, as we are seeing famines and droughts sweeping through the region, you have people desperate for the basic freedoms that we would take for granted. They are forced into a position where they're told: 'Well, not only don't you have a government against which you can assert basic human rights but also we are now going to come and make you work, sometimes'—this was previously alleged, and Amnesty International and the UN have said this—'with the government's support. We're going to put you into a form of forced labour.' The reason that's important for Australia is that many Australian mining companies operate in Africa, particularly in some of those Horn of Africa countries and right across the region.

Just as it's no longer acceptable for companies in the clothing industry to say, 'You might be sewing the label onto our clothes, but we have no legal relationship with you, so we're going to turn a blind eye,' now it's no longer defensible, nor should it be legally acceptable, for Australian companies, including Australian mining companies, to have interests in the Africa region and to turn a blind eye to whether or not forced labour is being used to dig up their resources and have them shipped across to Australia. We've seen terrible examples of companies from Australia going abroad to try and defend governments' abuses of human rights overseas. In Canada, Canadian mining companies have actually found themselves taken to court because of claims of forced labour in Africa. It's only a matter of time before it happens in Australia as well. You would think, in light of knowing what we know about slavery in Australia, slavery around the world and the potential exposure of Australian companies, the government might seize that opportunity to come here with a bill that would actually do something and have a significant chance of winding it back.

It is good that we are debating a modern slavery bill in this parliament. That is a good thing. But, just as we needed laws that held large companies like Nike and Adidas to account and enabled them to be taken to court, we need laws in this country that have teeth. To pass modern slavery legislation but then outsource effective compliance of that to the very same people that this is meant to be regulating raises the question about whether the bill is going to work at all. That is why during the course of the inquiry into this matter and elsewhere the Greens, others and the opposition have said, 'You really need an independent commissioner to be able to have oversight over this, because otherwise how can you be assured that anything is going to change?' We have also heard the likes of the Law Council front up and say: 'Why are there no penalties in this bill? How is it that this bill seeks to impose obligations on people, yet there is no penalty if they breach them?' I will come back to this in a minute.

There are a number of other things that need to be changed in this bill. During the course of the Senate inquiry, we made the point that, at a minimum, this act should be reviewed on a regular and ongoing three-yearly basis by a statutory antislavery commissioner. We think that the first of those reviews, if there were to be an antislavery commissioner, should consider lower thresholds, the targeting of businesses in high-risk industries regardless of annual turnover, appropriate and commensurate resourcing of the commission and penalties for noncompliance. That has to be considered soon.

We also call on the government to amend this bill to include a public register of compliance for entities over the reportable threshold and a requirement in the act that entities over the reportable threshold comply with the act to be eligible for tender for government contracts, because we know that government, to the extent that it holds the purse strings, has the ability to drive very significant change. What should also be considered—it's not in this bill but it needs to be considered—are the needs, scope and application of a national victim support and compensation scheme as the next tranche of modern slavery legislation in Australia.

All of those things would be useful improvements to the bill, and I expect that the bill will pass in some form, and that will be good. But we've got an opportunity to make it better. And as we're making it better, the simple test we should apply is: is this bill actually going to drive change? I think everyone is agreed now on the need to take measures to stamp out modern slavery, but the question's got to be not whether we're debating a bill that's simply got 'modern slavery' in the title but whether we're going to bring about change in the sector.

As I've said, we've heard some very distressing examples of Australian companies—and the Human Rights Law Centre has shone the spotlight on this—being prepared to stand next to regimes whose human rights records would be questionable at best in countries where forced labour is going on and not only not say anything about it but actually throw their weight behind the current arrangements. That is a grave concern. And as Australian interests expand—mining interests in Africa in particular—we are going to need some independent oversight of this to ensure that it has teeth, because those businesses are operating a long way away. They might be based in Australia and headquartered in Australia, but the operations take place a long way away. It is very difficult, simply from behind a desk, to monitor that. And I would suggest that it is nonsensical to simply say, 'Well, we're going to rely on self-reporting' to say that there are no problems, because we've seen that that hasn't worked so far. There is very much a need for someone with teeth to be able to go in and investigate what is happening and whether or not, under the name of Australian companies, forced labour is taking place elsewhere.

I reiterate that in looking at what's happening in Eritrea and Ethiopia a lot of people are hoping that recent changes might ameliorate some of that, but that's happening independent of what Australia can do. That's no excuse for Australia not to do everything that we possibly can to ensure that those supply chains do not allow companies to turn a blind eye to what is happening. As this bill progresses through the Senate, Senator Nick McKim will be making further comments about the Greens position with respect to this bill. But I'll say now that I sincerely hope that we don't miss this opportunity, where attention is focused on modern slavery—something that is very real, and greater than many people think—to actually put in place laws that have teeth and that will drive real change. It would be an extraordinary pity if the government simply said that they're concerned only about a facade of action, when we could be doing a bit better than what the government has proposed.

See this speech in context