Jason Wood (La Trobe, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Community Safety, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I speak on the Modern Slavery Amendment (Australian Anti-Slavery Commissioner) Bill 2023. The bill's primary intention is to establish an antislavery commissioner as a statutory appointment under the Attorney-General's portfolio. I acknowledge that this was a commitment from the Labor Party prior to the election. The cost over the forward estimates is $8 million. I do have a concern: is it the best way to spend the funding? I was previously in the role of assistant minister for home affairs. On our side, we think it may be necessary to take this to committee and have a further look at it. Maybe the minister can explain a bit more. I'm trying to work out whether the role of the Anti-Slavery Commissioner is more to look at ensuring that the modern slavery statements from companies earning more than $100 million are in some way enforced. Under the previous government, it was worked through with the business community not to name and shame those companies who don't meet the standard of releasing a statement. But we actually had that power. I remember at one stage the Department of Home Affairs did want us to release that. I'm very interested to hear from the minister, the Attorney-General, about how the role of the Anti-Slavery Commissioner would work, considering, too, that you have grants going to good community groups. It's a lot of money, $8 million, so I'd be very interested to see how that's going to be spent.

Sadly, worldwide there are an estimated 49 million, nearly 50 million, people who are victims of modern slavery. We often think it's something happening overseas, but, sadly, we've heard often that it's actually happening here in Australia. I remember an example was given to me of a lady coming from Thailand or Singapore. A friend invited her to Australia—'Come over here for a great holiday'—picked her up from the airport and took her straight to a brothel, where they took her passport away. Basically she was stuck there for over 12 months. Shocking situations like that do occur here in Australia.

Modern slavery encompasses various forms, such as forced labour, human trafficking, debt bondage and exploitation, cutting across various industries, including agriculture, manufacturing, construction and the service sector. It very much targets vulnerable populations, including migrants and refugees. Those living in poverty are disproportionately affected by modern slavery. Quite often it comes down to education and not knowing your rights. You may be from a country where you've got no trust in government and law enforcement at all, and therefore, if a person has, for example, taken your passport away, you think, 'If I go to the police, does that mean I get deported?' There are those sorts of incidents taking place. It's also very difficult to prosecute. I've heard numerous examples from the AFP and the Australian Border Force of how difficult it is to actually prosecute cases like this.

When I was the assistant minister for customs under the previous coalition government, we proudly legislated the landmark Modern Slavery Act 2018, to directly target modern slavery in supply chains and support the business community to take action by establishing a practical, risk based reporting framework. The Modern Slavery Act came into effect on 1 January 2019. Companies based and operating in Australia which have an annual consolidated revenue of more than $100 million—which ended up being over 3,000 business entities—are obliged to report annually on the risks of modern slavery in their business operation and supply chains and take action to address those risks.

When you're dealing with the bigger companies—such as Woolworths, Qantas or Bunnings, which is a good example—you find that those companies in some ways find it easy to put in a modern slavery statement, but then all those in the supply chain also have to comply, which puts added pressure on the small businesses. Reporting entities are required to submit annual modern slavery statements, which are published on the Modern Slavery Statements Register. We were the first country after the UK to do this. The big difference between Australia's online register and the UK's at the time—I'm not sure if the UK has now changed—is that there wasn't a search ability in the UK, which is something we made sure we had in Australia.

The register was launched on 30 July 2020. The coalition's online register for modern slavery statements was the first government run register of its kind in the world. As I said, the UK had something similar. The UK was very excited and said they had the best, but in fact the various not-for-profit groups and those involved in protecting vulnerable people were very impressed with what the previous government did. Can I congratulate the Department of Home Affairs. They were so passionate—especially the Australian Border Force—about doing everything they could to protect vulnerable people.

During my time as assistant minister, the register published more than 4,000 entity statements, covering activities of 8,000 reporting entities. The government itself is also required to submit annual Commonwealth modern slavery statements. We also put in place an expert advisory panel. Our efforts to implement the Modern Slavery Act were bolstered by the contributions of the Modern Slavery Expert Advisory Group. I thank all the group members for their expertise.

The great thing is that the inquiry into establishing the act was a bipartisan one. It went on, I think, when the former member for Dunkley Chris Crewther was on the committee. It was both sides of politics who supported this, and the advisory group was very helpful. It was committed to providing strategic advice to government to support the effective implementation of the Modern Slavery Act. The group comprised representatives from five peak bodies and a further 10 appointed representatives. The Modern Slavery Expert Advisory Group focused on various subjects, including the development of the Modern Slavery Recognition Scheme, Australian businesses' response to modern slavery risks in overseas supply chains, and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on modern slavery.

As the assistant minister in the previous coalition government, on 31 March 2022 I announced a statutory review of the landmark Modern Slavery Act. The review considered the operation of the act over its first three years and whether further measures to improve the act and, where necessary, compliance were required. One the issues was whether the threshold for statements should be reduced to $50 million. I know New South Wales was looking at that, and it'll be interesting to see whether the Labor government takes it up. The only thing is that when you go further down with the amount of money it becomes a great burden for smaller companies to provide the information for those statements. They take a lot of work.

The review was conducted in accordance with section 24 of the act and supports the National Action Plan to Combat Modern Slavery 2020-25, in which the previous coalition government committed to undertake a review of the act in 2022. Under the national action plan, we proudly awarded more than $1.6 million in grant funding to seven organisations working to combat modern slavery. The organisations were determined by the Department of Home Affairs group working on modern slavery. This was part of $4.4 million allocated over five years for multiyear grant funding opportunities for civil society organisations, NGOs, business and academia to deliver projects to combat modern slavery in Australia. There are some really clever organisations when it comes to passing on to victims information on how to report. I won't go into the details of how it is done, because that is something I don't want those involved in this to find out, but some of the ideas, when it comes to computers and what the ABF are doing, are fantastic.

I thank all the past and present members of the expert advisory group, in particular Professor Jennifer Burn, who has been the Director of Anti-Slavery Australia since 2003. She has been actively involved in the development of Australia's response to human trafficking and slavery. It was just incredible how passionate all these people on the advisory committee were and how thankful they were for government commitment. I'm glad the new government has taken the mantle on. Again, I thank all the ABF officers for their tireless work to combat the scourge of modern slavery in Australia.

One concern brought to me was that there was a reluctance of victims to come forward to the Australian Federal Police, and one thing I recommended to the Australian Federal Police was to allow a trial whereby agencies could actually speak to the victims first. The AFP had a concern that it would jeopardise the witness in evidence, but, as a former police officer, I pointed out to them that, if you've got no witness, you've got no evidence, and you've got no case. So I would be interested to know how that matter ended up.

Some important dates are 2 December, which is the United Nations International Day for the Abolition of Slavery, and 30 July is the World Day Against Trafficking in Persons. It's very sad that we have this occurring in Australia and around the world, and we just have to do everything we can to have tougher penalties and target those people involved in modern slavery.

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