Lisa Singh (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Attorney General) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the report.

I rise to take note of the Joint Committee on Law Enforcement's report into human trafficking, slavery and slavery-like practices, which was presented out of sitting, on 18 July. As the deputy chair, I'd like to speak to the recommendations of the Joint Committee on Law Enforcement. The committee's inquiry into human trafficking actually commenced in the last parliament. However, then parliament was prorogued, and we know the status of committee inquiries at that time. The committee was reinstated in this parliament and has continued with its deliberations and its work, which has culminated in the report before the Senate. The terms of reference and, indeed, a number of the submissions that were received for this report were the same as for the original inquiry in the last parliament, but a number of submitters chose to add to their original submissions, and extra submissions were received. There is a lot of interest in the issues of human trafficking, slavery and slavery-like practices in Australia. They have gained a lot of momentum, not just here in Australia but, indeed, around the world. That culminated with the UK recently, in 2015, moving legislation known as the Modern Slavery Act, which came into force in 2015 to deal with the supply chain issues of big businesses when it comes to slavery. What that found in relation to the UK was that a number of businesses are unaware of the fact that they do indeed have slavery or slavery-like practices in their supply chain.

In relation to this report, because it came out of the parliamentary Joint Committee on Law Enforcement, its focus was on law enforcement. That led to it having a number of recommendations which address those issues of law enforcement. But, at the outset, the terms of reference for this inquiry didn't just focus on slavery in supply chains. It did look at issues of forced labour, debt bondage and the like, but it also looked at a number of other issues, such as the prevalence of human trafficking in Australia, including those in culturally and linguistically diverse communities. It also looked, very much so, at the effectiveness, or lack thereof, of Commonwealth law enforcement agencies in responding to human trafficking. Out of the committee's deliberations and the evidence that it received, it was found that there were a number of inefficiencies in the way the Commonwealth government deals with human trafficking and slavery in Australia. It also focused on organised crime, transnational organised crime into human trafficking, the extent to which human trafficking is facilitated by migration visas, including marriage, partner, student and work visas, technology and false identities, and a number of related issues.

There are a number of recommendations that I could refer to, but I did want to highlight one issue which goes beyond the issue of slavery, in the sense of a modern slavery act, and that is the issue of forced marriage. Firstly, to be honest, it is amazing that we are here, in 2017, talking about slavery, slavery-like practices and forced marriage. But, nevertheless, here we are. Forced marriage for women and girls is still occurring here in Australia. A number of the victims are too scared to come forward, and their access to the support they need to make their situation known to law enforcement services is not always very straightforward or helpful. Alarmingly, there seems to be a number of women and girls still in forced marriage situations in Australia. Between 2013 and 2015, of the 49 reported referrals that the Australian Federal Police looked into, 32 of them were for girls under the age of 18. Since that time, the number of referrals of forced marriages to the AFP has only increased.

Out of all of the referrals and investigations the AFP carried out into human trafficking and slavery, 50 per cent of them are in the area of forced marriage. The committee did focus, therefore, on recommendations in relation to not only forced marriage but also the role of the AFP in identifying these situations. It recommended that the Commonwealth government increase the number of AFP officers with specialised human trafficking and antislavery training in all states. In relation to forced marriage, the committee took some of its information and advice from what occurs in the UK and recommended that the government consider extending the application of protection orders relating to forced marriage to people over the ages of 18 years. This is because of statistics showing that it happens not just to young women under the age of 18 but also to women over the age of 18, and they also need to be given the same protection at the airports that the current law gives to those under the age of 18.

The other issue, when we talk about forced marriage here in Australia, is that there are a number of organisations that do a lot of work in education in relation to forced marriage, yet they simply are not funded to reach out to enough schools to do that work. In the past year, ACRATH, for example, which does a lot of that education on forced marriage in schools, only had enough funding to reach out to about nine schools in the whole country. So we also recommended that the Commonwealth continue to fund organisations and programs that engage in outreach, education and awareness-raising activities on forced marriage issues and that the Commonwealth consider the inclusion of education on forced marriage in the school curricula, because that would make it a mainstay and, I would hope, bring extra funding on the issue to those schools.

We also recommended that information on forced marriage be consistently and routinely provided to newly arrived migrants in Australia through their engagement with government officials and agencies as well as appropriate community groups and programs so that they realise that forced marriage is outlawed in this country. It is not allowed. In fact, it has been legislated in this place to be against the law and should therefore not be occurring, yet we know from those Australian Federal Police statistics that, unfortunately, that is the situation that a number of young women and girls in Australia find themselves in.

One of the really important recommendations that I want to raise in the time I have left is the issue of compensation. We know that human trafficking and slavery comes under the federal Criminal Code, and yet there is no national compensation scheme for victims of human trafficking and slavery. Instead, they have to rely on the various nuanced state victims-of-crime compensation schemes, which differ depending on which state you look at. I think in Tasmania it's around $10,000 and in Queensland it's $100,000. If you're in a situation where you're trafficked, where you're in a forced marriage and slavery or slavery-like conditions—whatever situation you are in that warrants some form of compensation—then it shouldn't matter whether it occurred to you in Queensland or Tasmania; the compensation should be the same. So we recommended that there should be a national compensation scheme for victims of human trafficking and slavery that can be funded out of proceeds of crime funds, so that it doesn't have to come out of consolidated revenue.

All of these recommendations will now be considered by the government, I am sure, and I hope that they look upon them favourably. I will continue my work in this space on the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, which is inquiring into a modern slavery act for Australia, specifically focusing on the supply chains of businesses. I hope that inquiry considers the recommendations of this inquiry as well.