Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

[by video link] I am very pleased to be here today supporting this bill of Senator Patrick's, the Customs Amendment (Banning Goods Produced By Forced Labour) Bill 2021. It's a very important bill. It's an incredibly important issue—the fact that we have forced labour, that we have slavery continuing today, that slavery is not a thing of the past, that there are 40 million people around the world who are still subject to the appalling conditions of living as bonded labourers, as slaves in forced labour.

I thank Senator Patrick for bringing this bill to us, and I thank him for modifying the bill from the first version that we saw, which was focused on the atrocities and the appalling conditions suffered by the Uighurs in China, because it is important to acknowledge what's going on in China—acknowledge the huge, massive attacks on Uighur people's human rights in China—but it's also important to acknowledge that this is not an issue that is just restricted to China and this is not an issue just restricted to the Uighur population. There are issues of modern slavery, of forced labour, all around the world, so I really do thank Senator Patrick for having broadened the extent of the bill, which was one of the recommendations by many of the people who put in submissions to his previous bill.

As Senator Patrick himself acknowledged in his contribution, this bill isn't perfect, and, as Senator Watt just told us, there are many ways that this bill could be improved. The Greens support most of those critiques of the bill. We'd like to see our legislative framework improve to pick up on many of those issues that Senator Watt just raised. But that does not take away from the importance of this bill and the importance of putting the issue of forced labour around the world and what the Australian government's response should be fairly and squarely on the agenda, on the table for us today.

Yes, this bill should be improved, but so should the rest of our framework for addressing human rights. We need a legislative framework that puts human rights—the rights of people to live decent, unoppressed lives, to have freedom of speech, freedom of movement and freedom of association—at the core of our foreign policy. It needs to be at the core of our foreign policy. Not only that, it needs to be at the core of our trade policy and at the core of our aid policy. This bill is an important contribution towards changing our legislative framework for that to occur. As such, the Greens are very happy to be supporting it as a step forward.

As I said, this bill, as we know, began with the appalling conditions being suffered by a million or more Uighur people in China. We have heard so much in this parliament—and quite rightly—about what the conditions are. It's horrific. Basically, cultural genocide is being undertaken against the Uighur people, with detention of up to a million people, the forced labour this bill is addressing, reports of systematic rape and the widespread destruction or damaging of thousands of mosques. So whatever we can do as Australians to address this is important, and we need to keep the focus on. We cannot just let it be put to the side and say that, because China is a very large country and a very powerful force in the world, there's nothing that we can do. There are things that we can do, and we must do them.

But, as I have said, it's also important that we acknowledge that this isn't just an issue focused on China. We need to broaden it out. One reason why we need to broaden it out is that we need to make sure that, when we are talking about the appalling human rights abuses being meted out by the Chinese government—by that totalitarian regime—we don't get ourselves into a frame of thinking that it's only China that's doing that, because it's not. There are other appalling human rights abuses all around the world, as we know.

I have just spent the weekend focused on the tragic circumstances that are currently unfolding in Afghanistan, as I'm sure many of us have. We're going to be hearing a lot more this week about the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan—the massacres, the deaths that they are imposing and are likely to be imposing upon people. We have seen the coup in Myanmar. We have seen regimes such as Saudi Arabia's. There are issues all around the world, and we need to make sure that they are being addressed.

So it's not a focus just on China. We have to be very careful that we take whatever action we can to make sure that, by having a focus on the actions of the Chinese government, we don't flame anti-Chinese racism here in Australia. We've got to put all of the work that we are doing in a framework of respect for human rights everywhere, including in Australia, and respect for the human rights of people of Chinese heritage here in Australia. We know that, with the focus on China over the last year or so, there has been a huge increase in racism directed at people of Chinese heritage in Australia. It is very important that this bill has been modified so it's not focused just on China; it is focused on slavery and on forced labour wherever it occurs in the world.

There are other places in the world where it does occur. As I said, 40 million people around the world are subject to slavery or conditions of forced labour. For example, state sanctioned forced labour is particularly common in the cotton sector in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. Each year, during the harvest season, citizens are forced out of regular jobs to spend weeks picking cotton at work. In Saudi Arabia, millions of migrant workers fill mostly manual, clerical and service jobs in Saudi Arabia, constituting more than 80 per cent of the private sector workforce, governed by an abusive kafala system that gives their employers excessive power over their mobility and legal status in the country. Human Rights Watch tells us that the system underpins migrant workers' vulnerability to a wide range of abuses, from passport confiscation to delayed wages and forced labour. There is little that's being done to dismantle the kafala system, which is leaving migrant workers in Saudi Arabia at high risk of abuse. Then, in fact, there are other elements of forced labour, such as prison labour and the situation in prisons. Exporting prison produced goods is illegal under domestic and international trade law, but in the United States prison labour is a billion-dollar industry, and 37 states allow the use of prison labour by private companies. In eight states, prisoners are not paid for their work in state-run facilities. The country-wide average for inmates receiving the least for their work is US14c per hour, and the average for those earning the most is US63c per hour, so it's important that Australia focuses on where forced labour and modern slavery are occurring, no matter where it is around the world.

As I said, we need to be putting human rights at the forefront, at the core, of our foreign policy and of our trade policy. There is lots more that we can be doing, as well as supporting the bill before us today, and I'm hoping the Senate is indeed going to be supporting this bill today. We need to be increasing the powers in our Modern Slavery Act. Our Modern Slavery Act is up for review, and I am hoping that it will be strengthened so it can really address broader issues of modern slavery wherever they're occurring around the world, and particularly requiring it to have mandatory reporting so that that bill actually has some teeth. We must ratify the International Labour Organization forced labour protocol. I don't understand why Australia has not ratified that protocol yet. More broadly, we need to be changing our framework so that we can have a powerful focus on human rights abuses wherever they occur in the world as that would clearly enable us to have targeted sanctions on human rights abusers wherever they are in the world. Across parties and across the Senate we have had a focus on the need for Magnitsky legislation. As we know we have had a government response to this legislation which is frankly lukewarm. I am not convinced that we are going to be toughening our sanctions regime, as we need to, to give us the powers to be taking powerful action against human rights abusers wherever they are in the world. As Greens, we will be continuing our pressure to be getting really strong Magnitsky legislation to enable us to be effectively imposing targeted sanctions on human rights abusers no matter where they are from: whether they are Chinese officials, who are responsible for the appalling conditions that the Uighur are living under; whether they are the generals, who are responsible for the coup in Myanmar; whether they are people in Russia, in Saudi Arabia or in other parts of the world who are responsible for appalling attacks on human rights abuses.

I want to conclude by saying that this is a very important bill. But what is more important is to see it in the context of needing to have a legislative framework, which the Greens have been proposing and will continue to advocate for, that puts human rights at the core of our interactions with other countries, whether that's through our foreign policy, through our trade arrangements or through our aid arrangements, so that we can feel that we are doing our utmost to be supporting the rights of people around the world. This is important because while human rights are being abused, while people are suffering and not being able to live their best lives, anywhere in the world, we suffer too as part of that common humanity. We need to be taking action and we need to be taking whatever action we can. In that context, the Greens are very happy to be supporting Senator Patrick's bill this morning.