Jordon Steele-John (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Indeed I do. I move amendments (1) and (2) together:

(1) Clause 2, page 2 (at the end of the table), add:

(2) Page 15 (after 8), at the end of the Bill, add:

Schedule 3 — Goods produced by forced labour

Customs Act 1901

1 Section 50 (at the end of the heading)

Add "—general".

2 After section 50

Insert:

50A Prohibition of the importation of goods — goods produced by forced labour

The importation into Australia of goods produced or manufactured, in whole or in part, through the use of forced labour (within the meaning of the Criminal Code) is prohibited absolutely.

3 Subsection 51(1)

After "section 50", insert "or 50A".

4 Application provision

The amendments made by this Schedule apply in relation to goods imported into Australia on or after the commencement of this Schedule.

I am proud to be moving these amendments on behalf of the Australian Greens this evening. This is a move which we embark upon alongside community members and alongside diaspora groups that have been campaigning for this change for a very long time. This amendment would ban the import of products produced by forced labour from entering this country. Australia has been far too slow to act on stopping imports of products produced by forced labour. government measures, including business advisories, sanctions and import-export restrictions have occurred globally, but at this point Australia has not taken any public action. We now risk becoming a dumping ground for products tainted by slavery.

Perpetuating this grave human rights violation, rather than placing words of condemnation into action is shameful. Labor voted in support of banning products produced by forced labour when they were in opposition, when the same amendment to the Customs Act was last before the Senate. There is no good reason why they should not do the same today. Minister Wong has foreshadowed that the government will not support this amendment because of the Modern Slavery Review. This is a weak excuse. The terms of reference of the Modern Slavery Review specifically leave out the Customs Act. Labor have also just agreed at their national conference on the following:

Over 50 million people worldwide are trapped in modern slavery, many of whom are victims of exploitation in global supply chains. Australia has an important role to play in abolishing modern slavery, Modern slavery is a hidden problem that will not be discovered without meaningful attempts to expose it. Labor will ensure that Commonwealth criminal laws adequately capture, and prohibit, forced labour. Labor will enforce supply chain reporting requirements, including penalties for non-compliance.

A wide range of community organisations have joined with the Greens to call on Labor to prioritise this change now, and to do so now that they are in government and have the chance to do it. It is time for Australia to no longer be left to fall behind. It is time for Australia to join countries like Canada and the United States who have already implemented bans on these types of imports. A report released by the International Justice Mission found that more than 90 per cent of Australian businesses have identified potential risks of slavery in their supply chains, yet nearly 85 per cent of 404 company statements submitted to the Modern Slavery Statements Register failed to show any response to slavery or the risk of slavery in their operations or supply chains.

Across our region, forced labour is occurring en masse. To give the Senate some international examples, in Indonesia forced labour is seen in industries producing palm oil, on-board fishing vessels and in tobacco production, to name just a few. In Malaysia, migrant workers have been found to be involved in the production of garments under the conditions of forced labour. Globally, state-sanctioned forced labour is particularly common in the cotton sector. Each year in Turkmenistan, during the harvest season, citizens are forced out of their regular jobs to spend weeks picking cotton at work. In Saudi Arabia, millions of migrant workers fill mostly manual, clerical and service jobs constituting more than 80 per cent of the private sector workforce, governed by a system which gives the employers excessive power over their mobility and legal status in the country. Human Rights Watch tells us the system undermines and fundamentally underpins the vulnerability of migrant workers and subjects them to a range of abuses from passport confiscation to delayed wages and forced labour. Exporting prison-produced good is illegal under international and domestic law and international trade law but in the United States prison labour is a multibillion-dollar industry, with 37 states allowing the use of prison labour by private companies. In eight states prisoners are not paid for their work in state-run facilities.

Looking to the issues in relation specifically to the Uyghurs and to the treatment of Tibetan people, as this place is aware, since 2017, the Chinese government has imprisoned more than one million Uyghurs and subjected those not detained to intense surveillance, religious restrictions, forced labour and forced sterilisation. A UN report released on 31 August by the outgoing Human Rights High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet contained victim accounts that substantiate mass arbitrary detention, torture, cultural persecution, forced labour and other serious human rights violations. It recommends states, businesses and the international community should take action with a view to ending the abuses and advancing accountability. According to the end Uyghur forced labour campaign, one in five cotton garments are tainted by Uyghur forced labour. Forty-five per cent of the world's solar-grade silicon used for the creation of solar panels comes from the Uyghur region, and more than 17 industries globally are implicated in forced Uyghur labour.

In Tibet, UN experts have expressed concern over allegations that so-called labour transfer and vocational training programs imposed on Tibetans by the Chinese government are in fact being used as a pretext to undermine Tibetan religious, linguistic and cultural identity, to monitor and politically indoctrinate Tibetans, and warned that such programs result in forced labour. Some 500,000 Tibetans a year were subject to these programs, transferred to vocational training centres away from their families and homes.

This bill gives us the opportunity to send a message on Australia's position on these serious human rights abuses right now. As I have said, this is not the first time that this bill has come to the parliament. In fact, it has passed the Senate previously with the support of all parties, with the exception of the coalition. This included a yes vote from members of the Australian Labor Party. A bill focused on Uyghur forced labour goods was sent to an inquiry and this then produced a broader bill in relation to the banning of forced-labour-produced goods from all over the world without any exception. This was endorsed without reservation and passed by the Senate. It lapsed while sitting in front of the House of Representatives at the 46th Parliament. Even the United States state department, the Labor Party's closest international ally, indicated its support for the goals of the bill in the 46th Parliament, so did Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Australian Council of Trade Unions, Fair Trade, Be Slavery Free, the Australian Tibetan Council, a wide range of Uyghur organisations both at home and abroad, and the Human Rights Law Centre amongst so many others.

Now is the time to send the message that Australia will not accept products produced by any taint of modern slavery. In the face of ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity occurring in our very own region, this attempt to control the import of products produced with forced labour into Australia should be embraced by every party in this place. This would send a clear message to all countries that Australia sees forced labour as unacceptable and that our community will not accept that there have been goods produced by forced labour within our markets. We could see this parliament take immediate action to stop forced labour imports and no longer have Australia implicated in these horrific human rights abuses. I implore the Senate this evening to pass this amendment without hesitation.