John Faulkner (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A little earlier in the week I commenced my second reading debate contribution and spoke, I think, for all of 37 seconds about this important legislation—the Crimes Legislation Amendment (Slavery, Slavery-like Conditions and People Trafficking) Bill 2012. I was about to mention that the bill reinforces the key values of fairness, equity under the law and a fair day's pay for a fair day's work.

Slavery still exists. It is not a relic of the past. This bill takes head-on three modern manifestations of slavery—forced marriage, forced labour and organ trafficking—and it does so in accordance with Australia's international legal obligations. Under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Australia is obligated to take steps to fully realise rights recognised in these treaties, including marriage with the free consent of both spouses.

Forced marriage should not be confused with arranged marriage or religious custom. Christianity, Hinduism, Islam and Sikhism require full and free consent to marriage. In an arranged marriage families usually play a significant role in promoting the idea of marriage to the bride and groom but spouses do have the right to refuse the arrangement. The International Family Law journal suggested in 2004 that many victims of forced marriage suffer tremendously. Cases have included emotional and physical abuse, abduction and kidnapping, genital mutilation, rape, enforced pregnancy, abortion and even murder.

This bill creates a new offence for forced marriages. While it may be argued that the broad definition of 'slavery' as found by the High Court in The Queen v Wei Tang allows prosecution under the existing Criminal Code, the government has chosen to codify the crime, leaving no room for uncertainty at common law. Proposed new section 270.7A provides a definition of 'forced marriage'. This expanded definition will allow for prosecution of servile relationships which are not legally recognised as marriage in Australia. Proposed new section 270.7B inserts two new forced marriage offences. One subsection will be used in the prosecution of those who are a party to the marriage. The other subsection allows for the prosecution of third parties who either use force or coercion to foster such a marriage or are reckless to the fact that the marriage is forced.

While many consider the face of 21st-century slavery to be forced prostitution, a recent discussion paper from the Attorney-General's Department noted that slavery also exists in industries such as hospitality, construction, and agriculture, as well as in domestic situations. One recent example of this was a horrific case in the Blue Mountains in NSW where a restaurateur was prosecuted after promising a better life to an Indian national. After his arrival in Sydney, this individual's travel documents were seized and he was forced to work hours on end without pay as a kitchen hand, accommodated only in a backyard tin shed.

This bill broadens the definitions and offences which were previously associated with sexual servitude and creates a number of new sections which will apply more generally to all forms of servitude and all forms of forced labour. The definition of sexual servitude is replaced with a definition of servitude. Also replaced is the offence of sexual servitude with a broader offence of servitude. The elements of the new offence are: causing a person to enter or remain in servitude, or conducting a business involving servitude.

The bill creates a continuum of offences, from forced labour where physical restraint is not proved, to servitude where ownership is not proved, to slavery. The bill allows for an alternative verdict for forced labour if servitude is not proved beyond reasonable doubt provided the accused is accorded procedural fairness with respect to the alternate crime.

The third arm of this bill relates to organ trafficking. Australia is obliged under the trafficking protocol to criminalise organ trafficking. This bill inserts seven new offences into the Criminal Code relating to organ trafficking based on two subdivisions: organ trafficking and harbouring a victim. The offences are designed to criminalise every element of organ trafficking. For example, the harbouring offence only requires the prosecution to prove recklessness in harbouring, receiving or concealing a victim. Factors which will trigger the aggravated offence—carrying a larger penalty—are: if the victim is under 18; if the victim is subject to cruel punishment; or if in the conduct of organ trafficking the victim or another person dies or suffers serious harm. The aggravated offence of harbouring will be triggered if the victim is under 18.

It is now 189 years since slavery was abolished in the British Empire This decision had effect in the colony of New South Wales in 1824. It is 147 years since the 13th amendment of the US Constitution banned slavery. It is 125 years since slavery was abolished in Brazil in 1888. Nevertheless, this bill recognises that slavery remains a reality today. This bill will ensure more investigations, simpler trials and swifter convictions for those involved in such appalling exploitation and denial of liberty, and I support this bill.

David Fawcett (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I also rise to address the Crimes Legislation Amendment (Slavery, Slavery-like Conditions and People Trafficking) Bill 2012. As Senator Faulkner has just indicated, it is some hundreds of years, over 200 years in fact, since Wilberforce in 1807 brought the Slave Trade Act into the British parliament, and in 1837 the abolition of slavery. So many people when they look at films about slavery, like Lincoln with Daniel Day-Lewis who won the Oscar, tend to think about it as a thing in the past.

But it is not. For many people around the world their basic freedoms, their liberties and their individual rights are being abused. The exploitation involved, normally in the form of people trafficking, can take a wide range of forms including sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, organ harvesting, as well as sexual or domestic servitude and including forced marriage. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime found that victims were trafficked from a wide range of countries, over 127 countries, and there were more than 130 places around the world where they were exploited. All of this looks at trafficking for people for forced labour or sex but it does not actually include things like forced marriage or forced adoptions, so there is quite a broad range of people.

It is difficult to determine the extent of it in Australia. There are discrepancies between the estimates of government and non-government operations, but the Australian Federal Police have undertaken 305 investigations around people-trafficking offences between 2004 and 2011. As of June 2011, 184 victims had been referred to Australia's Support for Victims of People Trafficking Program, which indicates that it is an issue here in Australia and not just in other parts of the world.

It is interesting to see that the people who are quite active around the world and here in Australia are groups such as World Vision and groups within the Catholic Church and other churches.

It is a timely reminder that, for all the bad press that churches receive at times, when it comes to standing up for people's freedoms and their rights it is often people who are motivated by their faith who are actually taking steps and going out of their way to stand up for and to support people. Wilberforce was one of the earliest examples in this particular area, but I commend organisations such as World Vision for their extensive work and their campaigns of not trading lives.

It is an issue, though, in Australia. In South Australia recently we have had bills looking at things like decriminalising prostitution. Evidence has come from the University of Melbourne, for example, talking about the existence of trafficked prostitutes in Asia working in South Australia's illegal brothels and that decriminalisation would make the problem even worse. So there is evidence that this is not something that is just overseas, that is just in someone else's backyard. This occurs in our backyard and it affects our communities, so it is appropriate that this parliament does something about it. We need to support the work of organisations such as World Vision and Rahab, which was started by young women who reach out to and care for the women who are caught up in the sex industry, often having been trafficked, in places like South Australia.

It is also the case that whilst we tend to think of forced marriage as being something that perhaps happens in other countries, it does happen here in Australia. There have been a number of newspaper articles over the last few years highlighting the cases of young women who have sought the protection of the Australian Federal Police and others to stop them being sent from this country by their parents to end up in a marriage that they were not willing to be part of. The Australian Embassy in Lebanon, for example, handled around 12 forced marriage cases involving girls as young as 14, with claims that they were raped and kidnapped, back in 2005. So whilst the size of the problem is not definitely known, we do know that it is a problem.

This bill seeks to codify, for the first time, some of these offences so that we are making a very clear statement that what may be culturally acceptable in some countries is not acceptable here in Australia; that it is not only against our values and the freedoms and rights of individuals but, if those are not being respected, we will make it against the law so people realise what is expected if they live here in Australia. The objective of the bill is to strengthen and expand the capability of investigators and prosecutors to combat people-trafficking and slavery, in particular for the purposes of labour exploitation, and to facilitate the prosecution of these offences.

Specifically, the bill introduces new offences of forced labour, forced marriage, harbouring a victim and organ trafficking and makes a number of consequential amendments. It ensures that the slavery offence applies to conduct which renders a person a slave, as well as conduct involving a person who is already a slave. It extends the application of the existing offences of deceptive recruiting and sexual servitude so that they apply to non-sexual servitude and all forms of deceptive recruiting. It increases the penalties applicable to the existing debt bondage offences to ensure they adequately reflect the relative seriousness of the offences, and again there are some consequential amendments. I will come back to that point later because I have some concerns that some of the priorities in terms of the potential sentences do not reflect correctly the relative seriousness of the offences.

The bill also broadens the definition of exploitation under the code to include a range of slavery-like practices and it amends existing definitions in the code to capture more subtle forms of coercion, including psychological oppression and the abuse of power or a person's vulnerability. It clarifies the phrase that 'omission to perform an act that by law there is a duty to perform', in subsection 4.3(b) of the code, encompasses not only those duties imposed under Commonwealth law but also imposed under a state or territory law or at common law.

The coalition does have some concerns with the bill, and coalition senators made additional comments in the report by the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee which looked into this crimes legislation amendment bill. One of the concerns is around the very broad definition of coercion. The explanatory memorandum explicitly says the term has been drafted to be broad and non-exhaustive in order to supplement the existing framework and 'ensure the broadest possible range of exploitative behaviour is captured and criminalised'. But the failure to actually define what coercion means leaves open the possibility that a broad range of relationships in which power is unequal might be characterised as coercive. There are also some concerns around the strict liability provisions, and the coalition will be putting forward some amendments in that regard.

I would like to come to some specific issues that I have noted in both the information surrounding the bill and specific clauses. One specific issue I thought was worthy of note when I was researching the background for this speech and looking at the inquiry in South Australia is that evidence from a Melbourne university in relation to the South Australian bill looked at alternative models of legislation. I think it is worthwhile for this parliament to also consider alternative approaches to reducing the demand for services that create the market for people to traffic.

The Nordic model was discussed during evidence provided to the South Australian parliament. Under the model that was first adopted in Sweden, the clients of prostitutes commit an offence punishable with fines or even custodial sentences, while the prostitutes themselves are considered to have committed no offence. The evidence presented indicates that it seems to have been effective as there is now no known trafficking in Sweden. There are a small number of women, perhaps as few as 600, involved in prostitution now in Sweden, compared to Australia, where the industry believes there are some 17,000. There are no brothels and street prostitution is almost gone. Clearly, having a different approach and making the consumer of the service liable, as opposed to the provider, is a way to protect people who are often victims of life circumstances that force them into that line of work. By not making their conduct illegal but making the conduct of the client illegal, it seems to be effective.

I believe it is appropriate that this parliament should take note of some of those kinds of initiatives to make sure that we balance cracking down on these sorts of behaviours and these sorts of industries that exploit people with protecting the people who are exploited. I would particularly like to come to this concept of relative offences. Clause 270.7 talks about deceptive recruiting for labour or services. The penalty in the case of an aggravated offence is imprisonment for nine years or, in any other case, imprisonment for seven years. We heard Senator Faulkner talk before about the person who had been brought from the Indian subcontinent to Australia and who ended up essentially being made to work as a slave, living in a tin shed. That was deceptive recruiting, which led to slave-like practices. I completely accept that that is not appropriate. But if we move on to 270.7A, which looks at forced marriage, we find that in the case of an aggravated offence for forced marriage the imprisonment is seven years or, in any other case, the imprisonment is only four years. The relativity of that is, I believe, inappropriate.

Let us look at some of the newspaper articles, and I go particularly to an article in the Australian in February of last year. It talks about a centre in Western Sydney where there is a lady who runs a support service for young women who have been caught up in forced marriage or who have had pressure from family around that. She talks about the fact that this is very common in Australia, that it is deliberately hidden by community and religious leaders and that it co-exists with family violence and the subjugation of women. The article talks about the fact that legal aid lawyers have told the courts that, in a number of cases, girls are subjected to violence or threats of violence, including being dragged around by the hair, hit when they refuse the marriage that has been planned for them, taken out of school, locked in their bedrooms until they agree to go through the ceremony, or psychologically pressured by being told that their female relatives will be kidnapped and raped if they continue to resist the plans that have been made for them. In the worst case recorded, workers in the Migrant Resource Centre in Tasmania told authorities there that local families were exchanging dowries before girls were even 14, and that they have a case of a girl's family in Australia who pinned her down while her new husband raped her to seal the deal. How can that be a lesser offence in terms of the penalties than the deceptive recruiting? In terms of the standards that Australia maintains for the respect of individuals, this legislation should be sending the message that that kind of behaviour is inappropriate, that it is unacceptable and that it will be punished to the full extent of the law.

I also have some concerns as to the same section around strict liability. Clause 270.7B(2)(c) talks about the person who is not a victim of a forced marriage having committed an offence and says that strict liability applies to that person. What that means is that, in this case, if there is a young woman, a young girl who is 13 or 14 years old, who is forced by her parents to take part in a marriage, there is a strict liability upon the groom, whether that person is 18 or 48 or whatever age, to prove his innocence. Firstly, that is a fundamental change in the assumption of innocence that we normally have here, in Australia. Secondly, as we have seen in many of these cases, that person is in another country and, yes, he may be a party to the marriage, but the one who is actually guilty of forcing the marriage, who is guilty of the psychological or physical oppression, is not the groom; in many cases, it is the parents. If there is going to be strict liability then, surely, it would be on the people who have actually caused the physical or psychological harm, the people who have exerted influence and control over the young woman as opposed to the person who is the other party in what some would see as an arranged marriage. Clearly, for someone who is underage in Australia, those who are guilty of making this a forced marriage are the caregivers, which, unfortunately and unthinkably from our world view here in Australia, appear to be the parents. So I have a concern with the concept of strict liability in the first place of reversing that onus of proof, but I am particularly concerned that it may be applied against the wrong party. I believe it is something that needs to be considered in this bill.

Having said that, I do support the bill for all the reasons I have stated. It is long since Abraham Lincoln and long since William Wilberforce, and so you would like to think that our world has moved on; but, clearly, it has not. I believe it is important to recognise that many of the practices we are talking about, particularly around forced marriages, come from cultures other than that which is considered mainstream in Australia. The citizenship pledge which people take when they come to this country says in its preamble that it is important for all Australian citizens to understand their responsibilities. It also talks about what it means to be a citizen, whether Australian by birth or by choice. It is a critical part of building our nation. People are required to make the Australian Citizenship Pledge at citizenship ceremonies and, in doing so, they are making a public commitment to Australia and to accepting the responsibilities and privileges of citizenship. The pledge says:

From this time forward, under God—

if you take the oath—

I pledge my loyalty to Australia and its people, whose democratic beliefs I share, whose rights and liberties I respect, and whose laws I will uphold and obey.

So the strength of this piece of legislation is in the fact that it is saying that, in Australia, we do believe in democracy. We do believe that individuals have rights and liberties. We have extended a welcome hand to people to come and be part of this country, but if they will not respect the rights and liberties of all citizens, including their own children, then this parliament representing the people of Australia will make laws that highlight the standards that we expect in terms of upholding those rights and liberties.

The people who come to this country are welcome and expected, under this pledge, to share our democratic beliefs, to respect rights and liberties, and to uphold the law. I plead with them to leave behind those things that are not compatible with the expectations of this country, which they have chosen to make their new home in, in the interests of their dependants, their families and this community, so that we can build a strong, cohesive community as one people living in one nation under one law.

Ursula Stephens (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too rise to make a contribution to the debate about the Crimes Legislation Amendment (Slavery, Slavery-like Conditions and People Trafficking) Bill 2012. We heard this morning that William Wilberforce introduced the bills to the British parliament 200 years ago to abolish slavery, and that over 80 years ago slavery was declared internationally illegal by the League of Nations. One would think that that was the end of it, but we know that there are an estimated 27 million slaves in the world—and that is at least twice the number of slaves that existed in the Roman Empire.

It is particularly disturbing for us in Australia because so many of the world's slaves—roughly 20 million to 22 million of them—are actually found in our region. Many of these people have been born into slavery, or have been enslaved close to home in a factory or on a farm, in a quarry or in a mine, in a restaurant or in hotels. A smaller number are caught in trafficking rackets, and we do not even know how many are subject to forms of slavery that occur in war and conflict or in systems of slavery such as child trading or forced marriage. We do have some numbers, and they are very depressing. There are an estimated 15 million bonded labourers in Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Nepal who are all slaves to their masters and have no rights. We have an estimated 2.4 million people trafficked each year and many, as we have heard this morning, are trapped sex workers.

Then there are the child soldiers. That is the story that really hits home. An estimated 40,000 children are captives in Uganda—40,000 children who have lost their childhood. It is an evil trade. We know that. Enslaved people across the world are deliberately harvested from groups, or from classes of people who have been excluded or marginalised, or set aside on the basis of their gender or race, their disability, their religion or their caste, and who are excluded from the benefits of the economic system, the social system, from systems for conflict management and, of course, from the justice system.

The government is committed to both a strong criminal justice response to, and protection for, victims of trafficking and slavery. It is an absolute violation of human rights, and it is not enough for us to simply express our moral outrage. We must act to redress it. As the Australian Human Rights Commission reminds us: every person has equal rights, just by being born human. We know that we have a responsibility to ensure that enslaved people are not excluded from the legal system, that their rights are recognised, and that those who take these rights away are guilty of crime. The Crimes Legislation Amendment (Slavery, Slavery-like Conditions and People Trafficking) Bill 2012—a mouthful in itself—is designed to bring Australian laws into harmony with our obligations under antislavery conventions that we ratified in 1927 and 1958 in an attempt to ensure that our laws are comprehensive and apply to the current situation we face both here in Australia and in our region.

I am a member of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights which has the task of assessing the compatibility of all proposed legislation with the human rights and freedoms recognised or declared in the international instruments listed in section 3 of the Human Rights (Parliamentary Scrutiny) Act 2011. In considering this bill, the committee has been thinking about what it means to be owned and thinking about the big questions. What is bondage in the modern world? Why is it slavery? Where does trafficking fit in the big picture of slavery, and above all, how can we stop it happening? In considering that process, I found the book Australians and Modern Slavery by Roscoe Howell to be very helpful, and I would strongly recommend it to anyone concerned with this human rights issue. It is an analysis of how Australia relates to each of the 11 forms of modern slavery and, frankly, it is quite eye opening. It brings to the fore behaviours that we do not often think about and which can easily be left in the too-hard basket and behaviours that, as we have heard, are happening in our own country as well as in our region.

Sometimes people in this country are married too young or they are trapped into a forced marriage, and this occurs under systems of belief where women are regarded as property, subordinate, or with identity regarded not as personal but as familial. It happens today in cultures and communities that are established in Australia or are coming to Australia. Cultural ceremonies are taking place here where women, and men and families, believe that they are subject to cultural practices and that cultural rules are paramount. What this legislation does is make it known and make it clear that the rule of law is paramount in Australia. We all have to be ready to adapt to changing circumstances so, of course, the time is right to reassess the laws relating to slavery, slavery-like conditions and people trafficking, when millions of people every year are being exploited by others for financial gain.

It is important that we amend the earlier legislation, the Crimes Act 1914, the Migration Act 1958, the Criminal Code Act 1995 and the Proceeds of Crimes Act 2002, to establish the new offences. Senator Faulkner went through each of those offences in turn. They are offences of forced labour, forced marriage, organ trafficking and harbouring a victim.

This bill will do all that. It will also modify the scope and application of existing offences such as slavery, deceptive recruiting, sexual servitude and trafficking in persons, and increase the penalty for an offence of debt bondage—and debt bondage is something that we are hearing much more about.

There has been extensive consultation on the proposed legislative change in this bill and there is very strong support from across the country and across advocates, lawyers, migration agents, migrant resource centres, charities, churches and all of those who are involved in dealing with the very difficult, seedy side of these kinds of practices and the industry that has been built around it. The bill will not only tighten the law relating to these crimes; it will help to raise public awareness of the issues, and that is one of the important things that we need to ensure occurs, to promote justice and to bring about the changes that we all want to happen. I commend the bill to the Senate.

Sue Boyce (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to have the opportunity to speak on the Crimes Legislation Amendment (Slavery, Slavery-like Conditions and People Trafficking) Bill 2012. As a member of the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee I was involved in the inquiry into the bill. I would like to put some time into putting a human face on the reasons this bill is necessary. As the shadow Attorney-General, Senator George Brandis, has pointed out, we have some concerns and we will be moving some amendments, but in general we support very strongly the need for this legislation.

I was involved, a number of years ago, in the federal Liberal Women's Council's moves to change the law as it then operated in Australia, where women who had been brought to Australia as sex slaves, to work in prostitution, were being deported back to their home countries before they had the opportunity to give evidence of any sort against the people who had brought them here. As a government we were in fact inadvertently assisting the people committing the crime of turning women into sex slaves in Australia. I must admit that, at the time, I thought that that was probably the extent of the problem—that it was something that happened perhaps at Kings Cross in Sydney but nowhere else, that it involved poor women from Asia being brought to Sydney and Melbourne but not much else. It took some time for me to realise that this was a far bigger problem than we had previously thought. We still have serious problems knowing the extent of not just the sex slave industry but the slavery and human trafficking issues in Australia because it is very difficult to gather statistics.

It was probably about six years ago that I attended a presentation in Brisbane by the Reverend Tim Costello, who made the point while he was talking that right there, in suburban Brisbane, not very far away, there would be people who were living in slavery-like conditions, whether they were sex slaves, being exploited by strangers for their labour or being exploited by family for their labour. It was only then that the far greater extent of this problem really struck me.

One of the problems is that in some cases it can be very hard to identify who is in a slavery-like relationship and who is not. I know there are some small family businesses where children perhaps as young as eight actually have a role in the business and love their role in the business, and that is not something that I believe any government should interfere with. However, if that child is being forced to get up very early and stay up very late to take part in that business, then we do have a situation teetering on the edge of abuse and neglect.

Whilst the whole focus of the slavery and slavery-like conditions bill is around people who have been brought into Australia to be slaves, there are so many nuances within families, such as within forced marriages, as Senator Stephens was pointing out. One of our concerns about forced marriage is that, in many cases, both parties to the marriage can be very young. The suggestion that, if someone has been forced into marriage, the other party must be the guilty party is not necessarily the case. It can be far more nuanced than that. Both parties to the marriage, in fact, may have been forced into the marriage. So these are issues that we need to take into account in the way that we look at this legislation.

I want to go through a number of cases that have been brought to my attention by Anti-Slavery Australia—and it still strikes me as bizarre and awful that we need an organisation called Anti-Slavery Australia. The first case involves a woman—not called Maria but named Maria for the point of the exercise—who was 24 and came here from the Philippines. She had been working in a factory earning $10 a week to support her young son and her mother, and she was told that she could come to Australia to live with a friend's relatives and take English classes in her spare time, and that they would give her some money for a visa and an airfare. When she got here, she found that she was in fact supposed to be the fiancee of an Australian man. He took her passport and she was required to work in the fiance's family business seven days a week. She was never paid any wages. She felt that she could not leave, that she had to do what she was told by her so-called fiance or he and his family would hit her. She felt absolutely trapped, because there was no way that she could seek help from her elderly mother. She had been trafficked and enslaved—hardly the promise she had been brought here on—but perhaps from the outside it did not look like a case of slavery.

The next case involves a woman called Sun, who is 22 and came from South Korea and had come to Australia on a 12-month working holiday visa. She was actually someone who was doing sex work at home, in South Korea, to pay her way through uni. She heard from another sex worker that life was much easier both for study and to finance herself in Australia. She took out the 12-month working holiday visa thinking that she would study, and finance herself through sex work in Australia. But of course the agent who organised all this immediately had her collected from the airport and taken to a Sydney brothel, and the owner said she had to pay off her flight and her visa. She was working up to 20 hours a day, and she very rarely received any money at all because she was paying off this alleged debt to the brothel owner in Sydney.

A third person, a man called Prishen, who was 43 and came from India on a three-month holiday visa was going to work with the family's restaurant in Melbourne during his three months. They had paid for him to come, and in return he would help out in the restaurant. However, when he got here he was working all night and every night, and being paid about $50 per week. He could do what he wanted to do in his hours off during the day, but he was clearly being very heavily exploited by his family. The only way that this person could currently seek remedy would be through civil action and, of course, that is not a very satisfactory way for an impoverished person, whose primary language is Indian, to function in Australia.

The fourth person is an Indonesian called Abdul, who is 35. He came here on a 457 visa. He had an interview with an employment firm that linked him up with a subcontractor in Australia. He was sponsored to come out here to work on, 'large building sites in Canberra'. He was told his pay would be in line with Australian award wages.

When he got here, he was not able to read any of the signs or understand any of the safety briefings that he was given and he was told that he would be working a six-day week for $250. He thought that was a fairly low wage. He lived 30 minutes out of Canberra and he was taken to work by his boss in a van every day and taken back again. He was then told that there would $100 per week donated from his $250 to send home to his family. You might not be surprised to hear that his family never received any of that money.

It can be a very broad field when we are looking at slavery and slavery-like conditions. But it is, despite those balanced examples I have given, generally, a quite gendered crime. It is in the main women who are the victims of slavery and slavery-like trafficking. I am delighted that we now have this legislation before us. I would hope that we can follow it up with perhaps some more real action in the field of child marriage and in the field of female genital mutilation which, in my view, are part of the same power control that goes on over women, particularly those from cultures where it is more normal for the men to exercise the power.

The coalition members of the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee have put in some additional comments to this report. We agreed with the comments of the government members of the committee but we would like to see a few areas of this bill clarified, because it does finally bring us to the stage where there is an understanding, at least from the legislatures, of what is happening in some parts of Australia right now—right under the noses of everybody.

I think there is probably still more room for this information to be promoted, not just to the people who might be the victims of it but also to the general public so that they recognise slavery situations when they see them. Fifty years ago, domestic violence victims would certainly have passed under the radar, or just politely not be talked about; that is no longer the case. We need to get to the situation where everybody in the community is concerned and looking at whether what they are looking at is an equal relationship that both people want to continue, or if what they are looking at is, in fact, a form of slavery.

I commend the bill, and hope that the government will accept the amendments that we will be proposing.

Lisa Singh (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I also rise to speak to the Crimes Legislation Amendment (Slavery, Slavery-like Conditions and People Trafficking) Bill 2012. I am proud to do so as I believe it is my duty—in fact, it is the duty of us all as elected members of parliament—to make certain we implement the very best possible safeguards for the protection of vulnerable individuals. I would like to thank Senator Boyce for her support of this bill and for highlighting some of the real-life examples of people who have fallen victim to slavery and human trafficking here in Australia.

The need for legal and cultural reform to ensure that all people are free from bondage is as pressing now as it was when Abraham Lincoln resolved, through the 13th Amendment of 1865, to hold together the American union on a foundation of liberty and basic human dignity. And we are all reminded now of the singular importance of that fight against slavery as we seek to protect and extend these freedoms today.

This bill is about the Gillard Labor government striving to make sure Australia remains a just society, where the rights of individuals are upheld, and those who aim to exploit individuals and remove their rights are brought to justice. We are a part of an ever-changing world, a global society where trends move fast and people, sadly, can be treated as a commodity. Human trafficking and slavery is tragically becoming a growing concern in the 21st of century, internationally and here in Australia. Research suggests that globally between 500,000 and four million people are trafficked internally and across state borders, and of those people being trafficked 80 per cent are women and girls. Australia is not immune to this terrible trade. According to the Australian Institute of Criminology, 305 investigations and assessments of people-trafficking related offences were conducted by the Australian Federal Police's Transnational Sexual Exploitation and Trafficking Team. One hundred and eighty-four victims of trafficking were provided with assistance through the Australian government's Support For Trafficked People Program and 13 people were convicted for people-trafficking related offences here in Australia.

The majority of cases were of women being trafficked for the purpose of sexual exploitation. Many of these tragic cases follow the pattern outlined in case study from Anti-Slavery Australia:

When she got to the Sydney parlour, the owner told her she had to repay a 'debt' of $25,000 that she'd 'incurred' by having her flight and visa organised. In order to pay off this 'debt' she worked 14 hours a day, 6 days a week and her boss pressured her to work on her day off as well. She wasn't paid any money until her 'debt' had been paid off. Sometimes, her boss pressured her to perform sexual services without a condom. She lived in an apartment adjoining the parlour and was not permitted to leave the premises unsupervised. The boss threatened Sun with deportation if she complained too much, refused a customer or tried to go to the authorities for help.

Women typically find themselves in this situation having come to Australia under the pretence of undertaking a course of study or sometimes with the expectation of reasonable work in the sex industry or in other fields. The emotional cost and enduring pain each person experiences through this degrading trade is a price that one should never have to pay. This bill, which was developed with the support of non-government organisations and subject to two discussion papers with broad consultation, strengthens the protection of those who may fall prey to this unforgiving trade of slavery. One life involved and subjected to this trade, I believe, is one life too many. I welcome the changes being made through this bill being debated today, such as the definition of exploitation which will be broadened to include a range of slavery-like practices and increase the penalties applicable to the existing debt bondage offences to ensure they adequately reflect the seriousness of this offence.

Slavery is not acceptable and the bill loudly proclaims the government will not allow it to take root in our society. Slavery in any part of the world should never be acceptable and it is rightly prohibited under the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the United Nations Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery. Australia strongly condemns the practice and in 2005 ratified the United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organised Crime. However, in our society, which is not immune to international trends, it is imperative we continue to provide strong leadership in this area. It is the Gillard Labor government which is taking this action and standing up for people of all ages and ethnicities who may unwillingly become subject to slavery offences and or human trafficking. In the 21st century, no individual should be forced or threatened to take part in work or physical labour without their consent. No individual should be coerced into a marriage through any form of pressure. No individual should be involved in the illegal trade of body parts and no individual should be subjected to sexual or non-sexual servitude.

Labor has implemented a strong whole-of-government strategy to target human trafficking, including sexual trafficking and forced labour. This bill reflects this strategy and helps further administer its four central pillars: prevention; detection and investigation; prosecution; and victim support and protection. The Crimes Legislation Amendment (Slavery, Slavery-like Conditions and People Trafficking) Bill 2012 brings Australia's laws on trafficking and slavery into line with Australia's human rights obligations. It ensures the Commonwealth can meet its human rights obligations and adequately deal with the criminal conduct taking place in the area of people trafficking and slavery offences. I strongly welcome, through this bill, the introduction of new offences of forced labour, forced marriage, harbouring a person for the purpose of further offence of trafficking and organ trafficking into the Commonwealth Criminal Code.

The changing nature of this trade, and its global sophistication, can make it difficult for law enforcement agencies to detect and prosecute its range of exploitive behaviours. That is why it is important that the bill enhances the power required by law enforcement agencies to adequately deal with this sort of criminal conduct in the 21st century. The bill strongly condemns the trade and its practice, clearly stating to offenders or those intending to take part in the trade, that it is a crime—a serious crime, one that our society will not stand for.

I am sure I am not the only senator here who has come face-to-face with a woman who is desperately seeking help and guidance because she is sadly facing the prospect of being forced into a marriage she has not chosen. Women in our society should not be facing this crisis. I call it a crisis because that is exactly what it is.

When threats, deception and coercion are used to bring about a marriage or a marriage like relationship, it is a clear human rights abuse. Whilst forced marriage like slavery and human trafficking is not clearly evident in all areas of our society, it does still exist. I am concerned that, if we do not take action and introduce new measures through this bill such as the criminalisation of forced marriage, then these issues may become rooted in all other areas of our society.

To feel powerless, unheard and invaluable is not a life a woman should live. It is not a life anyone should live. We need to empower women. Women who are supported and empowered both economically and socially create a flourishing, productive, rich and diverse society. This bill will continue that proud Labor tradition of empowering women and protecting the vulnerable in our community. Through the support of this bill, we have a real opportunity to show global leadership in the area of slavery and human trafficking. By putting in place good policy, we can work towards the eradication as well as the prevention of this degrading trade in Australia and beyond. I commend this bill to the Senate.

Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in favour of the Crimes Legislation Amendment (Slavery, Slavery-like Conditions and People Trafficking) Bill 2012. I think it is really important to reflect in this place that often we have differing views about things yet it has been very humbling experience to listen to the passion and dedication of people on all sides of this debate today. It is obviously something that cuts across political borders. As fellow human beings we understand there can be no justification for forcing another person into that type of slavery or sexual abuse and assault.

It might surprise many people listening today that this type of activity even happens here in Australia because we are the lucky country. We do have the rule of law. We do ensure that we look after those who are vulnerable in our community and do what we can to ensure people are not exploited. Many people are shocked at the idea that sexual slavery, the slavery of individuals, even happens here on Australian soil. But the sad fact is it does. The inquiry into this legislation brought out that it is often occurring to those who are so vulnerable that it is kept silent.

One of the key problems in this issue is that we just do not know how many people are actually affected. There are NGOs and community based organisations that try and keep their finger on how many people access their services. Project Respect, for example, based out of Melbourne, helped over 900 victims of sexual slavery in the 2011-12 year alone. But there is no hard data as to how many people, and women in particular, are trafficked into Australia for the purpose of sexual slavery.

One of the recommendations made during the inquiry into this legislation was that we actually fund proper research into the demand for trafficked persons so we can keep a closer eye on just how many individuals and human lives are being destroyed and exploited through these means. To do that we would need adequate funding and partnerships resourced between academic institutions and other groups as well as, of course, government agencies managed by both state and federal government for policing and border patrol so that we can keep check on how many women are being affected by this awful hideous crime, which, I would argue, is a crime against humanity.

This bill goes a long way to ensuring that we put very clearly in the law the seriousness of these crimes against individuals. It ensures that there are tougher penalties for those who engage in putting women into these types of slavery conditions. Those types of penalties are welcome. They go a long way to sending the signal that this is a very serious crime. The bill includes penalties in relation to debt bondage, which we know is how many of these women, particularly young women, are caught in this hideous crime. They are often tricked into coming to Australia to study. A number of victims have study visas. They think they are coming here to learn English or to expand on their other skills they were learning at home only to find themselves bonded into debt by those who then force them to participate in prostitution and other types of slavery.

We need to have these types of penalties but we also need to do what we can to expand the support for victims. That is not what this bill goes to but I think it is very important that we use the motivation from around the chamber today, across the political divide, to advocate stronger support for the victims involved. One of the key recommendations from the inquiry was the setting up of a proper federal compensation scheme. One of the biggest problems in this issue is that victims' compensation is managed by the states but the people who are involved in trafficking individuals, particularly women, move their victims from state to state to avoid being caught. If a crime was committed in Victoria and the person has been moved to a brothel in New South Wales, it is unclear which victims of crime compensation the individual is actually entitled to.

This is a federal issue. Many of the people are coming to Australia under the misunderstanding of their visa requirements. It is a crime now in the federal legislation and we should establish a federal compensation scheme to help those victims.

One of the other issues that are particularly pertinent in this area is that as part of the support for victims—whether that be through accessibility to a longer stay visa once somebody has been rescued, if you will, from these hideous circumstances—there should be an ability for that person to access a proper, valid visa that is in their interest, that is going to be supporting them as a victim of these hideous crimes and that is not just directly linked to whether their case is helpful for particular prosecutions. This is really, really important because we need to be able to allow the victims in this area to feel free, comfortable and able to come forward, tell their stories and ask for help and assistance. Because many of them have been flown to Australia under the guise of a different type of visa, once they have been found to be working in a brothel and it is found that they are not in Australia on a valid visa, of course we need to do something to ensure that they can stay here safely and with all the support necessary. That support and compassion offered to those individuals should not simply be linked to whether the prosecution team believe that their case is going to be helpful enough to any legal case.

We need to make sure that there is proper support through the visa system, and that includes de-linking those visas and supports from the criminal justice process. I believe it is really important that we have victims being able to speak out against how they have been treated so that we can keep the individuals who are responsible for these hideous crimes locked up—I absolutely believe that—but we also have to ensure that we look after the victims through that process. I have often called for some type of special humanitarian visa, which would be available for those women victims who have been trafficked. I think that would be a very simple way of being able to acknowledge that we owe these women all the care and support that they deserve. A special humanitarian visa for those who have been victims of trafficking and slavery would be one thing that I urge both the government and the opposition to consider in coming months.

I also believe that we need to do more in terms of educating our communities about these issues. As I said at the outset, many people are surprised that this even happens here in Australia, and yet many people who find themselves in these circumstances, because they are being brought to Australia under a false pretence, find it very difficult to explain to individual members in our communities. Whether they are at university or at TAFE, or at other learning institutions where often many of these young women attend, there is a disbelief about the fact that this is going on. When they ask for help, when they put their hand out for assistance, there is an unawareness amongst our community that this is going on. We need to ensure that we invest significant resources into community education campaigns, letting those victims of these hideous crimes know that they have rights in Australia, that this is not allowed to happen to them, that it is a crime and that the people doing this to them are criminals. We also need to let them know that they deserve help, support and assistance. We need to ensure that we have proper education campaigns targeting high schools, universities, TAFEs and the professions which these women come into contact with, so that anyone who may need assistance is able to be offered that and action can be taken.

As I said, we also need adequate funding for the research to ensure that we know exactly what is going on: how many women in particular are a subject of this awful, hideous crime. The other recommendation that has not been picked up in this piece of legislation, but that I think is worth considering in future debates, is the responsibility that must be taken by individuals who intentionally use these services. It should be a criminal offence to intentionally, knowingly or recklessly obtain sexual services from a trafficked woman. If it is a crime to put women into this circumstance—which it should be—it should also be a crime to knowingly use that service; otherwise we are simply turning a blind eye to why these services are even able to continue. It is absolutely paramount that we send a very strong message to both the criminals in these syndicates and the people who knowingly use their services that the Australian government does not accept this, that this is a standard that is unacceptable in Australia and that we do stand by the human rights as outlined under the various international conventions that stamp out slavery and that say that treating another human being like this is a hideous crime and will not be accepted. An individual who knowingly uses these services must also take responsibility for their continuation of the abuse of these individuals.

Further support for victims, as I have mentioned in terms of a special visa category, would go a long way to helping these women. Ensuring that we have a federal compensation scheme and these other legislative reforms, as I have outlined, are all things that we now need to move on to. This bill has been a very, very important step and I commend it to the Senate. But our work is not yet over. We have got goodwill around this place; let's try and see how we can work together over coming months to make sure that the victims caught up in these awful circumstances are actually looked after. I commend the bill to the Senate.

Helen Kroger (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise too, with an enduring concern and interest to protect women from the most abhorrent crimes, as Senator Hanson-Young has referred to, to speak on the Crimes Legislation Amendment (Slavery, Slavery-like Conditions and People Trafficking) Bill 2012. As my colleague Senator Brandis noted earlier in this debate, most of the offences described as new by the government are in essence definitional changes to existing offences in the Criminal Code. However, there are important new offences in organ trafficking and forced marriage, and it is the establishment of two new offences related to forced marriage that I will confine my remarks to, largely because of my involvement in the inquiry which has been alluded to.

In saying that, though, I would just like to briefly mention that I support the strengthening of regulations against organ trafficking. I do not think there is anyone in Australia who would consider it to be anything but a heinous crime, but we have to recognise and be cognisant of the fact that this is an emerging and flourishing commercial trade that happens overseas and continues to happen today as we stand here to legislate against it. So this is a good move in the sense that it strengthens our position on it—legislating against it to make sure that we stamp out all possibility of this happening in Australia and of people overseas abusing the legislative program and framework here in Australia.

As I said, I support my colleagues' comments on the bill before me and in particular the concerns that they have raised, such as about the ambiguously wide definition of 'servitude', which could be misused in an industrial relations context. As always, on this side of the chamber we give the utmost care and consideration to ensuring that legislation that comes before us in this place does not lead to unintended consequences for our community. I call on the Gillard government to support our proposed amendments.

I will now focus the remainder of my comments today on forced marriage and the relevant offences that this bill addresses. It was just over a year ago that confronting media reports and stories from the community about young women being brought to Australia to be forced into marriage led me to co-author with Senator Cash an inquiry into this issue. While that inquiry looked at all aspects of prospective marriage visas, many of the submissions contained evidence and commentary relating to the incidence of forced marriage in this country. We heard from many witnesses who came forward about their concerns in this regard.

The definition that this bill inserts into the Criminal Code defines a forced marriage as one where, because of 'coercion, threat or deception', a person, the victim, 'entered into the marriage without freely and fully consenting'. It is inconceivable to many of us that any person, any woman, could be forced into entering a marriage against her will. As we understand, it is a cultural--and in some countries, a religious—practice, a tradition, where marriages are arranged between two parties, but I note that here in Australia that is not how we do things. Marriage is probably one of the biggest decisions that any two individuals will make in their lives. It is one of the greatest commitments that any two individuals can make between themselves, and so it should be. I strongly oppose anything that contravenes that, and I am particularly concerned that individuals may be forced into marriages here in Australia, when it is certainly not our tradition and it is not the Australian way of life.

Unfortunately, I have to say that the anecdotal evidence reveals that there is a hidden and disturbing problem here in this country. It may not be a huge problem. That is something that is very hard to identify, and Senator Sarah Hanson-Young has just spoken to the lack of anecdotal evidence that we have here, but there is certainly evidence that this is a disturbing problem here. There are reported cases of so-called marriage trafficking, where women are brought to Australia and forced into marriage, as well as the reverse situation, where women are taken overseas for the very same purpose. It is impossible for me to forget the widely reported plight of a 17-year-old Sydney girl who managed to save herself from a forced marriage in Lebanon with the help of the Australian Federal Police. There are also alarming accounts of women living in Australia being similarly forced into marriage here, particularly in the migrant community.

As I mentioned earlier, the difficulty that we have is that this evidence is anecdotal. The incidence of forced marriages in this country is an unknown factor. As Dr Tomison, Director of the Australian Institute of Criminology, made clear in the recent prospective marriage visa classes inquiry, research into human trafficking and in particular the connection between marriage and human trafficking is in an infancy stage. In other words, there is and has been extremely little, if any, research undertaken to ascertain the significance of this in Australia. The AIC does intend to further examine these connections, and I wish them all the best in that critical work. There is no doubt that, as the AIC, as well as the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women in Australia, have argued, there is a need for greater research into and awareness of the issue of forced marriage.

In this respect, we can look to the United Kingdom, where this issue has been given significant attention and focus, with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office even establishing a Forced Marriage Unit in 2005.

This unit has a policy role in working with other government departments and community organisations to tackle the issue and has been responsible for, among other things, publishing guidelines to help front-line workers identify and deal with cases of forced marriage. It has been recommended to this government that it consider establishing a working group to investigate the incidence of forced marriages in Australia and to explore relevant options that can be provided to assist victims. I strongly call on the government to act on this recommendation which goes hand in hand with the legislation that we have before us today.

It is also imperative that we seize the opportunity to put the spotlight on this issue to protect current and future victims. We need more research into exactly how prevalent forced marriages are, we need to raise awareness of the problem in the community and we need to provide more information and support to women who tragically find themselves the victim of this heinous practice. We also need, as the prospective marriage visa classes inquiry recommended, to raise the minimum age of visa holders within the prospective marriage visa program to 18 years of age to help minimise the incidence of forced marriage and human trafficking in Australia. The current visa requirements allow for young women under the age of 17 to be brought to this country for nine months, be sponsored by someone here in Australia and come here under the age of 18 with the intention of them being married at the age of 18. The inquiry heard much evidence in relation to this, but we did determine that: that was too young; girls under the age of 18 were particularly exposed; they would potentially not be provided with proper protection and afforded the rights that they should be; it was a fragile age; and that is one immediate change that could be made to strengthen our position in relation to forced marriages. And now, this moment in time, is when we need to do all of this. We cannot afford to wait a moment longer because, if we do, another young woman could find herself trapped in a situation not of her own making.

I welcome the creation of two forced marriage offences in this bill. The Criminal Code does not currently explicitly criminalise the act of causing a person to enter into a forced marriage, but with this bill it will become illegal to both cause a person to enter into a forced marriage and to be a party to a forced marriage. The second offence is directed at the spouse who is not a victim of forced marriage. Some critics have raised concerns about criminalising forced marriage and the potential for victims to be deterred from reporting for fear of the court process and being ostracised. This is another issue raised during the inquiry that I will come to shortly and that I have serious concerns about. I agree with the majority of organisations, including the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, that work in this field needs to support criminalisation. We need to make absolutely clear that Australia condemns this practice of forcing women into marriage and that under no circumstances do we support it. Ours is a country where people are free to choose whom they marry, and so must it remain. I also believe that including these offences in the Criminal Code will help to raise awareness of the problem—a problem that often remains hidden but, once again, exists. However, the coalition does have concerns as to the strict liability imposed in the forced marriage offences. There is a reversal of the onus of proof so that, if the prosecution establishes a person was forced into marriage, the other party to the marriage is presumed guilty and must establish a lawful excuse.

I will just reflect on a couple of issues that came out of the inquiry and that other senators have raised in their debate on these particular bills. Firstly, there is the need for a central register. Through the inquiry, we established that there is no one agency responsible for collating any information on this. If the police, the department of community affairs or the immigration office are advised of a matter, there is no one central agency that is advised of the incidence or the concerns expressed that an individual may be in a forced marriage and may be having issues in relation to that. There is no single body collecting this information. The example that we were given in the United Kingdom is one that we encourage the government to consider because it centralises the data collection process. Whilst that sounds clinical and cold, all we have here at the moment is anecdotal evidence which raises huge concerns. It is critical that we actually have analytical data to back up and provide the support for changing the current system in the way it applies. In my mind, having a central agency, whether that be the Department of Immigration and Citizenship or not, responsible for the collection of data is the number one way in which we could strengthen the process and the regulation that relates to this. I also note that, when we talked about forced marriages and we discussed the women who are victims in this so-called equation, it is very difficult to flush out this information because many of these women are very fearful of their circumstances.

So you have situations where women are brought here who do not speak English, who have no network of friends around them—when the husband leaves for the day, they have no-one else they can speak to—and who are not aware of their rights here in Australia. They may come from countries where they fear police, so they may come here with a culture of fearing police authorities. More importantly, they are actually unaware of their rights and they do not have anyone to speak to. The big issue is in ensuring that every woman who comes here under a sponsored marriage arrangement is apprised of their rights—and I think through the immigration department. Australian authorities should be assured and comfortable with the fact that that individual is fully across what their rights are in Australia, what our protections are for individuals and the support network that is available through the refugee network. If they should change their mind about the circumstances in which they have come here then they should feel that they genuinely have a network they can turn to that will provide support.

I support the comments that Senator Sarah Hanson-Young made in relation to humanitarian visas. That was something that was crying out for attention in this inquiry. These women not only are not aware of the support network but tragically are scared that they are the ones who will be returned to their country of origin. They are particularly scared because in many of these instances, because of the cultural practices and traditions of their countries, they will be blamed for the marriage collapsing. With that blame they are ostracised; with that blame they will be rejected by their own family. So if they are returned to their country of origin, they will be penalised by their family, whether formally or informally, will be blamed for the collapse of the forced marriage and will incur whatever the consequences may be.

In many of these instances it is fair and reasonable to suggest that they will be discriminated against on their return. It is not a black-and-white scenario where they come here to be married and the marriage does not work so they should be returned to their country of origin. They will be discriminated against. There is no question that they will face prejudicial behaviour and in many cases rejection from their own immediate family. There is a need for us to consider a carving off, if you like, in part of the visa framework of a humanitarian allocation for women who are in this incredibly difficult circumstance so that consideration can be given to them to stay here with clearly strong support from various agencies. They could stay here and not be forced to return home to what would be quite difficult circumstances.

I support this legislation. I am concerned that there may be unintended consequences, but I strongly support it. I look forward to further consideration of other ways in which we can strengthen the framework to support women who may well find themselves in what could be loosely described as forced marriages.

David Feeney (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to begin by thanking the senators who have contributed to this important debate on the Crimes Legislation Amendment (Slavery, Slavery-like Conditions and People Trafficking) Bill 2012. Slavery, slavery-like practices and people-trafficking are insidious crimes that fundamentally violate the human rights and indeed the very dignity of victims. Sadly, these crimes are not just past injustices relegated to the history books. Throughout the world exploitative practices, such as slavery, servitude and forced labour, continue to be a daily reality for millions of our fellow human beings. Regrettably, Australia is not immune. While we are fortunate that the number of people identified as victims of slavery and trafficking in Australia remains low, just one person affected by such egregious behaviour is one too many. This bill sends a strong message that Australia will not tolerate any form of slavery, trafficking or related coercive practices.

The purpose of this bill is to clarify and strengthen the operation of existing slavery and people-trafficking related offences in the Commonwealth Criminal Code. The bill will target those who facilitate exploitation by harbouring victims and introduce stand-alone offences of forced labour and organ trafficking to ensure that these practices are comprehensively criminalised. The bill will criminalise the unaccepted practice of forced marriage, ensuring that it is absolutely clear that marriage must be entered into freely, without duress or constraint.

The bill will also amend existing definitions in the Criminal Code to ensure that the broadest range of exploitative conduct is criminalised. It expands the definition of 'servitude' to non-sexual servitude to capture a broader range of exploitative behaviour. I want to make it absolutely clear that the intent of the government is not to in any way lessen the seriousness of sexual servitude by creating this broader offence but rather to ensure that all people in all industries are not subjected to the injustice of servitude.

I will now, if I may, turn to some specific comments that have been raised by senators in their contributions to this debate. First, the additional comments that have been made by the coalition speak of arguing for a distinction between real and apparent consent. The government in the strongest possible terms rejects the proposition that this distinction should exist. This is a proposition from the 1950s. One might very well retort, 'No does mean no and that consent must be full and free as it is found in our bill.'

This in our judgement is an antiquated notion and the government firmly sticks to the wording that is proposed in the bill.

We note that Senator Brandis indicated in his remarks that the opposition would not support a strict liability element within the offence of being a party to a forced marriage. But we note that the Liberal Party not only supported a similar strict liability offence but, indeed, introduced it in 2005. Philip Ruddock introduced drug offences involving children in division 309 into the Criminal Code in the Justice Legislation Amendment (Serious Drug Offences and Other Measures) Act 2005. Senator Chris Ellison took this bill through the Senate. The application of strict liability to the physical element that a child was involved was part of the original Liberal Party's bill, so we note that Senator Brandis is arguing a point here that is in defiance of his own party's history and previous conduct.

In her remarks, Senator Boyce made the point that a child being coerced into work early in the morning or late at night might be a form of slavery-like conditions. The government is of the view that the Liberal amendments would allow this very egregious act to happen. They will remove the concept of taking advantage of a person's vulnerability from the definition of coercion in the government's bill. They are also removing the concept of psychological oppression from the definition of coercion. The government cannot support this. Senator Boyce's own examples would not even be covered by the Liberal Party's changes and we urge her to look carefully at the amendments she is purporting to support and to reconsider her position.

I would like to thank the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs for its report on the bill which was released in September of last year. The government notes the recommendations made in the committee's report. A key recommendation of the committee was for the explanatory memorandum to be amended to better articulate that slavery-like offences may occur within intimate relationships. In line with this recommendation, an addendum to the explanatory memorandum was tabled in the Senate on 9 October 2012. The addendum clarifies that the offences of servitude and forced labour can apply whether the exploitation occurred in the victim's public or private life including in the context of intimate relationships.

The development of this bill has been a collaborative process. On behalf of the government I would like to thank the non-government organisations, industry associations, legal bodies, academics and members of the public, all of whom have provided input into this bill and made a valuable contribution. The Crimes Legislation Amendment (Slavery, Slavery-like Conditions and People Trafficking) Bill 2012 will ensure that our laws criminalising slavery, slavery-like practices and people trafficking are as robust and effective as possible.

The bill is also essential in ensuring that our law enforcement authorities are adequately equipped to investigate and prosecute these heinous crimes. The bill reflects the government's commitment to doing all it can to prevent the reprehensible practices of slavery and people trafficking in all forms. In conclusion, I commend this bill to the Senate.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.