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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the report.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Skye Kakoschke-Moore (SA, Nick Xenophon Team) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome the tabling of the report of the inquiry into human trafficking, slavery and slavery-like practices by the parliamentary Joint Committee on Law Enforcement. The human trafficking inquiry has raised many crucial issues for this parliament that must be urgently addressed. The committee heard harrowing evidence of human trafficking and slavery occurring both in Australia and through Australian channels. Submissions and evidence received by the committee painted a picture of modern human trafficking in Australia and abroad. This evidence shone a light on the many forms human trafficking can take. Be it the exploitation of foreign workers in Australia, women being trafficked into the sex industry or children and, in some cases, adults being subjected to forced marriages, it was abundantly clear that we could be doing more to protect victims of trafficking, but that we should also be doing more to prosecute the offenders. I welcome the recommendations made by the committee in this important report and call on the government to act on them without delay.

This inquiry also heard evidence about a relatively new but rapidly growing form of human trafficking—cybersex trafficking. Cybersex trafficking, or the live streaming of online child exploitation, is a form of trafficking that is transnational. It involves offenders in Australia who commission the abuse of children in developing countries on a pay-per-view basis. The Nick Xenophon Team supports the committee's recommendation that the Commonwealth government investigate the adequacy of current legislative provisions in criminal offences to address cybersex trafficking, but we believe the committee could and should have gone further.

The Australian Federal Police and the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions have reported increases in cybersex trafficking cases over the past three years. The International Justice Mission has helped rescue 201 children who were forced to participate in online sexual exploitation between 2011 and May this year. Our current legislation is failing to ensure that adequate protection is provided to victims, especially to children, who are exploited through cybersex trafficking by criminals in Australia. The Nick Xenophon Team believes the government must amend offences under the Commonwealth Criminal Code to ensure that the conduct of offenders engaging in cybersex trafficking falls within the relevant criminal provisions and can be effectively prosecuted by Australian law enforcement bodies.

In June this year, I moved amendments to the government's Passports Legislation Amendment (Overseas Travel by Child Sex Offenders) Bill 2017 based on very real concerns that by taking passports away from paedophiles they would in turn use the internet to satisfy their sick desires. My amendments related to sections of the Criminal Code concerning Australians who travel overseas in order to engage in sexual activity with children, as well as those who use the internet to procure or groom children for sexual activity. My amendments would have made abundantly clear that a person committing an offence under these sections do so when they are in the presence of a child by a means of communication that allows the person to see or hear the child. In other words, committing the offence virtually should make them no less culpable.

Since I moved these amendments in June, the International Justice Mission has reported that 12 victims of cybersex trafficking in the Philippines, some as young as two years, were rescued by authorities. But these are just the victims that we hear about. Hundreds, possibly thousands, of children remain vulnerable to online predators who seek to commission the sexual abuse and torture of these innocent victims. The government had the opportunity to deal with cybersex trafficking in June, when I moved these amendments. Instead, it allowed valuable time to go by before announcing legislation to deal with cybersex trafficking.

It was revealed in The Australian today that the government plans to introduce a broader package of reform which considers all aspects of the child sex offender crime cycle. This is a welcome announcement, but no details of the proposed legislation have been forthcoming, except for what has been reported in the media. The gaps in current the legislation need to be closed to stop these horrific crimes and to ensure that perpetrators are held accountable.

Efforts of law enforcement agencies must also not be hampered by internet service providers being unwilling to cooperate with Australian agencies undertaking investigative work into cybersex trafficking. In June, I also moved amendments to strengthen the Criminal Code by clarifying what information must be provided by ISPs and internet content hosts where the information requested is in the possession or control of the internet service providers. In almost a fifth of cybersex trafficking cases, police are not getting the vital information they need from internet service providers. Police say cooperation from ISPs is not always forthcoming, and it is often difficult to obtain crucial evidence, such as subscriber records, IP addresses and mobile data, to track down these paedophiles. Internet service providers should have greater responsibility to report this abhorrent crime when it occurs on their networks.

The Nick Xenophon Team is deeply concerned about the increase in cybersex trafficking and, in particular, the exploitation of young, vulnerable children. We believe Australia needs to take a strong stance against cybersex trafficking and for it to be a world leader in the prevention and eradication of this crime. However, legislation alone will not be enough to achieve this. That is why we strongly support the committee's recommendations regarding adequate funding for Commonwealth government programs, including the Australian Federal Police staffing and training and the national action plan to combat human trafficking and slavery. We agree that funding needs to be provided to law enforcement agencies to ensure that they are able to effectively combat and investigate human trafficking offences.

The parliament must act immediately on the recommendations made in this report. It is not enough to expose the depravity of human trafficking in Australia. We must do all we can to end it and to support the vulnerable people who are victims of these horrific crimes.

Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Kakoschke-Moore, would you like to seek leave to continue your remarks later? I think other senators would appreciate it.

Skye Kakoschke-Moore (SA, Nick Xenophon Team) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.