Linda Reynolds (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's always good to be able to stand in this place and provide good news to the chamber, and today I rise to do exactly that, on a significant milestone in the global fight against orphanage trafficking. Earlier this month I was honoured to represent the Australian parliament at the 145th Inter-Parliamentary Union conference hosted in Kigali, Rwanda. This conference was first and foremost an important opportunity for democratic parliaments to stand together in support of peace, democracy and the rule of law, but also at the conference I took the opportunity to raise the issue of orphanage trafficking with parliamentary colleagues from over 100 countries. I did so because I believe this form of child trafficking and modern slavery is one that, by working together, we can reduce and in fact eradicate.

The response of parliamentary colleagues from around the globe was immediate and it was positive. I'm very proud to advise the Senate that the IPU's Standing Committee on Democracy and Human Rights accepted my proposal for global parliaments to work together to stop the scourge of orphanage trafficking. And now, as the proposal's co-raconteur, I will work to take this proposal through the IPU over the next 12 months. The next step is for the Australian proposal to be put as a formal resolution to the committee's next meeting in Bahrain in March 2023, and, if adopted in Bahrain, it will be debated in the committee for adoption at the next assembly in October next year.

I thank all of my parliamentary colleagues both in this place and in the other place for their amazing support for this proposal. She's not here, but I warmly thank Senator Payman, in particular, for submitting the proposal on my behalf and for her great passion for, and persuasiveness with, this proposal. Of course, I must also thank our wonderful Senate staff who accompanied us on the trip: first of all, the Clerk Assistant, Ms Toni Matulick, who, I note, is here in the chamber at the moment, and also Jane Thomson. Not only did they provide terrific support to the delegation itself, but the Clerk Assistant also provided above and beyond support to shepherd this proposal through the myriad of bureaucracy, so I thank you very much for that.

Colleagues, for those of you who don't know what orphanage trafficking is, let me explain. Orphanage trafficking is a uniquely 21st-century form of slavery and it is also the perfect 21st-century multibillion-dollar scam. Orphanage tourism is where well-meaning Australians and people from many other nations visit or volunteer in so-called orphanages. Their doing that is a key risk indicator for orphan trafficking and a key vulnerability. It is now, sadly, one of the most effective and common means of profiting from the institutionalisation of children, and is often—in fact, most frequently—associated with many forms of child exploitation. Of course not all children in institutional care are trafficked, nor are they exploited, but how are our volunteers and donors today to know the difference? In short, they cannot. And, even if it is one of the few genuine facilities, we know the damage that institutionalisation and orphanages due to our own children, which is why we have stopped doing that, but, for some reason, we still rush to support the institutionalisation of other peoples' children.

At its most basic, orphanage trafficking is really an issue of supply and demand. The demand for orphan children has been created by hundreds and thousands of volunteers and donors from donor source countries like Australia who have both the desire and the funds to support so-called orphan children in what we call 'donor recipient countries'. Our demand is met by the supply through the removal of millions of children from vulnerable families. Well over 80 per cent of these children are not orphans, but they are from vulnerable and poor families. Many of these children are sourced by recruiters through false pretences and also by deceiving the children's parents, sometimes by the offer of money but often by a very powerful but simple promise to parents that they will give their children a better life than the parents can themselves.

The tragedy then proceeds because many of these children are what is called 'paper orphaned'. They are provided with new identity papers—hence, 'paper orphans'—and they're given a new orphan identity. They are placed in a so-called orphanage, often very far from home so their parents can't find them. They are not visible to the state authorities either as the institution themselves or the children. They are invisible to child protection and any other state oversight, and, sadly, most of them never, ever see their families again. Typically, in these facilities, they live in substandard conditions, receive little education and are deliberately poorly fed because this combination is designed to elicit our sympathy and elicit much larger donations from volunteers and also donors. These kids are often subject to the most appalling forms of child labour, sexual exploitation and domestic servitude because, ultimately, these children are commodities for profit.

It really is the perfect scam for, I think, three compelling—but, equally, shocking—reasons. The first is that millions of people find the narrative of assisting poor orphans so compelling that they are ready to open their wallets and their hearts. But, unfortunately, so often we do that without undertaking due diligence on either the home we're looking to support or the individual children themselves, and volunteers and donors all too often just assume somebody else has done that checking for them.

Second, it's a perfect scam because people in donor source countries, such as Australia, seem unaware of the dissonance in having, as in Australia, phased out orphanages and group homes—that is, congregate care for children. We've done that for our own children because we understand the damage it does to our own children, yet the dissonance is that we are, in record numbers, flocking to support the institutionalisation of other people's children, simply because they are poor.

Third, it is a perfect scam because nobody wants to believe that, instead of helping orphaned children, which is what they thought they were doing, they have actually paid for the trafficking and the exploitation of those very children they believed they were helping. Not only that, they and their children, who they often send to these facilities, have photos of these kids they do not know all over their Instagram accounts, and they say, 'Isn't this fabulous! I've been there and I have helped poor orphans.'

I first learned about this trade in children when I was in Cambodia on a parliamentary trip in 2016. Needless to say, it caused me a great deal of dissonance and concern, and I've been passionately pursuing this issue since then to get global and domestic recognition. Since then, I'm very proud that Australia has taken the lead in this.

Orphanage tourism was first recognised as a risk for modern slavery in the Global Slavery Index in 2016. Since 2017, it has been recognised by the US state department in the Trafficking in Persons Report, the TIP report. In 2018, I was incredibly proud, as the then Assistant Minister for Home Affairs, to take the first modern slavery legislation through this place. We became the first parliament globally to recognise orphanage trafficking as a form of modern slavery.

So, in conclusion, how can we, as parliamentarians, help to assist in the stopping of this trade? Firstly, those of us in donor countries who have caused this form of modern slavery and the trafficking of these children must stop the demand. We do that by highlighting this issue and changing the behaviours of donors and volunteers. Don't just go and blindly support these facilities; look for programs that support children in their own homes or in other homes in their own communities so they can be raised by their families or other families in their local communities. Secondly, in the donor recipient nations, we have to seek ways for donors to support programs that, again, support the families to stay together. The good news is that we already have a lot of tools at our disposal, and I look forward to keeping this chamber updated on our progress.