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

As an Australian parliamentary representative to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, last month I had the honour of attending its 147th assembly in Angola. While there was a lot of global turmoil reflected, there was also some great news there. As the rapporteur on orphanage trafficking, I presented a resolution titled 'Orphanage Trafficking: the Role of Parliaments in Reducing Harm'. I'm incredibly proud to advise colleagues that this comprehensive action plan was endorsed by 180 national parliaments. In fact, it is the very first global action plan to combat any form of child-trafficking.

Today, over 50 million people are trafficked into slavery. Eight million of those are children trafficked into residential accommodation, sometimes called 'orphanages'. These eight million children, mostly with parents, have been transferred or recruited from their families into these so-called orphanages for the purposes of exploitation and/or profit—profit from generous volunteers, many of them Australians, who do not realise that these children are in fact trafficked to gain money from them. This resolution is a comprehensive and very practical action plan, focused on assisting parliamentarians to take meaningful action through education, legislation and advocacy.

I thank the very many of you who have assisted me on this journey, not least of all my colleagues Senator Deb O'Neill and Warren Entsch, and, of course, in the other place, fellow delegates at the IPU who were of great assistance. I'd also like to thank the parliament's IPU team, so ably led by Jane Thomson; the Geneva based IPU team of Kate van Doore and Rebecca Nhep; Hopeland; Global Citizen; and, of course, Anne Basham and the Interparliamentary Taskforce on Human Trafficking. In Australia, and globally, we still have much to do to eliminate orphanage trafficking. Thank you.