House of Representatives on Wednesday 12th September 2018

Check against delivery

I would like to commend the Modern Slavery Bill 2018 to the House. Slavery has, of course, been a persistent evil throughout human history and, as we know, it remains; there are still 25 million victims of modern slavery who are exploited in global supply chains.

My first contact with people who were slavery victims was actually on 24 December 2014. I was deployed with the Australian Defence Force to a Middle Eastern country and some of my colleagues and I ended up at a Christmas Eve service. We came into contact with some women working at a women's refuge which was helping to get women who had been the victims of slavery back to their home country. I don't want to go into too much detail because I think that refuge continues to operate and continues to look after women from a certain country, but women were coming to that country and finding work, then they would have their passports stripped from them and then they would be forced into sex slavery. The refuge where these women could flee to was established, and then, through their home country, they would be recovered and reunited with their families. It really did emphasise that slavery is a problem, and that's why I'm so heartened that this government is taking action to make sure that Australian businesses have no place for slavery and to ensure that we have transparency in our supply chains.

The central objective of the bill is to combat modern slavery in the supply chains of our goods and services. As I said, the UN estimates that up to 25 million modern slavery victims are exploited in global supply chains. The government has worked very hard, through a range of consultations with stakeholders, on the key features of the bill to ensure that the bill is practical to implement for business and is consistent with community expectations. Under the reporting requirement, for example, over 3,000 corporations, trusts, partnerships and other entities will need to publish annual modern slavery statements.

The bill will set a $100 million threshold for reporting. This ensures that it focuses on entities that have the capacity to meaningfully comply and the market influence to clean up global supply chains. Statements will need to address mandatory criteria set out in the bill, including identifying the entity's key modern slavery risks and describing its actions to address these risks. These criteria will provide certainty for business about how to report and will ensure statements can be easily compared.

I won't go on because many have spoken on this bill already. I just wanted to lend my voice to it, and also to commend my colleague the member for Dunkley, who's done a lot of hard work in getting the bill to this point. I acknowledge the support we've received from those opposite, although we disagree on key features of the bill. This bill is a really important historic step by Australia in its fight against modern slavery. It's sensible, it's practical and perhaps over time we can enhance it once we get a sense of how the incentives embedded in the bill work to eradicate slavery from goods and services in our supply chains.