Criminal justice

We work together to stop serious and organised crime in Australia.

Modern slavery

Modern slavery describes situations where offenders use coercion, threats or deception to exploit victims and undermine their freedom.

Practices that constitute modern slavery can include:

human trafficking
slavery
servitude
forced labour
debt bondage
forced marriage, and
the worst forms of child labour

Modern slavery can occur in every industry and sector and has severe consequences for victims. Modern slavery also distorts global markets, undercuts responsible business and can pose significant legal and reputational risks to entities.

Entities that take action to combat modern slavery in their operations and supply chains can protect against possible business harm and improve the integrity and quality of their supply chains.

They can also increase profitability, investor confidence and access to financing opportunities.

The Australian Government is taking a global leadership role in combating modern slavery. There is no place for modern slavery in the Australian community or in the global supply chains of Australian goods and services.

Modern Slavery Act 2018

The Australian Parliament passed the Commonwealth Modern Slavery Act 2018 (the Act) on 29 November 2018. The Act established a national Modern Slavery Reporting Requirement (Reporting Requirement) and entered into force on 1 January 2019.

This Reporting Requirement applies to large businesses and other entities in the Australian market with annual consolidated revenue of at least AUD$100 million.

The Reporting Requirement supports the Australian business community to identify and address their modern slavery risks, and maintain responsible and transparent supply chains.

Entities required to comply with the Reporting Requirement must prepare annual Modern Slavery Statements.

These statements must set out the reporting entity’s actions to assess and address modern slavery risks in their global operations and supply chains. The Australian Government will make these statements publicly available through an online central register.

In a world-first, the Australian Government will also comply with the Reporting Requirement.

As required by the Act, the Australian Government will prepare annual statements about potential modern slavery risks in government procurement and investments.

Reporting Requirement

The Australian Government undertook a comprehensive national consultation process to develop the Reporting Requirement, including 16 consultation roundtables with over 170 participants, 99 written submissions and over 100 direct meetings with key stakeholders.

Key features of the Reporting Requirement include:

Application to a broad range of entities to ensure a level playing field. This includes foreign entities carrying on a business in Australia.
Coverage of the Australian Government which will lead by example by publishing an annual consolidated statement covering Commonwealth procurement. Commonwealth corporations and Commonwealth companies will publish separate Modern Slavery Statements if they meet the revenue threshold.
Reporting on all modern slavery practices criminalised under Commonwealth law, including:

slavery
trafficking in persons
servitude
forced labour, and
forced marriage

A public, Government-run register to ensure all Modern Slavery Statements are easily accessible online. Reporting entities will need to publish Modern Slavery Statements within 6 months from the end of their financial year.
Mandatory reporting criteria to provide certainty for business and ensure high‑quality Modern Slavery Statements. These criteria require reporting entities to provide information about:

their structure
operations and supply chains
potential modern slavery risks
actions taken to assess and address these risks, and
how they assess the effectiveness of their actions

A reporting threshold of $100 million annual consolidated revenue. This threshold covers approximately 3,000 entities and ensures the Act applies to large entities with the influence to drive change in their supply chains.
Support and assistance for reporting entities through a dedicated Modern Slavery Business Engagement Unit in the Australian Border Force. The Unit will also promote best-practice, administer the central repository and undertake awareness‑raising and training.
Clear and comprehensive guidance for business about the Reporting Requirement and their obligations.
Commitment to a review of the Reporting Requirement and its effectiveness 3 years after it takes effect to ensure it remains appropriate for the Australian context.

See also printable version of Modern Slavery Reporting Requirement

Key resources

The Modern Slavery Business Engagement Unit (the Unit) in the Home Affairs Portfolio is responsible for implementing the Act. The Unit’s role includes providing general advice and support to entities about compliance with the Reporting Requirement.

You can contact the Unit by email at: slavery.consultations@abf.gov.au

The Unit has prepared detailed draft guidance which aims to clearly explain what entities need to do to comply with the Act. See Modern slavery reporting requirement

The Unit has also supported the civil society organisation 'Stop the Traffik' to develop two videos about modern slavery. The videos below explain why modern slavery is an important issue and outline how businesses can take action.

Video - What is Modern Slavery?

What would you say to this job offer? No holidays. No sick pay. 16 hours a day. 7 days a week. No complaints. No money. No quitting

No one chooses slavery. Instead, you’re offered something that sounds legitimate. By the time you find out what it really is, it’s too late. Through manipulation, threats, violence or confinement, your freedom is taken away.

Most people in slavery earn nothing. They’re exploited physically, psychologically and often sexually.

Slavery still exists. As many as 40 million people work in slavery today – more than ever in human history. Modern slavery wears many disguises.

Take Aditi’s case for example. She lived in a village. When she was fourteen, a man showed up, offering the girls jobs in a factory in the south. It sounded good. They’d be trained how to spin and weave cotton. At the end of three years they’d get a nice bonus. It started out like an adventure. Thirty friends on a long bus trip. Until they arrived.

There was no training. Aditi was put to work 16 hours every day, sitting on the floor with loud machines. The factory was sweltering. The food was bad rice. Safety was non-existent. There was nothing to stop the girls from inhaling damaging fibres or even losing fingers in the machines. With no training, accidents were common. Some girls were even killed. None could bear to stay three years. When Aditi was too sick to keep working, she left with no money. Her injuries are not just physical. The trauma stays with her.

Modern slavery appears in the Worst Forms of Child Labour – work that harms their health: physical or mental. 10 million children are trapped working in these conditions.

Dangerous – Equipment/Locations/Chemicals/Heavy Loads

Difficult – Long hours/At night/Confined

Destructive – Physical/Mental/Sexual

And like all child labour, it takes away their opportunity for an education and a decent future. Anyone can be enslaved. Modern slavery entraps all ages and all walks of life. Most often, it’s the poor and vulnerable.

They have the same hopes for their lives and their families that we all do. Hope is a powerful deceiver when you’re desperate.

Like it was for Htway. His family was desperately poor. Their crops were failing. Htway was chosen to work abroad and send money home. He found an agent who offered him a factory job, with a loan to cover the fees.

But when he arrived, the deal had changed. There was no factory job, and the loan was gathering interest. If he couldn’t pay, they’d go after his family. He was forced to work on a fishing boat to pay off his debt. Once aboard, he was beaten into submission and worked constantly except for a few hours of rest. When Htway’s shipmate complained, he was pushed overboard. There was no other escape. When the boat docked in port he was locked below. He did not set foot on land for 17 years.

Modern slavery is where one person has taken away another person’s freedom – to control their body, to refuse certain work or to stop working. Freedom is taken away by threats, violence, coercion, deception, and abuse of vulnerability.

Slavery. Servitude. Forced Labour. Deceptive Recruitment. Forced Marriage. Sexual Exploitation. Debt Bondage. Human Trafficking. Organ Trafficking. Why don’t people just leave?

Victims are controlled by another person. Their identity papers are taken away, keeping them from leaving. Some don’t even know where they’ve been taken. Others stay because their families will be harmed.

Modern Slavery is found in every country in the world. People are working under slave labour in Australia.

When Dai came from overseas for a working holiday in Brisbane, he didn’t realize he was walking into a trap. Until the gate closed behind him. The suburban house held nearly 50 other victims, forced to work the phones all day, following a script for defrauding people.

They took Dai’s passport and told him if he tried to escape…they knew where his family lived. After months in confinement, he managed to get out of the house and flag down a passing car to get to a police station. Two men were arrested and convicted of the crime of ‘Causing a person to enter into or remain in servitude’.

Slavery can happen here. Even when it’s far away, it can be as close as the clothes we wear and the food we eat. We’d hate to think the cotton Aditi spun and the tuna Htway caught could end up in our wardrobes and on our tables.

When most people think about how their t-shirt is made they look at the tag and say – Oh this is made in Bangladesh or Cambodia and that is about all they know but when you think about how any garment is made it goes through multiple processes and it is far than just about the country where the final stage of manufacturing was done.

Take a T-shirt for example, you need to find out where the raw materials have come from. It is usually cotton in a lot of t-shirts, where is that cotton farm that produced that raw material. That cotton then gets ginned and then woven into fabric somewhere.

Where is the fabric being woven? How are people being treated there and then finally it is on its way to a factory where it is sewn into a t-shirt and then comes to us. At every stage of that supply chain there is a risk that someone is being exploited or enslaved.

Freedom is a human right. Fair go for all. Everyone should be able to say no to a job they don’t want, or quit when they want to leave. We all deserve to be paid fairly and work in a safe environment. We’re lucky enough to live in a country where most of us can take this for granted. How can we extend that right to everyone whose lives are influenced by our choices? We’ve only just begun.

I think now as a society, we’ve come to better understand the path a good can take to get from its place of origin to our dinner table or to our handbag. You know, it’s not good enough anymore for us to turn a blind eye to the fact that our mobile phones, our coffees, our computers could be tainted with modern slavery. And that’s why it’s so important and so wonderful, really, that Australia now has a Modern Slavery Act. The Modern Slavery Act (2018) is now law in Australia. Businesses must account for their efforts to fight slavery at home and abroad.

STOP THE TRAFFIK Australia started campaigning on the Modern Slavery Act in 2011. At that time we were asking for legislation around transparency in supply chains. Modern slavery is an issue that impacts us right here in Australia, whether it’s through what you buy, through your goods or your clothes or whatever you buy. It impacts an estimated 15,000 people in Australia, over 30 million in our region, and over 40 million worldwide.

We were able to get around that issue and realize in a bipartisan manner that we needed to tackle that issue in Australia and in the supply chains of Australian businesses and organizations. And it was really great to see that bipartisan effort, across the chamber, to come up with a final report that we agreed on and recommendations that we thought would be strong to tackle modern slavery, not only here in Australia, but globally.

Most Australians would feel uncomfortable with the idea that they’d bought a product that involved slavery at some stage in its production. What I think this bill will do is, over time, put Australians minds at ease that when they buy a product, particularly from a large entity, that it will be free of any slavery.

What difference can I make? The Modern Slavery Act is a major step from Government. And the response from Business will be critical in the fight against modern slavery. But how will they respond? That depends on us.

A Modern Slavery Act is really important, and it’s an important expression of our Australian values. It’s a first step though. We really need to do more. And we’re really looking forward to building on the first step that we’ve made.

Most people don’t realize that two thirds of today’s slaves are actually trapped in our region, and they’re involved in the production of products that you and I might use every day. So, our region, our products, our responsibility.

Consumers have a role to play in expressing their concerns about modern slavery to the retailers where they’re buying products from, but also to the brands and the companies that are providing products. So I would say consumers can say what they want, that they want an end to modern slavery, but support the businesses that are making the greatest change.

What can I do? Our choices matter – what we buy, what we share and what we demand of the companies that get our business. Change will happen when they know we’re talking and we won’t tolerate slavery anywhere. Together we can shine a light on slavery and end it.

A friend of ours works in the United Nations as an advisor. He was in New York, and it was one of those winter days where the cacophony of sound of the taxis beeping and people shouting and screeching of brakes and tires was just filling the air. But it started to snow, and when the snowflakes, the tiny, tiny little snowflakes, hit the ground, they melted because the ground was warm.

But it continued to snow until one snowflake on top of another snowflake started to make a difference, and they started to stay there. And then there was this thin, white film covering the ground in Manhattan. Until more and more snow came down, and eventually, these tiny snowflakes working together, stopped the traffic. And the taxis went quiet. New York went quiet. When people work together, it’s exactly the same way. When we all build on what other have done and we work together on this, we can stop the traffic, we can stop slavery, and we can really make a difference.

Video - Businesses and the Modern Slavery Act

Everyone who is trafficked is trafficked from a community to a community. The more those communities know about what modern slavery is and have the capacity to identify the signs the less likely it is that human traffickers and people who are slave traders are able to operate.

The slaves I have met are often so desperately poor and someone has approached them with the offer of a better life. And of course, as soon as they take that job. That offer just doesn’t materialise. They find themselves in a situation where they can’t leave and they are being exploited with little to no pay. They are coerced to stay there. We often see that where ever there is extreme vulnerability; there is someone out there willing to exploit that vulnerability.

The world is changing at a massive rate. Certainly, it is happening in the business world. Certainly, it is happening in global economies. Of the 100 top economies in the world, the income makers 71 out of the top 100 economies are now businesses and corporations and they are starting to realise that they have a responsibility to help with the well-being of workers and of nations that they are working in and sourcing from.

So why should an Australian company care about Modern Slavery. Well I think at a most fundamental slavery is illegal. It has been illegal for over 150 years and yet there are over 40 million slaves in the world. Research suggest over 15,000 of them are here in Australia. So the reason we should care about eliminating slavery is that it is just simply wrong. It is illegal, it is immoral, it is unethical, and yet many companies in Australia, I’d venture to say most companies in Australia are probably procuring goods and services of some kind or another where slavery was involved in the manufacture of those goods. It is just not good enough.

Why should I care or why do you care so much about those in another country where you are producing when you live in Australia and there is so much need here? I guess my answer to that is if it was your little girl or your little boy who was working in that factory for nothing. If it was your little girl or your little boy that was being abused in the way that they are; you would do anything that you could do to release them from that. And it our job as a privileged rich country to be able to offer that to other countries that don’t have the luxuries that we have. It is our job to be able to solve this problem. It is global it is even here in Australia but nobody has an excuse anymore because we have all been made aware of it. Now that you know about it, now your only choice is are you going to be part of the solution.

A few years ago at Haigh’s we were looking at our values. We wanted to take our values really seriously. At Haigh’s we don’t want to just make great chocolate, we want to give people a great place to work, great service when they come into our stores and we want to have a sustainable environmental impact in our community. And we want our suppliers to love supplying to Haigh’s. When we started hearing about concerns and risks in our supply chain with both slavery and environmental damage, we wanted to take the path to certification. We felt that certification offered us the best opportunity to give those people supplying us the fairest and strongest outcomes in their communities. When we decided to go down the certification path, everyone got on board really easily. It was a value’s driven decision, and everyone loved the opportunity to make a better contribution to our supply chain

How can you find out if there are issues in your supply chain? The first thing is you have to look. If you only want to show that there are no problems,that is what you will find. If you are truly committed to finding out if there are issues in your supply chain you need to know where you are sourcing from, what is involved in those supply chains all the way back to the end of the supply chain and be willing to take actions to deal with what you are finding.

I think to kick off a program of addressing modern slavery in any company, one has to be realistic. The first thing is that you have to be prepared to play the long game. It’s a very, very complex situation.

But we are a consumer of goods and services as is every company in Australia and I think the very first step is to decide what level of resource allocation you want. In our case it was a fulltime person, it may or may not be that, or in a larger company it might be a team of people working. And then it is a matter of mapping out a strategy. In our case we developed what we called an ethical sourcing road map and actually that document is available on our website for anybody to use as a basis for commencing. We developed a human rights statement and we developed a code of conduct for our suppliers and we then simply sat down with our major suppliers and we said “Look, we are not experts in this, you are probably not experts in this but we are very very serious about tackling this issue of Modern Slavery and we want to do it with you, let’s talk about how we can work together.

Ausbil has been supportive of a Modern Slavery Act in Australia for quite some time and we have consulted and engaged with the Government on this and I think many of our clients are also been very interested in this topic. They want to know how their money is invested. Under the Modern Slavery Act here in Australia we will likely have to report on our portfolios so we will need to demonstrate how the companies we invest in how they what identify the risk of slavery, but also we need to demonstrate what we have done about it in in terms of engaging with companies on risk mitigation. And I think coming back to clients, I more and more they are getting interested in how their money is invested and this feeds straight into the Modern Slavery Act which is even more a reason why companies need to act on this.

Companies that proactively support transparency in their supply chains are much more able to be compliant to current as well as future legislations and they are also able to operate competitively in global markets.

We need to remember that compliance to regulation is the minimum. There are countries where compliance to regulation is weak or even in countries where there is fair enforcement of regulation, business can do better, they can apply business industry standards, they also need to be partnering with suppliers and vendors to build their capacity as well as listening to worker voices. We need this partnership integrate approach to tackle such a complex issue as modern slavery in supply chains.

Be brave enough to look into your supply chain to see what is happening. We need to reward transparency. Those who speak out and say that they do have a problem should be not be attacked, they should be rewarded and have others collaborate with them to really get to the heart of the issue and resolve the problems that they have found.

What we found was that there was a huge ground swell of support from all of our team members, all the people that worked in the company. Supporting our efforts to engage with our suppliers, or the goods and services that we bought here in Australia were free of Modern Slavery, were free of human rights abuses. And we have done engagement surveys and have shown that staff engagement has gone up dramatically. People stop me regularly in the coffee queue or the lunch room or the carpark or whatever and talk to be about how proud they are that a profit-making technology company owned largely by shareholders in Japan, would really take seriously eliminating human rights abuses from any aspect of its operation.

By tackling social issues in our “Seachange Sustainability” program we can ensure that we are being transparent in our approach and that we are putting people at the heart of our business. It is not only good for the business, it is good for the people who work in our business but also it is good for the people who work in our supply chains. ‘Cos nobody wants to work for a company that isn’t taking human rights seriously

I think you have got a little window of time now where consumers are give us grace to be able to get this right but because of media and because of all the amazing organisations around the world fighting this problem, consumers are becoming more and more aware and I believe that every human being was created to do good and so when they are now educated to know that the products then are buying may not be benefitting the people and in fact they are part of the problem, people want to change and therefore, we now need to be able to change in the way we produce.

If we understand that slavery exists we can choose to do nothing, as is the case with most organisations today, or we can choose to get on the front foot, and seek to eliminate slavery from our businesses. The reasons we should do that are not just moral and ethical considerations but there are also considerations about company law in Australia. There is a massive, massive risk for every company in Australia who is complicit in this hideous crime of modern slavery. Every board in Australia should be discussing at a board level the risks associated with their organisation continuing to condone slavery

You can potentially, I think, make more profit if you are doing the right thing and encouraging others to do the right thing. If you are doing things more ethically I think over the long term, you will make more profit and you will benefit consumers globally as well by lifting people up out of their situations and making that global wealth that we need to bring people out of poverty.

Now that we have a Modern Slavery Act that will compel companies to go and look at their supply chain, it is estimated that would apply to the 3,000 largest companies, there are going to be discussions in those organisations about what if we find slavery? Or what happens when we find slavery? I have always made the statement that I would rather be on the front page of the Australian financial review as somebody coming out and saying, “We went, we looked, we shone a light and we found slavery and this is what we are doing to eliminate it.” Rather than being on the front page of the Australian Financial Review because an investigative journalist says, “We went and looked into the operations of Konica Minolta and we found Modern Slavery.” And I am on the front page scrambling and treading water trying to come up with the reasons why we hadn’t gone and looked ourselves. So in a very strange way, when we find Modern Slavery and I believe it is “when” for most organisations, then we will simply do every single thing we can to eliminate that form of human rights abuse and I don’t mind if there is publicity around the fact that Modern Slavery has been found. I think, what is the alternative? It is what we have today which is just bury your head in the sand and don’t go looking. It’s not good enough.

Modern slavery: Knowing your supply chains conference

On 26-27 June 2019, the Unit convened Australia’s first, government-sponsored modern slavery conference.

The conference aimed to equip large businesses to better understand their supply chains and comply with the Act.

Over 400 delegates from eighteen countries attended the conference, including representatives from major Australian and international businesses.

The conference included seven expert panel discussions with twenty-five business and civil society speakers from Australia and internationally.

The Secretary of the Department of Home Affairs also addressed conference delegates.

Video - Tackling modern slavery in supply chains

Hello, I’m Brad Armstrong, Deputy Comptroller-General and Group Manager of the Customs Group, Australian Border Force.

The United Nations has estimated that over 40 million people around the world are exploited in the supply chains of goods and services that we use every day.

The Department of Home Affairs is taking a global leadership role in addressing modern slavery in supply chains.

We recently hosted an international Modern Slavery conference in Sydney to raise awareness of the Modern Slavery Act.

The Act will increase transparency and scrutiny of the actions large business take to assess and address modern slavery risks in their supply chains and operations.

Over 450 delegates attended the conference. Our aim for the conference was to bring together international governments, business, civil society and academia to explore how we can end modern slavery in the supply chains of our goods and services.

Business interest in the conference was strong. We had senior representatives from multinationals and almost every sector of the Australian economy.

Home Affairs secured the participation of twenty-five world-class business and human rights professionals to share their expertise across seven panels.

We had diplomatic representation from 15 countries across the Indo-Pacific region.

Deputy Secretary, Paul Grigson opened the conference and the Secretary delivered the keynote address, engaged with the audience and closed the event.

The conference was an important step in the journey to improving the lives and wellbeing of the most vulnerable members of the global community, victims of modern slavery.

Should you wish to know more please engage with the Modern Slavery Business Engagement and Human Trafficking Branch at slavery.consultations@homeaffairs.gov.au. Thank you very much.

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