I support this Modern Slavery Bill because slavery is repugnant to me and to Australians across our country. It’s inhuman.
While this bill is a positive step, it is not as strong as my Child Labour Bill, which has been introduced to the Senate and is currently under review by the senate committee. My bill adopts a stricter definition of ‘child labour’ and imposes severe penalties on companies that exploit child labour in their supply chains.
Australia must commit to ending all forms of slavery, particularly child slavery, because it is the right thing to do.
Transcript
As a servant to the fine people of Queensland and Australia, I note that the Modern Slavery Act 2018 establishes the Australian Anti-Slavery Commissioner as an independent statutory officeholder within the Attorney-General’s Department. The role of this new commissioner is to bring together the different initiatives the government has taken since the Modern Slavery Act was enacted. These include a unit inside the Attorney-General’s Department and other agencies, including Border Force, to monitor the existing anti-slavery legislation, and an ambassador to counter modern slavery, people smuggling and human trafficking. The Modern Slavery Amendment (Australian Anti-Slavery Commissioner) Bill 2023 clarifies the commissioner’s ability to share information with the Australian Federal Police and other law officers. That will be useful where slavery is brought to light. The definition of slavery in the Modern Slavery Act, which the commissioner will be relying upon for their actions, is wide enough to include that which everyday Australians would consider slavery. There is an issue with the definition of ‘child slavery’ that I will return to in a moment. Noting the absence of penalties in this bill and the modern slavery bill, I hope the commissioner does receive the level of cooperation necessary to eliminate slavery in the supply chains of corporations doing business in our country and of course eliminate slavery as it exists in Australia, which is mostly sex slavery. Senator Shoebridge has advanced an amendment which should improve cooperation with the commissioner. One Nation will support the amendment.
The commissioner will provide an independent mechanism for victims and survivors and business and civil society to engage on issues and strategies to address modern slavery. This is the area of the bill that was dialled up following the committee report. There seems to be a strong emphasis on telling the stories of those workers who are being exploited and preparing material to inform business and the public on the issue. While One Nation will be supporting this bill, I believe Australians across our country consider slavery repugnant, and the best option is to proceed to criminal and economic sanctions right now for businesses that include slavery in their supply chains. Deal with it now and stop slavery now. Businesses have had more than three years to establish whether or not they have slavery in their supply chains. That should be plenty of time. Simply reporting on it—and self-reporting at that!—is not an effective solution. That approach is nearing its use-by date.
One Nation looks forward to the commissioner stepping this up and clearly communicating sanctions to business and working with the Attorney-General and the Minister for Trade and Tourism on further sanctions and penalties. It’s essential that an Australian consumer can buy goods or services in our country and be safe in the knowledge that they are not rewarding the use of slavery. It’s useful for people who see something to have somewhere to say something. For that reason I look forward to the commissioner operating a telephone and web function that allows people to report suspicions they have around the use of, or the keeping of, slaves. That could be used for reports of child slavery and child labour.
For all the talk about child labour, we still have children in the Congo digging up lithium so that urban elitists can buy their electric vehicles, install their power walls and pat themselves on the back about how worthy they are. This has to stop. Stop turning a blind eye to these kids dying in the Congo and other places. The mechanism in place so far has failed miserably to help child labourers, and One Nation has legislation already before the committee. It’s our measure to prevent goods being made with child labour from entering Australia. A problem that continues to exist—in part due to the definition of ‘slavery’ used in the Modern Slavery Act, which the parliament passed in 2018—is that the commissioner will be operating under the definition of ‘child slavery’ which traps only ‘the worst forms of child slavery’, not all the forms of it. Article 3 of the International Labour Organization Convention Concerning the Prohibition and Immediate Action for the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labour includes in part (d), ‘work which, by its nature or the circumstances in which it is carried out, is likely to harm the health, safety or morals of children’.
After all these years of talk about child slavery and all these Australian government actions, these poor children are still digging up cobalt with their bare hands when they should be at school. The International Labour Organization has a far better definition of ‘child labour’, which my office is using. Their definition of ‘child labour’—not child slave labour; it’s more encompassing—is ‘a child under 14 who misses school, or would miss school if it were available, in order to perform work’. So it is when work takes them out of school. That definition captures people who are caught in a never-ending cycle of poverty and misery, with children who are working to bring home a tiny income to support their families and who never receive the necessary education to break out of that cycle of poverty. They are trapped in poverty and misery for their very short lives. These children work until their bodies are broken, and then their children take their place. Child labour may provide large corporations with extra profits from cheap minerals, coffee and textiles, amongst others, yet it’s just plain wrong. It is inhuman.
I framed my bill to relate to child labour only because the Modern Slavery Amendment (Australian Anti-Slavery Commissioner) Bill 2023 has been on the drawing board for some time. My bill covers what this bill does not cover. Having seen the final version of this bill, I will provide the committee with an update on an amendment to my bill to allow the Anti-Slavery Commissioner to be the point of reporting of child labour on imported goods in addition to child slavery. One Nation will support this bill, and, as servants of the people of Queensland, I will continue to pursue this issue.
