MOTIONS

Mr HILL (Bruce—Assistant Minister for Citizenship, Customs and Multicultural Affairs and Assistant Minister for International Education) (16:34): I do want to put a few remarks on the record from the government's perspective. I genuinely thank the members for bringing the debate. It is a worthy use of the parliament's time.

These are important issues, and it does make a nice contrast with some of the suspensions of standing orders we've seen over the last few sitting weeks from the opposition, wasting the parliament's time with question time becoming smear time and suspensions of standing orders for melons and golf clubs and traitors and all sorts of rubbish. But modern slavery is abhorrent.

It is an umbrella term, if you like, for a bunch of things for which there are minor technical differences: human trafficking, forced labour, domestic servitude, sex trafficking. That is the crux of modern slavery. It's a situation where a victim is forced, coerced or defrauded into working for the benefit of the perpetrator.

I say clearly that, from the government's perspective, there is no ambiguity: everyone—every human being—should be free from such kinds of forced fraud and coercion. Every human being should have the right to use their own labour and to profit from it free from coercion. In 2018, I was involved in the opposition's work in the lead-up to the historic legislation that the parliament passed, introduced by the previous government and supported by Labor, then as the opposition.

I remember that I illustrated in my speech on the second reading the essence of slavery with common fairytales that we would have been told as kids. Cinderella, Rapunzel and Oliver Twist were all victims of modern slavery—it wasn't that modern then. Cinderella was forced to cook and clean for free, Rapunzel was deceived into staying captive in order for her captor to exploit the magical properties of her hair and Oliver Twist was a child whose vulnerabilities were exploited by criminals for selfish gain.

In 2018 the parliament came together to recognise that these are not just fairytales. There are, indeed, more than 40 million human souls on the planet—that was then; it'll be more now, I fear—who are modern-day victims living real lives in modern slavery. I acknowledge the work of the member for Hotham, now the Minister for Housing, for leading Labor's work, consulting with business, with unions, with civil society and with experts—and, indeed, looking internationally.

We met with the UK's then modern slavery commissioner when he was in Australia and gained much from that. These people are forced. These human beings are coerced and defrauded in the most inhuman of conditions, to work until they're unable to do so any more.

That's no exaggeration; often it is literally to work to death en masse—to starve to death, to be sexual slaves, to work 16 to 20 hours a day until they die. And governments across the world can only combat this together. No country can solve this alone.

It doesn't happen within one nation's borders. We live in a globalised world where supply chains and trade freely, I hope, move between nations. We can facilitate this trade or restrain it.

The truth is that perpetrators today, despite the efforts that Australia's made and is making and that other nations are making, continue to avoid detection by keeping the vulnerable voiceless, by taking their passports, by locking them up and by threatening their families and—literally, as I heard when I was in Bangladesh recently, shockingly—by kidnapping vulnerable refugees and trafficking them to other countries.

These victims are voiceless, though. They don't have a voice. They don't get to stand here.

They can't speak up for themselves. They're hidden in the unseen labyrinth of global supply chains, and it is one of the most profound power imbalances that you can imagine in human society. They're mostly women and girls and children and the very, very poor—the kind of poverty that we don't have en masse in our country.

There are parts of Indigenous Australia, shamefully, that probably approach some of that. But they don't have any privilege and they don't live in countries with the rule of law, where companies are accountable, where governments are accountable under the law. They're up against some of the most amoral multinational companies or, indeed, barons or kleptocrats from their own society given patronage by their government.

And it is the most inhuman suffering and exploitation of vulnerable people in the most shocking way. We in Australia, despite all the argy-bargy and all the antigovernment rubbish floating around and antipolitics denigration, are a privileged people. We do trust that our institutions work as they should.

We generally feel safe that the law does apply to governments, that it does apply equally to everyone no matter their background, but that's not the case in much or, indeed, most of the world, where people live in deep poverty. Most of the world doesn't get to vote and choose their governments. I say that at citizenship ceremonies.

One of the obligations of Australians when they become a citizen is to enrol to vote, and don't just do it because the Electoral Commission can catch up with you. You have to do it with pride because, the minute you become an Australian citizen, you're one of the minority of human beings on the planet who gets that privilege to vote and choose their government, and we should never take it for granted.

But we can't be present at the scene of these crimes. We can't. We can't help the woman forced through debt bondage to work in a sweatshop, making the clothes that we may buy in big stores, small stores or markets around our country.

But we can, we should and we must make sure that the company that chooses to buy from those wholesalers, factories or sweatshops in other countries takes every possible reasonable step to make sure that their contractors and subcontractors are paid a fair and decent wage. We can make sure that we speak up and that we're active in international forums like the International Labour Organization and play our part as a good global citizen.

We can't be there when an individual child is being exploited in a village or on the plantation, but we can make sure that Australian companies have a law that sits over them and then a set of accountability mechanisms to make sure that they don't purchase from these companies. Finally, I'll say: when we supported the then government's bill, we said it had two big deficiencies.

The then government was too scared to take on big business, actually put any teeth in the legislation and have any penalties to multinational corporations that breach these laws. They're nice words—fine sentiments. It was a start, but it wasn't enough.

The second deficiency, in my view then and in Labor's view, was that the act should have included an antislavery commissioner. Well, I'm pleased that we're now in government because, in 2023, an independent statutory review of the Modern Slavery Act was completed by Professor John McMillan. The government, in our response, agreed or agreed in principle to 25 of the 30 recommendations, because Australians rightly expect that products they buy in their shops, in their markets and anywhere across the country are not built and not imported on the back of human suffering— Mr Katter: Hear, hear!

Mr HILL: and the kind of misery which I know the member for Katter genuinely has in his mind and his heart in bringing this—the member for Kennedy! Well, some would say it's a synonym! I'm pleased that, in the last term of parliament, we delivered legislation to put in place Australia's first antislavery commissioner, and in 2024 we appointed the commissioner.

We're proud of this reform. The commissioner will hold all of us to account and is doing so, with challenging advice at times. That's good.

And finally, in July this year, the Attorney-General announced the government's intention to create a new criminal offence, where companies with an annual consolidated revenue of over $100 million which fail to prevent modern slavery in their supply chains can be prosecuted and punished. Now, we're mindful of the regulatory cost burden. It should be done in a sensible way.

But remember, most of these big companies are already trading in other countries in the world. They already have to be accountable. They have to account for their supply chains.

They've been doing it in the UK for years, and they can and should do it here. Now, there'll be defences available, but I'll finish on this point: this public consultation opens right now, which is one of the reasons I really welcome the timing of your motion. The consultations on the criminal offences close on 25 September, and every Australian, every union and every business—anyone—can choose to submit and express their view before the laws come into the parliament.

And I hope that we all come together and vote on them. I encourage everyone who's interested—Assistant Minister, I'm calling on you in a moment—to contribute. Now, members would understand this is an important debate, but we also have a lot of important government business to attend to.

I think in a moment—I have a feeling—it might be time to move on to the next item, but I really thank you for bringing the debate.