Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Hansard source

I wear it in the gym most mornings—which I had the pleasure of being presented with at a recent event that I and Tim Costello spoke to at the Syndal Baptist Church under the Catalyst banner. I have spoken now at about three or four of these events. One was held at Emmaus College, a terrific school in my electorate, under World Vision’s Stir banner. The interesting thing about the recent event was that they did not want a ban on chocolate. They do not want consumers to go out and ban chocolate buying at the moment. What they are asking consumers to do is to go into stores and purchase the chocolate, but write to the manufacturers, particularly Cadbury’s based here in Australia, and let them know that they would like to ensure that their product is not being made via the processes of child slavery. So they are not looking for a ban, but they are asking us as consumers to do our bit.

I have also had the privilege of having Oaktree Foundation members from Monash University and Deakin University come and see me in my office. They are a terrific group that operate in my area and they are pushing for fair trade on campus. I am supporting their moves there. Certainly in my office, like the member for Sturt, we use fair trade tea and coffee and we do not encourage too many people to eat chocolate bars out of vending machines.

I suppose when most people think of slavery, they imagine slaves shackled to a ship or to each other, as used to happen during the days of the African slave trade. I think we all hoped it had ended with William Wilberforce, but sadly it has not. The truth is these days the chains are often mental chains, psychological ones of coercion, fraud, deception and fear of harm to families. Many Australians would be shocked to learn that slavery and human servitude currently exist within Australia. This often involves sexual slavery and human-trafficking. We are not immune from it even here.

The issue of slavery, particularly child slavery, is something I feel very passionate about, and I have spoken on the issue at many, many local community events. It is an issue of great concern to my electorate. It is estimated that as many as 27 million human beings are enslaved across the globe in what is a multimillion-dollar trade. Slaves are found in Africa, Asia, South-East Asia, the US, Europe and indeed Australia. According to the Anti-Slavery Society:

Although there is no longer any state which legally recognises, or which will enforce, a claim by a person to a right of property over another, the abolition of slavery does not mean that it ceased to exist. There are millions of people throughout the world—mainly children—in conditions of virtual slavery, as well as in various forms of servitude which are in many respects similar to slavery.

There are several organisations performing fantastic work advocating on the issue, including World Vision Australia, through its Don’t Trade Lives campaign, and Catalyst, through a campaign called ‘Not For Sale: Campaign to End Slavery’. On their website, Catalyst touch on the issue of child slavery being used to farm cocoa beans:

In the Ivory Coast young men are enslaved on cocoa plantations. They are forced to work long hours, receive no pay, and are mercilessly beaten if they rebel. Anti-slavery groups estimate that up to 90% of Ivory Coast cocoa farms have slaves. Given the Ivory Coast supplies almost half the world’s cocoa, it is quite possible the cocoa used in the chocolate you eat or the topping you put on your ice-cream has involved slave labour.

The pleasure that we derive from eating chocolate could possibly be at the expense of child slaves in Africa. As the Trade and Environment Database puts it:

The problem of child slavery then is not simply a faraway abstraction with no immediate implications for anybody else except those who are directly affected, but rather it is an issue that everybody around the world should be concerned about and demand action to eradicate.

Again I commend the member for Sturt for bringing this motion to the House, and I call upon people to do that, to eradicate slavery by letting manufacturers know that they object to the notion that child slavery has gone into the manufacturing of their chocolate.

Very interestingly, at one of the events I went to, someone from the confectionery manufacturers was brave enough to turn up and present to the crowd. She admitted that, yes, they had failed to meet their last two deadlines and that again there would probably be little hope of their agreeing to meet. But there was a good discussion between the manufacturers and Tim Costello at this event to recognise that it was an issue that the confectioners were taking on board. Again, this is something that has happened through public effort, through public concern, through action such as this today, through actions in the community to ensure that when people buy something—if they buy that Cadbury’s chocolate bar, for example—they write to the manufacturer and let them know that they are deeply concerned about this issue. And it happens through people trying to ensure that they purchase fair trade chocolate. It is just as good and it is out there. Coffee, tea and the whole range of produce are available, and we should be ending slavery. It is absolutely obscene that in this day and age people are still enslaved.

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