Tim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

First, I give this speech with sadness that the topic even needs to be raised—that we still have the scourge of slavery in its different guises in the modern world, including in a nation, a Commonwealth, as great as ours. But I also start with sadness having listened to the speech of the previous speaker. If you could find any issue that warranted bipartisan cooperation, I would have thought it would be this one. We could make some obvious points: this government actually initiated the inquiry that led to the report, which is the topic we're discussing today, in October of the previous year versus the policy announcements of the opposition last year.

But to focus and dwell on these sorts of points about who's first distracts from the critical issue—and, frankly, the people—that this report and this cause is designed to address, because nobody should be under any misunderstanding about the importance of tackling modern slavery. It is a critical issue. The International Labour Organization measures the prevalence of forced labour. According to their 2012 global estimates of forced labour, an estimated 20.9 million people across the world are victims of forced labour. The statistics for each type of labour are quite staggering, I think, for many people in this chamber and without. There are 14.2 million people in forced labour in areas such as agricultural, construction, domestic work and manufacturing. In enforced sexual exploitation, there are 4.5 million people. Regarding state imposed forced labour, there are still, tragically, 2.2 million people who are in some form of state imposed labour, whether it's in military or rebel forces. Other UN organisations have reported that 63,251 victims of trafficking were detected in 106 countries between 2012 and 2014. In 2014, over 70 per cent of the 17,752 victims were women or girls, particularly those who are vulnerable and may not be in a position to assist themselves.

Nobody disputes the importance of this issue. It is critical that we face it and confront it, and that is what the report and the committee have sought to do. The inquiry heard about the devastating impact of modern slavery on individual victims. At its public hearing in Melbourne the committee heard from Ms Sophea Touch, a victim of domestic servitude in Cambodia. I have now read her account; it was a very moving one. She was born to a violent family, was sent 300 kilometres from home and was forced to sell cakes from around the village. She lost her chance to go to school. She was beaten and denied food if the cakes were not sold. Sophea was denied the freedoms that we all too often take for granted. I have served as Australia's Human Rights Commissioner and worked directly on some of these issues with many others. Nobody can dispute the enormous impact that the denial of basic liberties has on someone's development throughout their childhood and their adulthood and on their capacity to go on and live a full and free life. The important thing is to do what we can, particularly in the areas that are within our control.

In Australia, there have been over 750 referrals of human trafficking and slavery offences to the Australian Federal Police following the introduction of offences in 2004. From what little data there is available, it seems that forced marriage is the highest risk area in Australia, followed by sexual exploitation and labour exploitation. There have been similar problems in ethnic communities, where people have used dowries as an example of the way to extract relationships and force people into servitude. This is not acceptable in a modern, liberal, pluralistic country with a basic respect for the rights and freedoms of all people. What we know is that most cases were found in metropolitan areas. The committee heard that in 2014 a case of modern slavery was revealed in a brothel in suburban Melbourne, where a woman was held captive and found hidden in a secret wall cavity. We have the resources and the capacity to do something about that now and, as a society, we must do more now.

What we need to do is focus as a country on the things we can control and work cooperatively with the private sector to help tackle the scourge of modern slavery beyond our borders. Of course, we should always work with companies that voluntarily take appropriate action and are part of the solution, not participants in the problem. Where we can work with them to try to effect change, we should, so that we can stamp out modern slavery together.

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