I move:

That so much of the standing and sessional orders be suspended as would prevent the Member for Kennedy moving the following—That the House:

(1) notes:

(a) Australia has agreed to a number of international commitments relating to modern slavery, forced labour and child labour including the Palermo Protocol, conventions established by the International Labour Organization and the Convention on the Rights of the Child;

(b) Australia implements these commitments by focusing on supply-chain transparency that only applies to entities with annual consolidated revenue of at least $100 million (0.11 per cent of Australian companies) and, even then, only requires reporting on risks and mitigation measures;

(c) strong evidence is available that fresh fruit and vegetables produced overseas are produced using slave labour wage levels, extending to child labour;

(d) Australia currently assesses fresh produce import applications without any consideration of the need for the product or the working conditions under which it reached our shores;

(e) by comparison, the United States has a stronger import-control framework with import prohibitions, which more closely aligns with international commitments; and

(f) Australia must move from 'report and disclose' toward 'report, investigate and prohibit' to ensure:

(i) stronger and more effective implementation of international obligations;

(ii) Australia does not become a destination market for at-risk goods;

(iii) support for Australian businesses, including the vulnerable agriculture and manufacturing sectors; and

(iv) alignment with emerging international trends towards mandatory due diligence and import controls; and

(2) calls on the Government to:

(a) prohibit imports linked to slave labour wage levels, extending to child labour (modelled on Section 307 of the US Tariff Act, but also including specific provisions in relation to fresh produce);

(b) provide the Australian Border Force with authority to investigate, detain, require evidence and seize or exclude goods;

(c) establish a rebuttable presumption of prohibition for high-risk goods (that is, agricultural products) that originate from specified regions, sectors or entities associated with forced labour; and

(d) extend the existing Modern Slavery Act to apply to all importers and require reports to feed into a list of prohibited high-risk goods.

Moving what we are today, in this place—I'm trying to gather my thoughts here, and I'm afraid I'm going to have to take up the time of the House in referring to my notes. I think we've circulated the actual legislation.

The banana industry in Australia is a huge industry. It employs 6,000 people. It is the biggest generic product sold in Woolworths and Coles. The honourable member who spoke previously represents part of that industry, and I probably represent the rest of that industry—6,000 jobs. Now, there's an application that has come in and has been accepted for processing. I moved in this place that the processing body of the federal parliament and the department be replaced by the CWA ladies at Kynuna because all they've ever done is say yes. To every single application, they have said yes.

This is a country that had no farming. It was the only country on earth where there was no farming until about 150-odd years ago, and then we started farming. So we don't have the endemic diseases that other countries have. We don't have them. So we have a very strong case for keeping products out. Even under the restrictive nature of our laws—and I applaud successive governments for that—black sigatoka came into Australia, and 250 hectares were sterilised. We can't grow anything there. The land can't be walked on. It can't be touched. How many hectares are going to be sterilised in the future because disease gets in?

We said, if you allow the prawns to come in, you'll get white spot. If you allow citrus in, you'll get citrus canker. I could go on and on. In each case, that's what happened. We told you it would happen. You completely ignored everybody, you brought the stuff in and you brought the disease in with it. So, if ever there has been hypocrisy in government, it is in the processes by which we assess applications for fruit and vegetable imports into Australia.

So we are moving this legislation. We're not concentrating on the diseases; we are concentrating on the labour conditions under which goods are produced. I'm not into denigrating other countries, but in a lot of countries producing bananas—for example, even in America, people worked for $5 an hour the last time I looked, which was a fair while ago now, when Australian workers were on $18 an hour. In the United States it was $5 an hour. You say, 'That's Mexican wetback labour coming across.' It doesn't matter where it comes from or how it gets there; the fact is that their farm workers are getting paid $5 an hour, and we're having to compete against them, but we're paying $18 an hour. And those figures are fairly old. It would be much worse now, I can assure you.

What we're asking for here is that you take into account the fact that the product is being produced with slave-labour wage levels. All you're doing is promoting the slave-labour wage levels to stay there for eternity. The benefit does not flow to the workers—oh no. I'm not going to name the countries. The workers are employees. The farms are owned by people that live in the capital city in big mansions. So you're not helping the worker; you're helping the big, rich farmers that live in the big mansions in the capital cities of these countries. I'll use the expression 'Central America', for example, where they produce a lot of bananas.

So this legislation goes forward. Our forefathers fought for pay and conditions. When the greatest man in Australian history by a long way, 'Red Ted' Theodore, was elected Premier and then was effectively running the federal government later on—if we'd listened to him, we'd have had no depression in Australia. By the way, I didn't say he was the greatest man in Australian history. Paul Keating said that. I didn't say he was the greatest man in history. Malcolm Fraser said that. Well, I disagree with them on about everything, but at least they got that one right. But, when he instituted the Labor Party, one in 30 of us that went down the mines died down the mines. One in 30 of us that worked in the cane fields died in the cane fields. That was our situation. So he formed a union, as the wonderful song goes, to win fair pay and proper conditions. We don't have one in 30 dying in the cane fields today. We don't have one in 30 dying down the mines today. But in places like China, yes, they'd probably still be up around one in 30, maybe, in their mines in China.

So we stand firmly behind the principle that employees—the workers, if you like—in Australia are protected against product that'll take their jobs off them, bananas being a classic case in point. People work for slave labour wage levels in those countries that produce bananas. If they come in here, 6,000 people in Australia will lose their jobs, and about 200 or 300, maybe 400, farmers will be bankrupted. Is that a good outcome for Australia? And in those bananas will come disease. Bananas in particular are very susceptible to numerous diseases because of the nature of the fruit. So (a) we are going to undermine wages and conditions here in Australia, (b) we are going to perpetuate slave labour wage levels overseas and (c) we are exposing our country to the worst possible types of diseases. I name white spot. We said, 'Don't bring the prawns in.' You brought them in. We got white spot. We said, 'Don't bring the citrus in, because you get citrus canker.' They brought that in. We got citrus canker. 'Don't bring bananas in.' But, even with that protocol, bananas got in, and black sigatoka came in, as we predicted.

So we know the downside of this, but I think there's an important principle involved. The World Trade Organization has gone into the details of a foreign country—I won't name that country—and the working conditions there, which they consider to be slave labour wage levels. That is a country that applies continuously to bring their product—bananas, in this case—into Australia. I am not aware of a single application being rejected once it gets into the system. Bananas are in the system, and I'm not going to go over how the bananas were stopped before, but it's an interesting comment upon good Australians standing up and fighting. I come here representing those hardworking people.

If you have a banana bunch, it weighs about 40 kilos. The first time I picked one up, I fell over on the ground. I had no idea they weighed that much. But, for these people, that is how you work bananas. You hit it with a machete or a cane knife, put them on your shoulder, wobble a bit and then stagger out and put it on the back of a tractor, and it's taken for processing. Why I went into detail is that it's a very intense labour input, and we must protect our workers from slave labour wage levels. (Time expired)

Is there somebody to second the motion?

I am deeply honoured to second the member for Kennedy's motion and reserve my right to speak.

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—

Hear, hear!

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.

():  I move:

That the debate be adjourned.

Question agreed to.