Are employers in Australia doing enough against modern slavery?

The Human Rights Law Centre in Australia is raising the alarm on businesses that have ties to suppliers with a record of human rights abuses – and it is urging the Federal Government to take action.

The human rights advocacy group examined the disclosure statements of more than 100 companies across the country for two years, and found that most of them are failing to adhere to reporting standards on such abuses.

Businesses that earn north of $100m are required to come clean, in a statement, about possible links to forced labour across their supply chain network, and to inform the public of how they are addressing the issue.

These include links to seafood suppliers and clothing manufacturers in China, biomedical suppliers in Malaysia, and even some fresh produce businesses in Australia, among others. 

More than half of the companies reviewed by the law centre "failed to disclose obvious modern slavery risks in their high-risk supply chains," said the group's senior lawyer Freya Dinshaw, as quoted in ABC News.

Moreover, less than a third of businesses under review were said to have taken action against modern slavery.

"It is increasingly apparent that reporting alone is not going to be enough to drive fundamental change in supply chains," Dinshaw said. However, businesses that fail to report links to problematic suppliers also face "no real ramifications".

In 2021, the Federal Government allocated a five-year budget of $4.4m to help civil society groups that are investigating connections to these human rights abuses.