"Australia’s deportation bill risks increasing modern slavery and forced labour issues", 24 June 2024

Walk Free is gravely concerned Australia’s deportation bill, formally known as the Migration Amendment (Removal and Other Measures) Bill 2024, will worsen the situation for vulnerable people and expose many more to the risks of modern slavery both in Australia and abroad.

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The Migration Amendment (Removal and Other Measures) Bill will harm vulnerable people by:

• Silencing victims and creating barriers to seeking assistance due to fear of criminalisation and deportation.
• Creating more barriers to access to justice, including by limiting the ability of law enforcement to hold offenders of modern slavery crimes to account.
• Retraumatising people with lived experience of modern slavery by instituting removal policies which some survivors have likened to the actions of traffickers.
• Fundamentally misunderstanding the exploitative nature of trafficking by illogically concluding that a person can be ‘deterred’ from being trafficked when they are exploited by traffickers who deny them their free will and agency.
• Punishing victims if they fail to comply with a removal pathway direction through criminalisation and travel bans.

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