14– 27 November 2024

Selected Recommendations

• Ratify relevant international instruments, including the International Convention on the Protection of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families, the Migration for Employment Convention (Revised)(No. 97), Migrant Workers (Supplementary Provisions) Convention (No. 143) and the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention No. 169.
• Ensure that local and state/territorial authorities are sufficiently consulted and actively involved in policy/programme development and service delivery.
• Reform Divisions 270 and 271 of the Commonwealth Criminal Code in line with the recommendations made by the Targeted Review.
• Regularly collect and analyse disaggregated data on contemporary forms of slavery in order to strengthen identification of these practices and protection of victims and survivors.
• Strengthen the Additional Referral Pathway by providing sufficient training, financial and other support to non-governmental entities. .
• Co-ordinate Support for Trafficked People Program (STPP) more effectively with full and meaningful consultation with public and private service providers at local, state, territorial levels, as well as those with lived experience. Involve them in programme design and delivery and ensure access to STPP without any form of discrimination.
• Promote meaningful engagement with those with lived experience of contemporary forms of slavery as well as local, state and territorial actors. Formally engage them in the National Roundtable on Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery.
• Allocate the necessary resources for a gender-based violence prevention strategy and expand access to culturally relevant support particularly for migrant and Indigenous women, including construction of shelters and transition housing for the victims.
• Ensure that all victims have access to sustained, equal and effective assistance without required conditions such as cooperation with criminal justice processes.
• Establish a national compensation scheme for all victims of contemporary forms of slavery.
• Publish the Government’s response to the Independent Statutory Review of the Modern Slavery Act 2018 conducted by Professor McMillan as soon as possible.
• Amend the Modern Slavery Act to create a legal obligation on large companies to establish a due diligence mechanism.
• Provide clarity on the capacity to engage in anti-competition behaviours, ensuring that competition law requirements do not prevent companies from engaging in due diligence activities.
• Introduce a penalty regime for businesses that fail to report or implement due diligence.
• Introduce sector-specific guidance on mandatory reporting and due diligence.
• Implement import ban on goods produced as a result of forced and/or child labour.
• Proactively monitor the conduct of employers, labour hire companies and immigration agents through regular inspections. Strengthen the cooperation with local, state/territorial authorities, as well as civil society organisations and workers’ organisations in this regard.
• Redress more effectively the power imbalance between employers and employees built into certain schemes such as PALM, Working Holiday Visa Holder, Student Visa, Temporary Skill Shortage Visa and Domestic Worker (Diplomatic or Consular) Visa.
• Provide sufficient information to temporary migrant workers, PALM workers, in particular, in languages they understand. Involve local actors and stakeholders in this regard.
• Ensure the ability of all temporary migrant workers to change their employer without any form of discrimination.
• Streamline migration for employment pathways and visa regimes.
• Strengthen access to employment and essential services for asylum seekers.
• Strengthen the efforts to address contemporary forms of slavery experienced by persons with disabilities in residential settings.
• Abolish Australian Disability Enterprise and promote integration of persons with disabilities into the open labour market.
• Recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People as the original occupant of Australia in its Constitution.
• Create an Indigenous-led and survivor-led national truth and reconciliation body, to provide an opportunity for the affected Indigenous survivors to tell their stories and contribute to reconciliation efforts for past injustices.
• Strengthen the efforts to address the negative legacies of colonialism, as well as the resulting intergenerational trauma experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People, including through providing culturally appropriate adequate remedies.
• Ensure the self-determination of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People by, inter alia, providing support and adequate direct funding for survivor-centred and Indigenous-led investigations into past injustices and current situation of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.
• Raise the minimum age for marriage to 18 with no exception.
• Promote trauma-based, culturally appropriate and intersectional responses for forced marriage survivors.
• Decriminalise sex work fully in law and in practice.
• Provide financial and other needed support for the work of Federal Anti-Slavery Commissioner to carry out his function effectively.
• Establish an independent and impartial grievance mechanism for all victims of contemporary forms of slavery.

Businesses

• Larger companies should establish and implement a due diligence mechanism, and provide support and guidance to their global supply chains.
• Smaller businesses should start sector-based collaboration in order to identify risks and take further actions to implement due diligence as appropriate.
• In implementation of their due diligence obligations, the businesses should view contemporary forms of slavery in broader human rights context, based on international human rights standards, including the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, the principles of Global Compact, and OECD Guidelines on Multinational Enterprises. They should cooperate fully with other actors such as workers’ organisations and civil society in the implementation process.