Modern Slavery Training Requirements

Modern slavery training requirements in Australia are indirect. No Commonwealth law says a business must run a modern slavery course, and none prescribes a syllabus, a duration or a refresher interval. What the Modern Slavery Act 2018 requires is that a reporting entity describe, in its annual statement, the actions it has taken to assess and address modern slavery risks. Training is simply one of the actions most entities choose to describe.

That changes what good looks like. Section 16 sets out the mandatory criteria a statement must address, and every statement is published on a public register. Because the Act is a transparency instrument rather than a prohibition, what gets scrutinised is the quality of what you describe, not a pass mark against a training standard. A line saying all staff completed an online module reads poorly next to a statement explaining which roles were trained, why those roles, and what changed as a result.

In practice the real requirements come from three places:

• Your own last statement. Whatever you committed to in one reporting year is what you will be asked about in the next.
• Your customers. A business below the reporting threshold usually meets the Act as a clause in a supply contract or a question in a tender rather than as a regulatory duty.
• Your risk profile. Offshore manufacturing or heavy reliance on labour hire calls for different training from a professional services firm, and role-based beats workforce-wide.

Records are the part organisations most often underestimate. Completion data has to show who did what and when, and it has to survive a change of system or provider, because a statement approved by the principal governing body should trace back to evidence someone can actually produce.

The Modern Slavery Act 2018 on the Federal Register of Legislation is the primary source. Requirements differ by sector and change over time, so treat this as general information rather than legal advice. Related material sits under compliance training and records management.

Sentrient’s modern slavery course sits inside the wider compliance training courses library.