What Is Modern Slavery
Modern slavery is a legal term, not a general description of poor working conditions. Australian law defines it as eight specific practices: human trafficking, slavery, forced labour, forced marriage, servitude, debt bondage, deceptive recruiting for labour services, and the worst forms of child labour. Each one is a serious crime.
The line that matters is coercion, and whether a person is able to leave. Underpayment, excessive hours and unsafe conditions are unlawful and serious, and they are dealt with under workplace law, but on their own they are not modern slavery. Blurring the two leads organisations to either escalate ordinary compliance issues as slavery or miss the severe cases sitting further down a supply chain.
A second distinction gets confused just as often. Human trafficking involves moving a person, within or across borders, for the purpose of exploiting them. People smuggling involves moving a person across a border for payment, without the intention of exploiting them once they arrive. Different offence, different response.
These practices are prosecuted, not merely reported on. The offences sit in Divisions 270 and 271 of the Criminal Code. The maximum penalty for slavery is 25 years imprisonment. Forced labour carries up to 9 years, or 12 for an aggravated offence, and forced marriage up to 7 years, or 9 where the victim is under 18. The Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions publishes the full offence list and the leading Australian cases.
For most Australian businesses the exposure sits in their suppliers rather than their own workforce, and often offshore. Forced marriage is the exception most likely to surface through an employee’s own circumstances, which is why awareness of it sits closer to family and domestic violence support than to procurement. Obligations differ by jurisdiction and change over time, so treat this as general information rather than legal advice.
Read more in the modern slavery category, or see Sentrient’s modern slavery course and the full compliance courses library.
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