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Article

31 May 2018

Author:
The Sydney Morning Herald

Commentary: Australian media commends govt. and urges Parliament to support new Modern Slavery legislation to purge companies of slavery

"Australia to join assault on slavery", 28 May 2018

...An element of the federal budget deserving of robust cross-party backing is a proposal...to help reduce the shocking level of global slavery.... The Coalition government is poised to introduce legislation to purge companies' supply chains of slavery...

...The legislation will compel private companies to monitor and report on their supply chains. ...[I]t will, in what the government states is a world-first, impose similar requirements on the public sector...

...The world is waking up to slavery...Perhaps the most effective sanction that will flow from such transparency will come from consumers. With people becoming more aware of, for example, the exploitation behind fast, cheap fashion, being named and shamed can be catastrophic for a business profiting in any way from slave labour...

The key is transparency, for the shame of being revealed to have slaves in a supply chain would be likely to create a costly backlash from consumers and shareholders. The government is to be commended for engineering this change, and we urge the Parliament to emphatically support a Modern Slavery Act.