Modern Slavery

>> Jane: Welcome everyone to our third Justice Talks event for 2022 and tonight as you know we're focusing on modern slavery. I apologise for starting a couple of minutes late but as you are probably aware, we had a couple of difficulties with the link to the zoom event. So my name is Jane Wangmann and I am the faculty co-director of the Brennan Justice and Leadership Program and I'm one of your hosts for this evening. I'm joined tonight with one of my co-directors from the Law Student Society Monica Keech, who will help facilitate the questions at the end. We also have Crystal Meikle our program administrator, Sivaan Walker our student programs officer and most importantly our special guest and presenter for this evening, professor Jennifer Burn. To start our event this evening I begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we are sitting and participating in this zoom event. I am coming to you from the unsuited land of the Gadigal people, the Eora nation and I pay my respects to their elders past and present. Because this is a zoom event, I know that many of you may be coming to us or sitting participating from other traditional lands and I would like to extend my respect to the elders of those traditional lands as well and I'd also like to extend a very warm welcome to any Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders who are participating in this event this evening. So welcome everyone we have a really large number of Brennan students participating tonight as well as alumni which is really fabulous to see. I imagine that many of you just like me, are very excited and keen to hear about Professor Burn's significant work and that of anti-slavery Australia. Before I introduce Professor Burn, I'm going to take a moment to just mention some housekeeping for the event and I do know that after years of COVID restrictions, you're probably quite well-versed in these but I'm just going to mention them just in case. So please remember to mute your microphone if you are not speaking. If you're bandwidth allows and you feel comfortable, it would be great to see your camera on particularly during question time it's just really nice to see some friendly faces but only if you're comfortable at that time. If you do have your camera on and you find that the recording's starting to freeze, just turn your camera off and it usually frees up some bandwidth. We will have question time at the end and you can either ask your question in person, you can post it in the chat as we go along or you can post it in the chat at the end. Lastly as Crystal mentioned for those of you that were entering, for the Brennan students in order for you, to get your five ROJ points, if you could please add your full name to the chat box and one of the Brennan team will mark off your name so that you get the points. So now it is my very great pleasure to introduce you to our special guest for tonight Professor Jennifer Burn. Professor Burn is the director of anti-slavery Australia and she is a professor here in the faculty of law. Anti-slavery Australia is a legal research centre based here at UTS. Here, Professor Burn leaves a dedicated team of researchers, educators and lawyers all working towards eliminating all forms of human trafficking and slavery, to research direct service delivery and advocacy programs. Professor Burn has had an active involvement in the development of Australia's response to human trafficking and slavery for decades and it's been quite tireless work. Her work is significant and has been recognised to awards such as the 2016 UTS Deputy Vice Chancellor's medal for research impact and the 2020 Law Council of Australia's outstanding Migration Lawyer of the Year award. Jennifer was appointed to the inaugural Australian government National Roundtable in human trafficking in 2008 and she continues to serve in that role. She has been a member of multiple working groups for this round table including groups focused on transparency and supply chains and labour exploitation. Professor Burn has also served as the interim anti-slavery commissioner for New South Wales from 2019 to 2020. She is currently a board member of the Mercy foundation and a member of The Advisory Group for the centre for research on modern slavery at the University of Auckland business school. So please join me everyone in welcoming Professor Burn in giving this presentation tonight.

>> Jennifer: Thank you very much Professor Wangmann. Please do call me Jennifer tonight that would be really lovely. Obviously I'm speaking to you from my office in the faculty of law at UTS and in a discussion about modern slavery in Australia, the acknowledgment of country is particularly significant and I recognised that long before the annunciation of recent concepts of human trafficking and modern slavery, Aboriginal people experienced harms of the type that we would now understand to be slavery, servitude, forced labour and forced marriage. I pay my sincerest respects to the traditional owners of the land here, the Gadigal people of the Eora nation, past, present and emerging. I am privileged as you heard from Jane, I'm very privileged to lead anti-slavery Australia at UTS and we are a strong team of academics, lawyers, researchers, educators, lawyers and students committed to eradicating modern slavery through a steadfast commitment to survivors and to human rights. We do prioritise the lived experience of survivors in shaping our legal work and our research and our training programs. In our work we engage with many anti-slavery partners in civil society and government to amplify our shared advocacy law and policy work and awareness raising initiatives. You can find out more about us by having a look at our website. This evening I'll speak with you a little more about anti-slavery Australia and I really would like to encourage you to join us, our particularly Brennan students and all students at UTS you are very welcome um to contact us and to join us in our mission of eradicating slavery and trafficking. Tonight I will address the concept of trafficking and slavery, globally and in Australia, and provide narratives from research into slavery and trafficking. I'm going to outline what's meant by modern slavery and distinguish it from the substandard working conditions and I'll illustrate this by showing you several short animations that we have developed to raise awareness about the shocking exploitation that is modern slavery. Some groups are vulnerable to slavery and understandings of slavery and trafficking continue to emerge and I will speak with you about new forms of trafficking. But remember please that in every apparent new manifestation of slavery, there is at the core a form of control that has existed for thousands of years. Slavery is not a historical artefact, but it is a heartbreaking reality for millions of people around the world and it has been such for thousands of years. Slavery is exercising control over a person, as if they were an object just a thing to be bought and sold and the consequence is that people can be dehumanised and commodified. So tonight I will review some of the indicators of modern slavery in Australia and around the world and touch on a couple of emerging issues such as the review of the Australian Modern Slavery Act and then I'll finish by speaking with you about the first Australian case of servitude and link that to international developments and then I'll speak about some really exciting projects that you might like to get involved with and I'm going to encourage you again to join us in some way and you know perhaps in the PLT program but there are plenty of opportunities for you to join us. I wanted to begin by speaking to you about Sir Mo Farah and some of you may have read about his case recently. In July this year people around the world were surprised and shocked to learn that the legendary English Olympic Hero Sir Mo Farah had a completely different upbringing to the account that had been previously published. Sir Mo had recounted that he and his family travelled from Somalia to the UK as refugees and sought asylum there. In fact his story was quite different and he has told his story to raise awareness about human trafficking in the UK and to give heart to those who are experiencing this kind of abuse. So Sir Mo said that in fact Mo Farah is not his real name. He had been trafficked to the UK as a child and forced to work in domestic servitude. His real name is Hussein Abdi Kahin. He told the BBC that when he was nine he was taken from his home on the east coast of Africa to the UK and then enslaved. He said for years that he kept blocking it out but you can only block it out for so long. He said his mother and brothers have never been to the UK and they live in Somali land. His story is a story of trafficking and this links exactly to the UN trafficking protocol definition of human trafficking. Just before he was taken to the UK, he was introduced to a woman who would escort him there, he'd never met her and he wasn't related to her. He explained that he was excited to be flying to the UK and he looked forward to meeting his relatives there and it was this woman who gave him the new name of Muhammad Farah. She had documents, travel documents in that name, but as soon as they arrived at their destination those documents were ripped up and she said to him 'if you ever want to see your family again, don't say anything'. He said often I would just lock myself in the bathroom and cry. He didn't go to school until he was 11 and there everything changed because his outstanding and exemplary skills as an athlete were recognised and nurtured in the school where he was enrolled and eventually he told his PE teacher the truth and the PE teacher contacted social services and there was an intervention. He of course went on to and continues to be a highly respected athlete in the UK, he is an Olympic hero, he is now a citizen but he decided to tell his story to challenge myths about slavery and trafficking. He was so fortunate that he had a rare ability, you know he could run, he was recognised and valued throughout the UK. You know eventually he was able to reunite with his mother, Aisha and his brothers and he's taken his own son to Somali land to meet his family but many are not so lucky. So this is a story of human trafficking that is exactly and precisely linked to the trafficking protocol and trafficking can emerge in many unexpected contexts. It was very brave of him to speak about his trauma and his experience and he did this at some risk to himself because of course to obtain citizenship in the UK under the name of Mo Farah he presented false documents. So he was at legal risk the government had said that they will not take action against him but again many are not so fortunate. So now I want to um look at human trafficking and slavery in Australia and just say this. Although there are now initiatives to establish mechanisms to engage survivor leaders and inform the development of law and policy through survivor advocacy, to date there has been very little direct evidence of the survivor experience. Rather available accounts have been published by media or advocacy groups and in a paper that I wrote, I draw on material published in two colonial inquiries to bring light to precarious migration pathways and the experience of trafficking and slavery in Australia. In this research I was able to draw on my colleague Professor Tracy Booth's research on narrative analysis and victim impact statements and Tracy's with us tonight. Thank you Tracy. You've heard the story of Sir Mo but now let me outline two narratives of trafficking and slavery, this time in Australia. I said the narratives are drawn from two coronal inquiries into the deaths of two people who were never legally recognised as being trafficked to Australia. Phoungthong Simaplee died in the Villawood Detention centre in 2001 and Manjit Singh died in the Sydney Hospital 10 years later. The facts surrounding Phoungthong Simaplee her life and trafficking experience have always been contested. Yet it became clear at some stage in her childhood in Thailand, she was sold by her parents and then trafficked to multiple locations including possibly Sydney. Phoungthong Simaplee was identified by immigration authorities as a person who could not establish her identity and she was taken to Villawood where she died three days later. The coroner examined her death and the colonial inquiry helped to push human trafficking onto the Australian National agenda. The coroner found that her death was caused by the consequences of narcotic withdrawal, combined with the antecedent causes of malnutrition and early acute pneumonia. The colonial inquiry attracted intense media interest and a lot of commentary and this was partly in response to the inquiry through the work of a Victorian NGO called Project Respect and journalists Natalie O'Brien and the then Elizabeth Weinhausen. There was a huge outcry in Australia that Australia could be a destination country for victims of trafficking. A parliamentary inquiry was convened and very soon after that, Australia established a series of initiatives designed to investigate trafficking and provide support to people who had been trafficked and it was at this exact time that we at UTS started to respond to International and Australian efforts to eradicate trafficking and to directly support people affected by trafficking and we've been actively involved in Australia's response since 2003 and that started at what was then called the UTS Community Law and Research Centre, that students have always had an involvement in this part of our work here at UTS. So Phoungthong Simaplee's death really was instrumental in changing the Australian response to human trafficking. Ten years after her death, Manjit Singh died. He came to Australia on a gold standard temporary work visa called a 457 Visa. He came here in 2006 to work in an Indian restaurant, he was optimistic about the chance that he had to come to Australia and to make a life here. Early in his life he had contracted TB and he had recovered and he was screened to be allowed to come to Australia but in Australia his TB activated and eventually he died following an operation that was intended to assist him. Manjit Singh provided the Australian Federal Police with three statements about his experiences in Australia. The statements were never tested in a court of law and there's never been a final legal determination about his experience. The coroner drew on the statements in the colonial inquiry and explains that Manjit Singh was one of four children, his parents had a small farm in Northern India a 10 Acre Farm, he was able you know to obtain a diploma in food service and he was sponsored to Australia where he came with optimism and hope in his heart. He was offered certain working conditions as were required by a sponsored Visa but in fact the circumstances that he described to the Australian Federal Police were completely different. He said that he worked seven days a week from 8 A.M until midnight. He slept in the storm of a restaurant and he was locked in overnight. He didn't have a key, he was given very little food. He didn't have a bathroom, he bathed in the restaurant restroom. He had no food, no phone, no computer. The coroner found that there was evidence that he had been deceived in coming to Australia. He had never been paid and he suffered terribly. You know the coroner reflected on Manjit Singh's death and said it's difficult to imagine what must have gone through his mind at that time. He was lying in a hospital bed thousands of kilometres from home and his loving parents. His hopes of providing for his family and perhaps establishing a new life in Australia had turned to dust, he was only 33 he had no close relatives with him. The fact that this happened in one of the richest countries in the world is desolating and as I said he died before the conclusion of the criminal justice process and the facts were never tested in a court of law and yet these facts would also go to evidence human trafficking, testing these facts against both the trafficking protocol and the offence of trafficking in the Commonwealth criminal code. So let me now speak about Anti-Slavery Australia and it's in response to stories like these that we established in a very small way back in 2003 and building on that work, we became a centre of the faculty in the university in 2011 and that's when we formally became Anti-Slavery Australia. Everything we do is based on research, our policy is evidence-based and informed by survivors and as part of the faculty of law, we have a very or we feel we have a very strong connection to the Brennan Program and we do welcome students to join us in our work. We have three main core or three core areas of work. I've already m in fact perhaps I haven't but I've said that one of our main areas of work is that we provide access to free legal and migrations advice to victims and survivors of modern slavery in Australia. Although we're based here in our faculty of Law, we do have a national reach and we support victims and survivors all over Australia. The areas of work that we work in are diverse victims compensation, migration. We help people navigate complicated processes in criminal justice and of course try and find certainty and security in their lives through legal processes. We also run Australia's response to forced marriage through a website which is called My Blue Sky and there's been a lot of recent media around My Blue Sky and forced marriage and if you wanted to look at that it's mybluesky.org.au. Flowing out of this foundational work, we research and we develop advocacy which is then formed by the direct experiences of our clients, the people that we work with and reflecting national the national interest and engaging more with survivors on a formal basis, we will establish within Anti-Slavery Australia, a very small survivors advisory council to advise us on the development of law and policy. We do a lot of education and awareness raising, we do a lot of work with communities, we do a lot of online work and face-to-face work with communities and with government and on our website anti-slavery.org.au there are two free courses that you can do. One about modern slavery and the other that was just released a few weeks ago called modern slavery in the home which speaks about the forms of modern slavery that can take place in a domestic environment, in a private environment. There are so many challenges that we face and our clients face and you know really our mission is to help our clients obtain justice and so we will navigate complex pathways to help them do that. So I'm sorry about this photograph showing or that you're drawing showing one of our legal team. It is not at all accurate but it's intended to show a professional yet person who is informal and approachable but we do welcome students as I've said and if you're interested in this, keep an eye out for a recruitment notice which will be placed in student in brief in early October. So I've been using this phrase modern slavery quite a bit let me just speak briefly about what it is. Firstly, every single one of those icons represents a serious crime set out in the Commonwealth criminal code. It's been 31 convictions for slavery and related offences since 2004. Slavery and trafficking occur in all industries and sectors. It can be hidden in homes found in restaurants on farms, building sites and all these forms of slavery have been identified here in Australia. So it's a very serious and grave and potentially distressing area that we work in but you know we have found through the work that we can do, helping vulnerable people obtain certainty and protection in their lives through legal processes, they can find recovery, they can find peace that the work that we do is vulnerable is so important and helps vulnerable people take a new direction in their lives. People who have experienced complex trauma probably never recover but by being able to provide certainty and security and protection people can take a step forward and that's what we have been able to see in the work that we do here. I wanted to distinguish between slavery and a decent job. So hopefully if you're working you have wonderful working conditions you're paid properly and you work in a safe environment. As we know many people in Australia are underpaid and another one of our colleagues Dr Laurie Berg, has researched in this area and has written on wage theft. This is a very serious issue in Australia where people are underpaid they work two hours that are too long they work in an unsafe environment. So wage theft is almost systemic as Dr Berg has shown. Slavery is something else it is it is that element of control and commodification that takes a leap from a civil breach of law into criminal exploitation and I've already said that the essence of slavery is control and commodification and I'll now show you a short video that really highlights how this works in the Australian context.

>> Video: Modern slavery happens in Australia. Jai trained as a chef in India. Jai's boss owned a restaurant in Australia and organised Jai's visa and flight. When Jai arrived in Australia his boss took his passport Jai had to work and sleep in the restaurant. At night, he was locked in the storeroom and had no key or access to a bathroom. He was not allowed to leave. Jai had limited food few breaks and worked from 8 AM to midnight. Jai's boss told him that he would not be paid until he paid off the debt he owed for his flight visa and bought. Eventually, Jai was able to get help but he was very poor in health and died a few years later. To learn more, visit antislavery.org.au.

>> Jennifer: So we've already heard a number of stories of slavery and trafficking and you know from what we've discussed tonight you can see that some people are particularly vulnerable, typically migrants, people on temporary visas, people who work in jobs that are often not recognised, refugees and Asylum Seekers and of course children and young people, women and girls are also particularly vulnerable. These are occupations like cleaning, domestic work security work, hospitality and agricultural work are all areas where there is an extra level of vulnerability and when that is combined with some of these other factors like holding a temporary Visa, the risk becomes amplified. There are risk factors poverty and you've seen this um what countries where there's a weak rule of law or whether it's natural disaster. These can all be risk factors that can make a person or a community vulnerable to trafficking but so often our trafficking is an is an individual process where there is a person who takes advantage of the unique vulnerabilities of an individual and you've seen some of those examples tonight. Let's have another look at another form of trafficking which is called exit trafficking. When Australia first started to act in response to trafficking, we said that we were a destination country. It's a kind of a rubric that's used to describe trafficking and it divides our countries up into source, transit or destination countries and sometimes countries have more than one of those characteristics. We always thought that Australia was a destination country but over the last few years we've now identified another form of trafficking which is called exit trafficking. It can affect Australian citizens and residents taken overseas for forced marriage or it can affect a person in Zara's situation, a temporary Visa holder.

>> Video: Modern slavery happens in Australia. Zara came to Australia to live with her new husband. Zara was looking forward to her new life with her husband but soon after she arrived, he became very abusive and controlling towards her. While in Australia, Zara gave birth to their child. One day, Zara's husband bought her and their child a one-way flight back to Zara's home country. He told her to pack her bags and threatened to kill her if she did not go. Zara felt that she had no choice and boarded the flight. After Zara left Australia, her husband tried to cancel her visa. He gave false information to the Australian immigration authorities including impersonating her. A few months later, Zara and her child managed to return to Australia and sought help. This is an example of how someone can be trafficked out of Australia. To learn more visit antislavery.org.au. 

>> Jennifer: So I wanted to just reflect with you on the cases that we've heard about and just touched on some of the indicators particularly the indicators of slavery. So you know you'd already if you look at this list up on the screen you're already recognised a number of these indicators that we've discussed through some of the stories that have recounted tonight. So a person who has no discretion over their life really, they're controlled they have limited freedom of movement monitored guarded or confined, living at their workplace controlled living in an abusive situation, having their documents taken away from them, working long hours and so on subject to deception. These are all indicators of modern slavery. Let's have a look briefly at how big a problem this is and of course these statistics that you can see on the screen have been developed by the international labour organisation and Walk Free. They are credible statistics using the best available material but of course they are estimates and you can see here that the numbers are extraordinary. The ILO's that you know over 40 million people living in slavery around the world, almost 25 enforce million enforced labour, 15 million enforced marriage and 73 million children in the worst forms of child labour. These are astonishing figures in a profoundly distressing figures and these were all researched and published ahead of COVID. I have absolutely no doubt that these figures would be substantially more now as a result of COVID and the crash of global economies where there is still not recovery. In Australia again we don't really know what the true estimate is, we are assisting 400 people here the AIC, Australian Institute of Criminology, said there's around about um just over 1500 people in slavery but importantly they say only one in five is ever identified. This is a huge wake-up call for us as we work to raise awareness about modern slavery in Australia. There are more reports to the Australian Federal Police a forced marriage than on any other form of modern slavery in Australia and I said a few minutes ago, that the majority are Australian citizens or residents facing a forced marriage, significant numbers of reports in other forms of modern slavery. Let me now just touch on the Modern Slavery Act. This was introduced on January 2019 and it was intended to transform the business community's response to modern slavery, it is groundbreaking legislation that was introduced in Australia. It requires large entities like the University of Technology Sydney for example but also large businesses to give the government a modern slavery statement each financial year, addressing certain mandatory criteria and you can see the mandatory criteria on the screen. So organisations have to describe the risk of modern slavery, describe the actions they're taking to address the risk, assess the effectiveness of those actions and so on. So this is important legislation incredibly important legislation. It is subject to review now and there will be a review process that will begin with a consultation paper that will be issued shortly and I can touch on some of the big key issues in about moments. Just moving towards the end, I wanted to show you another video this time about an illegal call centre established in two very palatial houses in Brisbane.

>> Video: Modern slavery happens in Australia. Tom came to Australia on a working holiday Visa. Tom's boss took his passport and mobile phone. Tom was kept inside a house with many others and had to work long hours seven days a week. The work involved calling people overseas to extort money from them. Workers were forced to learn a script. Tom worked 15 hours every day. He and others had to follow strict rules in the house, were verbally abused, threatened and told it was impossible to leave. Tom was not paid any wages for his work. Eventually, Tom managed to escape from the house, flagged down a motorist and contacted police. Police responded and found 23 other exploited people who'd been coerced and controlled. To learn more visit antislavery.org.au.

>> Jennifer: I'm trying to now just speak link this to some global and I think I can do that because you would have possibly seen last week's media reports that presented a story that's exactly like this but in Cambodia and there, The Guardian reported that hundreds of people have been trafficked to Cambodia from various countries in the Asian region including Taiwan. People held captive in a criminal call centre, forced to learn a script, people recruited over Facebook and social media, offered a job, accommodation and then they're sold into slavery and this is a global phenomenon. So coming up to the end now just touching on two important projects that we've got it here at UTS. The first is um a project on establishing a national compensation scheme for people who have experienced trafficking this is a very important scheme for us and you know we're fully committed to the establishment of this scheme. Been working very closely with a number of people including Fiona McLeod is seen Victoria, who provided pro bono representation to the very first child who was able to obtain a recognition payment for her experience that resulted from being trafficked to Australia when she was age 13 and exploited in servitude. So this Justice for All is a critically important project for us. We also have Seeking Freedom which is our newest project which is ensuring that children are protected and respected within the context of modern slavery. Children are forgotten in so many policy areas but there are certainly gaps in the Australian response and children are not being identified. this is now my last slide and I'd like to thank you all for being here tonight and I seem to be plugging placements and connection with Anti-Slavery Australia. So I won't do that again but if you do want to find out more please do contact us I'd be delighted to speak with you as would other members of our team. So I'd like to thank you Jane and thank you to all the Brennan Community who are here tonight.

>> Jane: Oh thank you so much Jennifer that was so incredibly informative and moving. I will hand over to my colleague Monica she will facilitate some questions and for those of you in the audience if you'd like to you can either ask orally or you can post him in the chat to get us going so handing over to you Monica.

>> Monica: Thank you Jane and thank you Jennifer for such an engaging presentation I definitely think that modern slavery is an area of the law that we don't hear enough about or in enough depth so thank you so much for speaking with us tonight. Like Jane said, please feel free to put any questions in the chat or you're welcome to turn on your camera or raise your hand to ask in person if anyone has a question.

>> Tracey: Perhaps I could start. Thank you so much Jen that was just it was a really interesting if shocking talk. I think all of us are still reeling a bit. One question that I had, you mentioned that there's been 31 convictions is that right of slavery related offences? How many prosecutions have there been?

>> Jennifer: Oh not 31. So you know I do have a table but I don't have the figure on the top of my head but it's significantly less than that. So I'd say it's around 20. 

>> Tracey: Okay and that says as you suggested that really one in five we only really know about.

>> Jennifer: The reason is that you know for some of these court cases there are multiple people convicted in some of the actions.

>> Tracey: Yeah okay thank you.

>> Jennifer: Most of the convictions have been in sexual servitude. Very few in human trafficking and one in servitude which was the call centre case and one in a restaurant case. But the majority have still been sexual servitude.

>> Tracey: But not that restaurant case where the poor man died.

>> Jennifer: Not that case.

>> Tracey: Thanks.

>> Monica: Okay Anita has a question.

>> Anita: Thanks I put mine in chat and I won't repeat it now verbally but I wanted to exercise my chat rights and ask them in chat. Jennifer thank you very much a wonderful presentation and yeah I mean my question is also challenging so you may not feel up to it but just wanted to pop it in. 

>> Jennifer: Would you like me to answer the question? Well I can read Anita's question, our Dean's question, which is asking me about what the greatest challenge is professionally or personally. You know there have been so many Anita so many challenges both professional and personally. I've been really so fortunate to be able to work with incredible people uh in the Anti-Slavery Australia team. You know to have such outstanding colleagues and partners and friends within Anti-Slavery really lifts us all and supports us all. For the cases that have been particularly challenging have been profoundly challenging and although I speak about optimism and hope, not every case has a happy ending and you know you've in fact heard about at least one case tonight where a person died undoubtedly is the result of his experience in Australia that would have contributed to the circumstances of his death. There are others who were so deeply traumatised that it will be difficult for them to ever take a step forward and this can be quite heartbreaking but you know I'm fortunate and we're all fortunate that Anti-Slavery Australia that we work with such wonderful people and Anita in such a supportive faculty.

>> Monica: thank you I have another question from Julie Petticrew from Electronics Watch. I actually have the same question as her but she was wondering if you could give us some insight as to what amendments to the Modern Slavery Act you and your Anti-Slavery Australia colleagues would like to see as a result of the current review.

>> Jennifer: Yeah hi Julie. Thank you for your continuing involvement in this space. Julie could be presenting her own talk tonight, particularly around the electronics industry. You know for me I think you know the big ticket items would be a consideration of the threshold you know as you heard currently 100 million. You know arguably the threshold could be reduced perhaps to 50 million. There will be considerations about whether there should be a penalty for non-compliance. There is no penalty at the moment the idea when the legislation was enacted is that the market would exercise oversight of the statements that were lodged on the government register. That's not in entirely a very convincing model you know given the number of statements that have been lodged in the breadth of activity. There are certain activities like supermarkets and chocolate and fashion that will get scrutiny all the time but with over 3000 statements that have been lodged, there are plenty of companies that most of us have never heard of who are doing extraordinary things or you know unique things or making widgets or doing this and that it's very doubtful that consumers and civil society would have any you know oversight or have the resources to interrogate statements. So the question's got to be one whether there should be a mechanism in place to provide some kind of oversight that could be enabled by technology. At the moment there's no template or standardised form of reporting, so companies can elect to report in any way that they like. Some specifically address the mandatory criteria others don't, some have a lot of pictures some don't it can be really hard to compare them. For companies that don't address the criteria in a continually perhaps, should there be a penalty because we are speaking about modern slavery. The other issues I think, Julie, would be around the breadth of the Act is the Act in fact too narrow? Should it be broadened to look at broader due diligence frameworks? you know we're focused on slavery, but should there be a focus on other forms of human rights abuse so I think that will be part of the mix. Then of course it's the labour the government has announced they will establish a position of an anti-slavery commissioner. The question will be you know whether the commissioner will have oversight of the Modern Slavery Act regulatory scheme as well as victim support and protection so I'm sure that Julie you'd probably have ideas about other things that will be you know other hot topics but I'd certainly like to see in my best possible world, a statutory victims compensation scheme included within the Modern Slavery Act. It's time and other measures to better support victims.

>> Julie: I agree with everything you just said there. Absolutely and I think on the question of remedy also. We've I don't know if I've sent it through to you yet. but I will. We've just put out a policy brief on remedy.

>> Jennifer: Oh terrific!

>> Julie: Because it's not something that's being talked about enough we don't think and just that importance of there's the compensation but then you know under the UN guiding principles, there's also the requirement that they have to prevent further harm. So yeah I mean there's lots of work to do, but it's all those students out there and Incredibly fascinating interesting and worthwhile space to be working in. 

>> Jennifer: Julie you should tell everybody about your area of work. 

>> Julie: Okay don't want to sort of jump in here my name's Julie Petticrew I work for a European organisation called Electronics Watch and I am their Australian representative. What we do is the electronics Industry but we only work with public sector organisations or NGOs as well and we provide a monitoring and in-country monitoring services for people that affiliate with us so these public sector organisations or NGOs that affiliate with us. We've got a few of the Australian universities on board. We've got Curtin, Monash and University of New South Wales and quite a few other conversations happening and we've also done a couple of bits of consultancy work for the Australian government on their supply chains and the risks that they've faced in there. Our entire model is based on the worker/victim and all our measures are just based on the success and we put the workers at the center of our model. So we don't go in there and say we see a problem we're going to fix this for you, we wait, we verify any report of abuse or modern slavery, we see lots of stuff as Jennifer pointed out around migrant workers as a huge red flag. One of the biggest cases we recently had was 10 700 workers from Myanmar that were in Thailand and they were again all the red flags that Jen pointed out, they'd had their passports confiscated, they were victims of loan sharks, horrendous living conditions and the like. We successfully with the workers at the centre, negotiated compensation. I think we're still trying to track down 19 of the workers. So yeah there's people out there working and we're just trying to leverage the public sector because that's worth trillions globally and we have about 400 affiliates throughout UK and Europe. 

>> Jennifer: Amazing work you do. Everybody would have been so interested to hear that tonight Julie.

>> Julie: Well they just did so thank you. 

>> Jennifer: I'm just gonna quickly answer three of the questions sort of come in on the chat. So chai has asked about the penalties in terms of imprisonment. They vary from seven years up to 25 years for slavery. In general I would say that the period of imprisonment is around about seven years. What can the public do about modern slavery in Australia? Please learn more please learn more raise awareness have a look at the courses that we have on our website, the UTS website, the open course modern slavery, modern slavery in the home. Raise awareness if you see something that you think's not right reach out, you can always call us. You know given that only one in five people are ever identified. There are four who not who are not they might be in a home, they might be working in a food takeaway food store in the main street in Australia, they could be in a restaurant, they could be in multiple different environments so learn more and reach out. There's a question from Anita Williams about our regional training work. This is something that is actually on the agenda for this coming year. We've got some money from Department of Social Services and we're going to go on a road show. I haven't told our Dean yet about that so she'll be very interested. We're going to be going all around Australia raising awareness about modern slavery and particularly around forced marriage. The materials that you can see on mybluesky.org.au are incredible and in particular there's a front line workers guide which is outstanding. So I'd really encourage if you're interested in that have a look at that. Thank you.

>> Monica: Perfect. Unless anyone else has another quick question we might have to wrap up for tonight. Do we have time to quickly answer this one? 

>> Jennifer: Yeah this could be one that a few of us might answer. So Chai's got a supplementary. How's the rise of the gig economy impacted slavery in Western countries. I'd say that that is still emerging but they're a very deeply distressing accounts that we're hearing about people in the gig economy who are exploited n in modern slavery and depending you know how you define the gig economy you know it's a it's a major and global issue.

>> Monica: Okay thank you that might be our last question for tonight unfortunately. This has been super interesting. I'd just like to say thank you to all students, faculty, Anti-Slavery Australia representatives for coming. I'd like to extend a special thank you to Jennifer Burn for leading us through this Justice Talk. Watch out for Anti-Slavery Australia LTS opportunities in the Brennan Collective Facebook group as Jennifer plugged throughout her presentation. We have some more Justice talks coming up. On the 21st of September we have an environmental justice talk and as well on the 6th of October we have an in conversation with Amani Haider and that will be all from us have a great night everyone thank you for coming again 

>> Jennifer: Thanks very much Monica.