Recording: Modern slavery – Amplifying survivor voices

Transcript: Modern Slavery – Amplifying survivor voices 

THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  Thank you very much for joining us today.   

Firstly, I'd like to acknowledge that for those of us in Australia, we are all on traditional lands of First Nations people.  This land was never ceded.  I want to particularly acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, which is the country that owns the land upon which this university is built, and I want to particularly pay respect to Elders past and present for the custodianship of knowledge of the land upon which this university is built.  I also want to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the country where all of you are joining us from.   

My name is Verity Firth, I'm the Pro ViceChancellor of Social Justice & Inclusion at UTS.  It's my real pleasure to be hosting today's event on Modern Slavery: Amplifying Survivor Voices.  We're joined by a great team of speakers, Helena Hassani, Habiba, Professor Jennifer Burn, and Dr Jacqueline Nelson and I'll introduce each of them properly in just a moment.   

I'd like to advise that topics discussed in this webinar may evoke strong feelings, thoughts and memories and if you experience any of these, please take a break and reach out to a trusted friend, family or professional.  We will post a list of free and confidential counselling services in the chat now.   

So on to today's discussion.  49.6 million people worldwide live in modern slavery.  Slavery is often hidden  in homes, restaurants, farms, and building sites.  What is common to all of these is that someone is being exploited and controlled.   

In Australia, over 1,900 people are victims of modern slavery, but only 1 in 5 victims are identified, meaning 80% do not get the support that they need.  The modern slavery offences referred to the Australian Federal Police in 2021/2022 included forced marriage, sexual exploitation, forced labour, human trafficking and trafficking in children.   

Australia's initial response to modern slavery strongly focused on criminal justice outcomes and was not informed by the voices and experiences of survivors.  Governments and policymakers have often missed the opportunity to learn from survivors and have not recognised them as expert in their own experiences, but there is now growing recognition that antislavery efforts must be more systematically survivor informed and in today's discussion you'll hear how a survivorled approach can help combat modern slavery through meaningful, ethical and traumainformed engagement.   

It's now my honour to properly welcome and introduce each of our panellists.  Helena Hassani is a human rights advocate and campaigner for the prevention of child and forced marriage and family violence.  This year she was a delegate to the United Nations for the Annual Tripartite Consultations on Resettlement in Geneva and continues to work and advocate for the rights of girls and women.  Helena is also a poet and writes poems on forced marriage and issues related to violence against women and girls.  Welcome, Helena.   

Habiba works in the child protection industry and has lived experience of forced marriage.  She is of Pakistani heritage and was raised in Australia.  Habiba has extensive experience in the community services sector.  She is passionate about raising awareness about the options available for those experiencing forced marriage.  Welcome, Habiba.   

Professor Jennifer Burn is the Director of Anti Slavery Australia at UTS.  She has over 20 years of research and practice experience in human trafficking, slavery and forced marriage.  She served as the Interim Antislavery Commissioner for New South Wales from 2018 to 2020.  At Anti Slavery Australia, Jennifer's current policy drive is to establish a national compensation scheme for victims and survivors of modern slavery.  Welcome, Jennifer.   

And last but not least, Dr Jacqueline Nelson is a research fellow on the Speak Now project at Anti Slavery Australia.  Speak Now explores a range of issues relating to forced marriage prevention, such as the role of frontline workers, young people managing pressure to marry, and navigating family relationships.  Jacqueline is a sociologist whose previous research has examined difficult conversations within families, responses to racism, and public policy responses to social issues.  Welcome, Jacqueline.   

So now to my panel.  I'm going to start with a question to all of you.  I might come first to you, Habiba, if that's alright.  But the question to all of you is modern slavery can feel invisible in Australia in 2023 and some people may be totally unaware of it.  Can each of you share some insight into the state of modern slavery in Australia?  And Habiba, over to you. 

HABIBA:  Thanks, Verity.  Hi, everyone.  I think that with modern slavery in Australia it's often seen as an unAustralian issue and there's a large lack of awareness around what that looks like around the world, but then again here in Australia.  Usually if you're affected, that's when you're aware of it and know or realise or recognise it as an Australian issue.   

I feel like there's a big taboo around discussing modern slavery.  Usually they're quite difficult conversations to have within the household, but also to address, and then within the community services sector or sectors that are trying to manage the difficulties and the complexities around it, often there's a lack of information or a lack of awareness around how to tackle those issues. 

As you said earlier, 80% of people aren't getting the support they need, so people aren't feeling comfortable, confident or don't know where to go to speak about modern slavery or if they're affected by it.  So we can't expect to know how to deal with the issue if it's not being spoken about. 

THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  Helena, what do you think about the state of modern slavery in Australia? 

HELENA HASSANI:  I think I would echo with what Habiba has said and also I do think that modern slavery is  it seems to be very invisible in Australia and there are so many myths about the modern slavery and forced marriage that it doesn't happen in Australia, but it actually happens behind the closed doors.   

What is important is raising awareness around this issue and talking about this is really critical in this area, but also if we ask the right questions and use the correct tools, then we know the extent of the practice of modern slavery taking place in Australia, including forced marriage. 

THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  Jennifer? 

PROF. JENNIFER BURN AM:  Thanks, Verity.  Well, modern slavery is a new way of describing serious criminal exploitation of people.  It includes the crimes and human rights abuses of slavery, trafficking, forced labour and  in 2013, forced marriage was included as a criminal offence in Australia.  We know in Australia that people are exploited in multiple settings, including in private homes, in domestic servitude, in forced marriage.  They are exploited in agriculture, in factories and hospitality.  But thinking about forced marriage, this is a form of modern slavery, but it is also a human rights abuse and a form of genderbased violence. 

As you've said, modern slavery is often invisible and this means that people affected are often not recognised as people with rights and they don't get the help that they need.  From a policy perspective, at a national and a state level, there is a need for increased awareness raising in the community and a complementary need for better support and protection frameworks.  Thanks, Verity. 

THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  Thanks, Jennifer.  And Jacqueline? 

DR JACQUELINE NELSON:  So my expertise, I guess, is in forced marriage as a specific form of modern slavery and like everyone has mentioned, it's really hard to know just how common forced marriage is.  We do know that of the modern slavery cases that get reported to the Australian Federal Police, forced marriage is the most common form and about half of the reports that go to the AFP relate to forced marriage. 

There's also lots of misconceptions about modern slavery, so what it is, who experiences modern slavery, and I think we've got to be really careful around these types of misconceptions.  I think there's a risk that we can perpetuate racist stereotypes and also if we have a picture in our heads about who experiences modern slavery, that can make it harder to identify it when it happens in a way that, you know, maybe we weren't expecting or to someone that we didn't think, you know, would experience what we call modern slavery. 

One thing  you know, in terms of the stereotypes that we might kind of dispel around forced marriage, we know that it's experienced by Australian citizens, residents and also those on temporary visas.  It's mostly women and girls who experience forced marriage, but it can affect people of any age, gender or sexuality.  We always emphasise that forced marriage is not inherent to any one particular culture, religion or region of the world, so the people that we support who are in or at risk of forced marriage come from a really diverse range of cultural groups and religious backgrounds as well. 

Forced marriage is not condoned by any of the world's major religions, and we also always say that there's lots of different types of marriage practices and ways that people make decisions about marriage, whether they're kind of more individual or more collective.  What's critical across these different practices is whether or not consent is present. 

THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  That's really interesting that half of the complaints to the Federal Police are forced marriage, yes.   

Helena and Habiba, you recently released an eightepisode podcast and its name, so that people can look it up, is Speak Now: About Forced Marriage in Australia and it's part of the Speak Now project that Jacqueline is helping to lead at Anti Slavery Australia.  Can you both tell us your motivations about producing the podcast, sort of what you found in the process of producing the podcast and what you hope to achieve with the process?  Habiba, do you want to go first? 

HABIBA:  Sure.  Thanks, Verity.  I guess, before I kind of go into that, it's important to highlight that I've had lived experience of forced marriage and that was a driving motivator for why I stepped into this space in the first place and that lived experience included me going back to my home country and, you know, being forced to meet with someone that I didn't want to marry, it wasn't something that I wanted to engage in, but felt a lot of pressure to do so and didn't feel like I had much of a choice. 

When I experienced that, I began to notice that there were a lot of people around me that were having a similar experience and so there was that shared experience within my community and I felt like it was almost my responsibility to speak more about it and to help create a platform where people can start to understand what this looks like  kind of like what Jacqueline said, sometimes we have an idea of who we think would be impacted by it, but I saw people that I  or women I thought in my community were strong, you know, independent and fierce who also were experiencing forced marriage.  So I had a preconceived idea of what that looked like until people started sharing their stories with me. 

So I guess what I would like to achieve is not only, you know, creating that platform where we're starting to share knowledge and lived experience and the truth about what that looks like here in Australia, but also hopes that other people will begin to start that conversation within their community and feel empowered to speak out about the issue that we're facing that we have on our hands and start to help others and support others to find their way out of these negative experiences. 

THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  It's really interesting what you say about creating that safe space for people's stories to come forward and that you didn't quite realise how much it was going on until you created that space. 

HABIBA:  Absolutely. 

THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  Helena, how did you feel about the podcasting project and what do you hope to achieve? 

HELENA HASSANI:  Thanks, Verity, and thanks, Habiba.  I think that personal experience is really strong in terms of what I will be talking about.   

So my motivations are to actually raise awareness in Australia that forced marriage is happening here and to challenge the myths and misconceptions that Dr Jacqueline just mentioned before that a lot of professionals and Australian people think it is not happening here, it's not an Australian issue, but in fact it happens and I hope that, through these podcasts, we raise awareness that it happens to Australian people, Australian citizens and people of diverse communities and residence status, but we also want everyone to listen, to know more about the issue, learn more about this issue, and to those who are suffering in silence, we want them to listen and to seek support for themselves. 

Now, what we hope to achieve is these podcasts are very rich podcasts with people with lived experience.  We have got expertise in the field, professional perspectives, which will actually assist professionals, community members, survivors and any other people who are actually interested in learning more about this issue. 

But also, I would really highly encourage everyone interested in learning more to go to My Blue Sky website and look at the information available there and check out the podcasts.  We will post the link to My Blue Sky website and the podcasts in our chat.  So it's really rich for everyone. 

THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  And on that point  and I'll come back to you now, Helena  what are the mechanisms and support systems that are available to help people escape forced marriage?  That was my first bit of the question.  So what are the actual mechanisms that do exist and, importantly, what's needed to prevent forced marriage from happening in the first place? 

HELENA HASSANI:  Thank you, Verity.  So support services  as you would know, My Blue Sky is a great resource and support service available for both professionals, people who are experiencing, and it's available in many, many different languages, in case if people have got language as a barrier.  So you can read information, you can seek support in your own language.  So that is really a national support service.  Then we have got Australian Red Cross, the NTTP support, and that requires a referral from the AFP, which is available in all states, and they provide different sort of supports, case management and referral to other services. 

But also there is a really critical need to provide safe space for people for disclosures.  We need to provide both mental and physical safe spaces for people to provide the disclosures and understand the complexities associated with their experience and once we develop a really good understanding of the situation with having a traumainformed lens, we can guide the client or the victim survivors with the most appropriate support for the client at the time of disclosure and we can empower them to choose what is the best support for them.  Like, you know, we need to bring a lot of changes to the way that we are approaching, the way that we are addressing forced marriage and it doesn't happen overnight, but we can actually work together with community members, with support services, to address this issue and implement the right mechanism or support services which is not very  like which is very friendly and trauma informed for everyone who needs to come forward and get that support. 

THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  And Habiba, what support services do you think are particularly good, though recognising what Helena is saying about it's almost like support services are built for individuals, their individual circumstances, but I'd be interested in your opinion around that as well as what can we do to prevent forced marriage taking place in the first place? 

HABIBA:  Sure.  So I think support services  what makes them good is a good question and I think it's when  as Helena said, they are individual, they don't stuff a bandaid on fixing the problem and apply the same thing to every individual person.  It's important to hear from the individual that's experiencing it, but also their family.   

A loss of family is a big, I think, contributor to forced marriage and the issue as a whole and it can create a lot of, I guess, disjointedness for the person that's experiencing it.  So it's really important to ensure everyone is on board, or whoever can be, and you put the voice of the person experiencing forced marriage at the forefront to ensure that we're providing that holistic support, understanding where they're coming from, what kind of, you know, I guess gaps there are within their life and the issues that they're experiencing and where we can support as a whole. 

We know that there are an array of support systems and listening carefully and understanding the individual is most important.  When I was experiencing forced marriage, I did utilise some of the support systems, but some of them don't work and we know that and I think that's really important to understand why we started the research in the first place as a part of the Speak Now project, and having seen where some of that research has gone is really helping, I guess, us to understand where to next and it's going to help prevent more of those issues taking place in the first place.  So yes, you know, ensuring that we put that research in place, we're hearing from those experiencing these issues and their families as well. 

THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  And Helena, on prevention, what are your views? 

HELENA HASSANI:  I think on prevention, prevention is really hard and complicated.  So prevention refers to the very early stages of forced marriage before anything has happened or taken place with the families.  I think at times of  prevention, at times it is almost impossible.  It's not possible.  But we want to be confident that we have tried our best to prevent it, but you can't prevent everything, unfortunately, from happening.   

But people are experts in their own situation, so they understand the dynamics and the risks associated with prevention or avoiding the forced marriage.  Our role is to empower the client and then let them make that decision for themselves.  You may think that empowering young people is enough to prevent forced marriage, but prevention requires work with families as well, like Habiba mentioned, and families play a critical role in prevention, so we need to work in a holistic way with families, young people, services together if we want to prevent it from happening and when working with families, we are always needing to continually assess the safety and the risks associated with it. 

THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  Yes.  So Jennifer, last year you coauthored a report.  The report's name is Beyond Storytelling: Towards Survivorinformed Responses to Modern Slavery and this report charts the push which is being led by survivors to engage with survivors in meaningful, ethical and traumainformed ways to improve responses to modern slavery.  So can you give us some of your key insights and findings from this report? 

PROF. JENNIFER BURN AM:  Yes, thanks, Verity.  But first I just might say that, you know, the research that Frances Simmons and I did in the Beyond Storytelling report was happening and at the same time we were developing the Speak Now project and really you can see that, you know, the engagement of the whole team  and you can see us and you've heard from us today in the webinar  has really informed and strengthened the research and in some ways it's a perfect example of how critical it is to engage people across the board, those with lived experience, experts and others. 

But just going back to the report Beyond Storytelling, we found in our research that too often survivors have been considered powerless, victims, but now there is an increasing recognition that survivors have much to contribute and they are rights holders and they are entitled to participate in decisions and opportunities that affect them.   

To develop the research, we interviewed survivors in Australia and overseas and one of the people we interviewed was Dr Minh Dang, from Survivor Alliance, and she said that "survivors understand the benefit of sharing some aspects of the story to raise awareness, however, our experience in slavery is not the only nor the primary topic that we want to discuss", and she went on to say that survivors want to engage in policy development, program design, to lead organisations. 

This push in Australia has been documented in multiple ways, but including in the National Action Plan to Combat Modern Slavery, where there is a strategic priority to development a victim and survivor empowerment and engagement strategy and we know through our research that it can be very difficult to engage with survivors in a way that is meaningful and ethical, that fundamentally survivors should have a meaningful opportunity that is not tokenistic, an opportunity to participate, to engage and to lead and, importantly, survivors shouldn't be taken for granted.  They should be recognised for their expertise and they should be paid for their time and expertise. 

So we have seen at Speak Now at Anti Slavery Australia at UTS that there are really good research outcomes and policy outcomes that happen when survivors are included in our daytoday work and activities and, you know, reflecting this, our team here includes people with lived experience.   

So just summing up, survivors should be centred in any activity that affects them.  Engagement with survivors should be open and fair and transparent.  Survivors should have the information that they need to understand the full context of the proposed activity and consent in an informed way.  But we've found at AntiSlavery Australia that some survivors choose not to engage publicly, preferring rather to contribute in other less public ways, and we can tap into the resource in multiple ways. 

And just finally, Verity, thinking about our role in the university, we can foster diversity and encourage participation and facilitate access to education and we can positively support survivors in the work that we do at the university.  Thank you. 

THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  I think that's a particularly pertinent point about paying too.  You know, this is real expertise.  You wouldn't ask an expert to provide you with, you know, a report without thinking of remunerating them.  Why would you expect that of survivors as well?  

Jacqueline, so you're with AntiSlavery's national project Speak Now.  So it's a pretty wideranging project seeking to prevent forced marriage and other forms of modern slavery through education, awareness raising, collaboration, and so forth.  Tell us about it and what is the approach and what are some of the outcomes from the project?   

DR JACQUELINE NELSON:  Thanks, Verity.  So Speak Now kind of emerged out of observations made by our, antiSlavery Australia's, legal practice that alongside the legal response that we provide, we also need a kind of stronger social response, so more preventative activities as well because what people want in terms of outcomes is really, really diverse and wideranging, so the supports available need to reflect that for some people that means, you know, a legal pathway, for other people it means something different.  So, you know, the diverse needs and wishes of survivors is something that we're interested in working at ensuring that we're supporting. 

In terms of our approach to working with survivors in the project, we have  we kind of came up with a set of key principles that guide us in the Speak Now project and two of these are particularly relevant.  So one of them is centring people with lived experience, and hopefully you can see in the podcast that there's been an opportunity to do that there.  And I guess I just reiterate what Jen said about, you know, meaningful, traumainformed opportunities for leadership and involvement.  We've tried to do that at kind of each stage of the process.  This kind of goes well with our commitment to participatory and collaborative design processes, so those two things have gone hand in hand.   

One of the ways we're sort of trying to keep ourselves accountable to those principles is we've built them into our monitoring and evaluation framework.  We're lucky to have someone on the project who's really excellent in this area and so it means we're always monitoring and reflecting on our progress. 

So I think, you know, it's a new  the recognition of the importance of survivor leadership, survivor engagement is new and so we're learning as we go.  We're reflecting on what's happening and we're trying to sort of share our learnings with the sector because it is a sectorwide kind of move to acknowledge the importance of survivor leadership in this area. 

In terms of outcomes, as you said, it's a very big ambitious project, but a couple of the things that we've focused on have been awareness raising.  So we've talked about people not being aware that modern slavery is something that happens in Australia and I always make reference to some really excellent research that a colleague Frances Simmons and Grace Wong did and they showed that, you know, people who've experienced forced marriage really strongly remember what happens when they first disclose to a kind of frontline worker what the response was, how they reacted, you know, so we know that that first response that people get, it can be really critical in terms of determining what happens afterwards. 

So that sort of research and our own work with people with lived experience has kind of directed us towards awareness raising with frontline workers.  So we've kind of been working across, you know, it could be health professionals, people in youth and child services, it could be settlement workers, you know, people in schools.  We've kind of tried to engage with a really wide range of frontline workers and sort of educate them about identifying and responding in a culturally appropriate and traumainformed way if they do come across this issue. 

So one thing that we've developed is we've  based on our collaboration with frontline workers, we've developed a frontline worker guide which is available on our website and we just finished a big awareness raising effort.  We did 39 training sessions around Australia to raise awareness amongst 1,300 frontline workers and community members about this issue.  So that's one of the big outcomes of the project. 

Just one more, because I don't want to take up too much time, we've done some peer research.  So another kind of observation that people have made is that there's a real lack of research that's codesigned or coproduced with survivors of modern slavery and we did some research that kind of went some way towards addressing that gap.  So over the last two years I've been working with a group of young people connected to affected communities and they've worked as research assistants or peer researchers and we've codesigned and conducted research that's aimed at preventing forced marriage.  So we've looked at the pressures that young people experience around marriage and relationships and they went off and did their own design focus group questions, went off and ran focus groups and then we've coanalysed the data and we're writing that up together.  So, you know, we're starting to explore these different methods that we can use to work with young people to raise awareness of forced marriage and generate conversation about how to navigate pressures and seek support. 

I think using that kind of youthled research method really did lead us to, you know, different insights.  I mean, if I had have gone out by myself and tried to do this project, you know, we really did allow for perspectives from those people who are affected by forced marriage to come through.  So that's been really, really useful. 

THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  I think your training too.  Like training 1,300 frontline workers, that's pretty significant, especially if, as you say, it's that first response that people really remember and that potentially might mean that they seek further assistance.  So I think that's pretty impactful work.   

So we're going to go to the questions that I've got now coming up in the Q&A box, and as I said before, I basically tend to go on which questions have the most upvotes.  But I will quickly ask a question from Sharon Chung about whether or not Blue Sky can assist with people who are overseas for various reasons, but usually live in Australia and they've experienced issues related to forced marriage.  Are there resources or assistance or support that Blue Sky can give in those approaches, in those circumstances?  Who would like to answer on that?   

PROF. JENNIFER BURN AM:  Well, I might start off with that one, but Helena and Habiba might also like to contribute.  The website mybluesky.org.au is really an access point for support and one of the unique things about that website is that it includes a chat box that's actually staffed by real people  they're not bots, they're legally trained people at Anti Slavery Australia  so any person can contact us using the chat box, but there are other ways that we can be contacted as well.   

So, yes, we can help a person, an Australian who is overseas and we do do that work.  A lot of that work is around safe repatriation back to Australia and we do that by working with government agencies, such as DFAT, sometimes the Passports Office, sometimes the AFP, but with community agencies as well to try to secure support for safe return home. 

THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  Would anyone else like to add to that?  Habiba, did you  yes. 

HABIBA:  Yes, so My Blue Sky was one of the services I used when I was experiencing forced marriage and, you know, there are so many misconceptions and one of them was if someone took my passport or ripped it up, I wouldn't be able to come back and that was information that I could find on the website.  So it's really great for helping to provide that sense of security.  And I did tap into that SMS function as well and that was really helpful being able to speak to someone that wasn't a bot and they checked in as well when I hadn't responded to see whether I wanted to go through with any of the options that they had provided.  So that was really great. 

THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  That's excellent.  Alright, the next question from the audience is from Lucia Smith and she says what are some more common and harmful myths or misconceptions surrounding modern slavery in Australia that have either been debunked or need to be debunked alongside the racial stereotyping that was mentioned earlier, and how do we go about shifting these misconceptions?  Who would like to have a go at that question from Lucia?  Helena? 

HELENA HASSANI:  I'm happy to go.  Yes, I think I did mention very briefly on that that there are a lot of myths and misconceptions around forced marriage, it doesn't happen to Australians, it only takes place in migrant communities and it's practised in the communities from CALD backgrounds, but let me put it this way that noone is actually immune from forced marriage and it affects everyone.  It doesn't matter what your gender is, what is your age, it impacts anyone. 

Now, I think how we can address this is by challenging these myths and misconceptions and if we hear anyone saying that it's not an Australian issue, it's an immigrant issue, let's challenge that and let's correct these misconceptions that, yes, it happens to  it is majority of the cases are unfortunately coming from some of the communities.  However, those are also like, you know, Australians and they have got the same rights as someone who was born in Australia and raised in Australia and we're talking about humanity and we talk about people's life and the risks that is associated to that person and them not choosing to be in that situation.  So by challenging this conversation, we are actually promoting changes, longterm changes in our communities, in our societies, and everyone is responsible in their own capacity to challenge this and actually be part of a bigger change. 

THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  Sorry, Jacqueline? 

DR JACQUELINE NELSON:  If I could just briefly add to that as well because we did hear from frontline workers about some of these sort of misconceptions and myths and big ones were it's a family issue and something that I shouldn't get involved in, and the other kind of one was that it's a cultural issue and this is how marriage works within this particular community. 

So I think it's that line of awareness raising without stigmatising particular groups and that's why I think kind of communityled and survivorled, you know, prevention, that really needs to be supported. 

THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  And your point you made earlier about no major religion supports forced marriage, right? 

DR JACQUELINE NELSON:  Yes. 

THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  So Irene says that when she was doing some previous training with Red Cross she heard that there's never been any convictions for perpetrators of modern slavery, "This can be discouraging for victims and I was wondering what the organisations are doing to advocate in this area" and is that true, has there never been any convictions? 

PROF. JENNIFER BURN AM:  So I might start off with that one.  There have been convictions for some of the offences in the Commonwealth Criminal Code around slavery, servitude, forced labour and trafficking.  There's been around 31 convictions since 2004.  But it's right that there haven't been yet any convictions for forced marriage offences.  So the forced marriage offences are part of our Criminal Code, they do operate throughout the whole of Australia.  We've heard earlier that most reports of modern slavery do relate to young people particularly in forced marriage situations, but those reports don't ever extend to a long investigation and a prosecution so far. 

There are many reasons for that, and both Habiba and Helena might like to speak to this as well, but I'll just add one thing, which is recognising that one of the great issues in this context is that those who are particularly affected are often younger people from conservative families, they actually do not want to get their families into trouble with law enforcement.  So they would rather not go forward than put their families at risk.   

So, in response, the Australian Government did create a new kind of a support program that's specially designed for those who are in forced marriage.  It does require a referral from the Australian Federal Police, but then there's access to 200 days of nonconditional support and this recognises the central fact that those who are particularly affected do not want to engage in a criminal justice process.  But Habiba and Helena might like to comment as well. 

THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  Helena  Habiba, Habiba.   

HABIBA:  Yes, I think I could definitely back that up from my own personal experience.  When I did reach out to Blue Sky, that was one of the things that was really at the forefront of my mind is how is anyone in my family going to be impacted by that and I don't want to get anyone in trouble.  I was still quite young and didn't understand, you know, how the system worked.   

But I think that's a lot of people that are experiencing forced marriage, they don't really understand how it could impact their family and that's probably one of the most daunting thoughts is getting someone in trouble or essentially incarcerated as a result of their actions, so they don't want to add more of a burden, you know.  If they're already struggling with the forced marriage itself and they're trying to go up against that and then you add this extra thing on top, I think that's going to be really discouraging.  But that's just from my personal experience. 

THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  And presumably that's the reason for what, Jennifer, you were saying about this other pathway which does involve a referral to the police, but isn't punitive in a criminal sanction sense. 

PROF. JENNIFER BURN AM:  Yes, that's absolutely right.  And this is really at the heart of the project that we've been working on because, you know, we recognise that forced marriage  what we want to be doing is preventing forced marriage.  So, you know, we've developed a whole framework that the whole team has been working on and we prioritised building capacity in the frontline community group.  That's why we went all over Australia.  But we've also developed extraordinary resources that are available in language for communities, numerous animations, and we're continuing to do this work and then measure the impact of the work that we're doing. 

So it is an incredible project that we've been working on so consistently over the last year or so with these great people and others who aren't on the webinar today. 

THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  Helena, do you have something to add to that? 

HELENA HASSANI:  Yes.  I think on what has been already said, I just want to make a brief note that overall our forced marriage approach in Australia is very punitive and this punitive approach actually stops young people from getting the right support that they need and also  like Habiba actually shared her own personal experience that it really makes young people to think twice whether they really want to go ahead with that approach or not and because families or their loved ones are those that really know so far and noone wants their family to get in trouble.   

That's why it really doesn't help people, especially young people who are experiencing, to come forward for support services.  But if you have got a more smooth approach, that might change the numbers that we are getting for forced marriage referral and also the types of supports that we can provide to them.  It's all about like agencies working with like, you know, communities and authorities, AFP, to come up with a collaborative way of supporting young people rather than like, you know, making it really punitive and sound really hard for them to get the support from services. 

THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  Yes.  That makes total sense.  The next question is from Yasmin, which is a good one, around passports because what she's pointing out is the problem is often passports for children, rather than the women itself.  It's planned by the perpetrator and it's not necessarily about forced marriage, but due to domestic abuse and they send them home, "I have about a dozen women in other countries now children are Australian citizens and they can't come home because DFAT won't give them their passports."  Does anyone want to comment on that and sort of how children start to enter this complicated situation, Jennifer? 

PROF. JENNIFER BURN AM:  Yes, thanks, Verity.  I would like to  Yasmin, it would be good if we could talk more about this.  I'd like to understand more about the context of how this is happening and it may be that we can develop a response here.  So let's connect. 

THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  Alright, Yasmin, so you can connect with Jennifer offline and if you need help doing that, you can email us here.  And Prue McIntosh would also like to talk more about that with you, Jennifer. 

THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  Marion Gevers asks about the distinction between forced marriages and arranged marriages.  Some communities who seen from an Australian point of view look like a forced marriage, but it's, she says, veiled behind the excuse that it's in fact a willing arranged marriage.  Her question is how can we help these women and the other question is is there a distinction?  Jacqueline? 

DR JACQUELINE NELSON:  Yes, I'm glad Marion asked this question because that is another one of those misconceptions that we often talk about and we talk about in our training.  And we do, you know, make an important distinction between forced marriage and arranged marriage because, you know, arranged marriages are very common, you know, they're a completely lawful way of, you know, entering into a marriage and so in our training we kind of emphasise that the difference between these two things is that, you know, each party can freely consent.   

However, this kind of comes back to language as well, which I think there was also a question about.  Whether or not people use the term arranged marriage or forced marriage, you know, people can  well, first of all, an arranged marriage can become a forced marriage if someone initially agrees to it, was happy to kind of look into the possibility of marriage but then changed their mind and doesn't want to go through with it.  Another issue is that people talk about arranged marriages and that's the language that's being used when they may or may not  you know, there may or may not be the possibility of saying no to that arrangement.   

So I think it kind of emphasises the importance of not using labels when we talk about this and I know lots of frontline workers are really expert at using appropriate language and labels and that people might not identify as having experienced modern slavery or a forced marriage when that might be, you know, how we would describe it.  So I think that's  you know, it kind of leads us into thinking about how to talk about the issue when we're talking to people affected and what their preferred kind of terminology or how they identify their experience.  Habiba, I don't know if you want to add to that. 

HABIBA:  Yes, so I think when we look at this, it's important to understand that it's seen through many different lenses.  So we have the Australian law perspective, so what does consent look like within Australian law, and even within that there's so many grey areas.  So I can understand and appreciate why that would be so confusing for communities around Australia. 

And then you have different ideas of consent around the world and what that looks like, where for some individuals if my parents give consent, that means yes.  So that can get really confusing whether something is arranged or forced and what I say is that understanding where the individual sits on that and how they feel and how this marriage is making them feel is really important.  If they're getting a gross, icky feeling, then we know that there's something that's not quite right, but if they're happy and they're willing to go forth with it, you know, and they can see a happy, bright future for themselves, then yes, that looks like a really good happy arranged marriage potentially, so bringing it back to the feelings of the individual because all the other stuff can make it really, really confusing.  And it's not as easy as that, there are lots of other complexities that may be involved, but if I were to kind of try to bring it back down to the basics, that's where I would suggest to start. 

THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  Yes, that's a great answer.  Now, I'm aware that we're running close to time, so I'm going to ask one last question of the panel, but luckily it's  and I know also  I've been noticing that Jennifer has been typing some answers to your questions, so that's very good of you, Jennifer, thank you.  But it's not dissimilar to the question that Elizabeth Payne has posed anyway.  So my final question for the panel is  and I'll come first to you, Helena  what is the most important thing that people working on policies and social and cultural responses to modern slavery should do when working with survivors?  So what's the most important thing you should do when working with survivors and what would you like to see change in the way that we work with survivors?  Helena first, then you, Jennifer, then Jacqueline, and we'll end with you, Habiba. 

HELENA HASSANI:  Thank you, Verity.  I think when working, it's really important to have a survivorled approach.  Like, you know, Jennifer did talk about her storytelling coauthored report.  Now, it's really important that we consider what is a really good approach when we want to support people who are experiencing or have experienced this and when we have the survivorled approach, that is really helping us to understand the whole dynamic and then what is the most appropriate response that we could offer in Australia. 

And the other thing that is a really important approach is working together in every level of the community, whether it's like community members, sectors, agencies, all working together, especially the AFP, which is the main like provider of referral to services and receiving referrals and have got the firsthand sort of referrals with themselves.  It really needs to ensure that all the services, everyone is working collaboratively with communities to have a really good approach, response while working on policies because then those policies will be implemented in the wider sector to shape and to support people who are experiencing forced marriage and modern slavery and need the appropriate support. 

THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  Jennifer, what do you think the most important thing is?  Oh, you're muted.  You're muted. 

PROF. JENNIFER BURN AM:  Of course I'm muted.  There's always one.   

Look, I just want to say that centring the survivor is really absolutely critical, ensuring that all the processes are open and transparent, the survivor has an opportunity to give informed consent  these are some of the really critical, critical principles.  And, you know, it can be a complicated and quite a long process laying the groundwork for engagement with people with lived experience, but we need to put the time in to make sure we get the processes right.  Thanks. 

THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  Jacqueline? 

DR JACQUELINE NELSON:  I'll keep it a really brief comment.  I think there is this kind of growing inprinciple commitment to listening to the voices of victims and survivors but, you know, we need to go beyond just listening and making sure that that meaningful involvement happens in practice.  I also think we need to be led by survivors about what meaningful involvement in policy and programs look like, so that will look different for different people. 

THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  Yes.  And last but not least Habiba  so what should we be doing and also is there anything you would particularly like to see change? 

HABIBA:  Yes.  So I guess survivor led has been like the key theme that we've been speaking about, and I also saw a question in there about language and I think language is so powerful and so important.  We're not going to get it right 100% of the time because language is always changing, there's new terminology that we think might fit better, but I think it's about that genuine approach and genuinely trying to make that effort of getting the language right and checking in with survivors to see what works best, and that could change over time in the context of, you know, where we are and what's happening and the environment.  So that's really important to note.  We all make mistakes and that's okay as long as we genuinely can then move on from that.   

Perceptions are also really important, understanding what perceptions your service has within the community and what lens this survivor might be looking at the service through or someone who's experiencing forced marriage as well. 

And then I think finally, speaking on something that Jen spoke about earlier, which was paying survivors for their time and for going over their story.  It's so important because their story came at a cost to them while they were going through the experience and that could have cost them, you know, their health, their mental health, financially, their family, and that's something that you can never compensate financially.  You can't give someone that time back or take the trauma away by paying them and if they're sharing their story, they are being retraumatised and speaking on my experiences often can leave me to continue thinking about it even when I step away, which can be really difficult and it's really hard to sit with those feelings continuously when you're constantly going over your story.  So I can then understand why certain people might not want to talk about it and just leave it in the past as well.  So I think that's really important to compensate in whichever way, shape or form that is most appropriate as well.  And I feel like I didn't answer the last question. 

THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  The last one was what would you like to see change? 

HABIBA:  Yes, there's a lot that I'd like to see change, but I think I would love to see a better general understanding of the issue and would also love to see more people being able to talk about what they're experiencing openly and getting the support that they need.  A reduction in numbers  you know, zero would be amazing, but as Helena mentioned before, you know, we know sometimes it can't be prevented, but definitely a reduction in the amount of people experiencing it. 

THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  Wonderful.  Well, thank you, and that's perfectly at time.  So I want to thank all of our wonderful panellists. It was a really great discussion and I appreciate the depth and the content and the information you've provided for everyone today as well as, of course, the experience of having lived through these situations.   

I want to tell all our audience thank you for joining us and you will be sent a link with the recording, so please share it far and wide.  Part of this is about raising awareness, particularly the awareness of the supports that exist out there.  So thank you again and we'll see you at our next webinar.