A new month has arrived and with it there’s a new report on Australia’s illegal migrant slave labour trade. From The ABC:
Three Tongan workers have died and others are being forced to live and work gruelling hours in pitiful conditions on a Federal Government-backed program, a parliamentary inquiry has heard.
The inquiry heard that some labour hire contractors were skimming close to $1 million every month off illegal Malaysian migrant workers.
And some contractors in the Sunraysia district of Victoria others in Bowen, Queensland are placing up to 15 workers in squalid homes and charging them up to $100 a week each…
Labour contractors are getting away with blatant exploitation because employment and immigration authorities are not taking enough notice of the problems the inquiry, which is looking at establishing a Modern Slavery Act, heard…
“If the contractor has 800 workers, and skims $4 per hour, they make $25,600 per day, and monthly they make $768,000 per month,” [Melbourne-based lawyer Raj Thanarajah] said…
Falepaini Maile, a Sydney-based schoolteacher and president of a Tongan support group… said she had spoken to Tongan workers living in unventilated shipping containers and cramped caravans in Childers and Bowen in Queensland.
“The water supply was just one tap and the water was slimy green in colour,” Ms Maile said. “At night when the woman wanted to go to the bathroom, they go out together, it’s not safe. “They get cold and water drips down, and they have to wake at four in the morning to start work. She said the workers cooked on the ground…
The Foreign Affairs and Aid Sub-Committee Inquiry into the Modern Slavery Act in Australia will collate its findings for a report in December, with an expectation that the Attorney General will introduce legislation in 2018.
As we keep saying, there are now entire business lines, firms and sectors across Australia whose business models rely heavily on the systematic undermining of wages or, worse, running virtual slave labour.
We have seen this in fast food, convenience stores, agriculture, building, accounting, IT, engineering, education, transport, the gig economy and no doubt it is even more widespread.
The Senate report, entitled A National Disgrace: The Exploitation of Temporary Work Visa Holders, was released in March 2016. And yet 20 months later there has been minimal action from the federal government, with widespread rorting of Australia’s temporary visa program continuing unabated.
Let’s hope this latest parliamentary inquiry into modern slavery finally delivers some reform.
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