16th May 2024, 11:11 AM – Senate Modern Slavery Amendment (Australian Anti-Slavery Commissioner) Bill 2023 - Second Reading - Prison labour

The majority voted against an amendment to the usual second reading motion, which is "that the bill be read a second time" (parliamentary jargon for agreeing with the main idea of the bill).

Amendment text

At the end of the motion, add “, but the Senate:

(a) notes that:

(i) there are over 42,000 people imprisoned in Australian correctional centres, with many of them working for as little as $2 an hour for certain Australian corporations, including Qantas,

(ii) Australia has the highest rate of prisoners held in privately operated facilities in the world, and private prisons and Australian corporations profit from the use of slave-like labour and wage theft within prisons, exploiting prisoners for financial gain,

(iii) as First Nations people are disproportionately criminalised and incarcerated, the ongoing forced labour through prison labour programs represent modern-day manifestations of colonial practices such as slave labour, indentured servitude, and blackbirding that occurred in Australia,

(iv) this modern history of wage theft and slave-like conditions includes the Community Development Employment Projects, and work-for-the-dole schemes; and

(b) calls on the Government to:

(i) release the exact numbers and names of companies that employ prison labour in Australia, information which is currently unknown as requests for the data has been repeatedly denied by government agencies; and

(ii) ensure that the Australian Anti-Slavery Commissioner has direct powers to refer matters and industries to the Fair Work Commission and the Fair Work Ombudsman, and that the prison industry, and prison labour supply chain is referred immediately”.