Modern slavery exists in an underworld, but on any given day we could walk by one of its victims. 

It's been estimated that around 41,000 people are living in slavery-like conditions in Australia, suffering exploitation across many sectors of our economy. In the most horrific cases, people are trapped in sexual servitude. Many of them came here as temporary migrant workers hoping for a new home. 

The issue is vastly under-reported. Tip-offs to the Australian Federal Police (AFP) hit an all-time high of 382 in the year 2023–24. At the top of the list was human trafficking, forced marriage, forced labour and sexual exploitation. (Other forms of modern slavery include debt bondage and deceptive recruiting.) 

The record number "represents innocent lives in the community" AFP Human Exploitation Commander Helen Schneider said when the findings were announced.

Prior to this, reports to the AFP inched upward from 162 in financial year 2018 to 294 in FY2022. 

The low numbers mask the fact that it's happening all around us. As recently as mid-June, the AFP arrested a woman with Australian and Nigerian citizenship for luring people from Papua New Guinea to Australia with the offer of university scholarships. The PNG nationals were then forced to work at various farms in Queensland to pay off the substantial debts the human trafficker said they had incurred for travel to Australia. 

The exploitation of many more innocent lives goes unreported, mainly for fear of retaliation by overseers. 

'I knew we were in trouble' 

Moe Turaga has lived experience of modern slavery. He was lured to Australia from Fiji along with nine others by a Fijian trafficker with the promise of a job picking fruit in Victoria. 

"I didn't ask a lot of questions on arrival in Sydney. My boss took my passport and told me I had a debt to pay off for my travel expenses. He took my wages for two years, and he told me he was sending them back to my mom in Fiji. I never received any cash or had any access to a bank account," Turaga says. 

My boss had not sent any of my wages home for the whole two years I was picking fruit

Modern slavery survivor Moe Turaga

Working conditions were harsh. Turaga was injured more than once and not offered medical care, but he felt he was doing the right thing by his family. 

"After two years, I managed to call my mum," he says. "The first question she asked really shocked me: 'When are you going to send some money home?'. My boss had not sent any of my wages home for the whole two years I was picking fruit. I was 19. I had no idea what modern slavery was, but I knew we were in trouble." 

He never received the wages, and his boss never faced any consequences. 

Exploitation of workers in the hospitality sector is a one common example of modern slavery.

Peer support is critical 

Though years have passed, the raw feeling of helplessness is not hard to recall. "We really had no idea what to do or who to turn to," Turaga says. "We were trapped. I could not go home to my mum empty handed. That was the biggest thing. I had no money to go anywhere, and my passport was still with the migration agent. So we just had to keep on working and keep looking for a way out."

Turaga eventually found one through a woman from a neighbouring farm that he met at a church morning tea. Sensing his distress, she offered him paid work, helped him get his passport back, and set him on a course that would prove life-changing. Money finally started arriving at Turaga's home in Fiji. 

Unfortunately, it seems that people's ingenuity and propensity to exploit or abuse is limitless

Survivor Connections co-founder Sarah Schricker

Over time, he found his way to becoming an Australian citizen and now works with Survivor Connections, an organisation founded in 2023 by modern slavery survivors. Its mission is to provide peer support for survivors and help them transition to an autonomous life. This involves providing guidance with necessities such as housing, employment, medical care and legal assistance. In a recent survey of Survivor Connection's clients, 90% reported having serious difficulties making this transition without the help of someone who knew firsthand what they'd been through. 

Survivor Connection's co-founder Sarah Schricker says modern slavery "can happen anywhere in many different contexts".

"Unfortunately, it seems that people's ingenuity and propensity to exploit or abuse is limitless."

The one commonality is that victims are usually socially isolated and financially desperate. 

Spotlight on overseas supply chains

While advocacy groups such as Survivor Connections as well as the AFP regularly hear from local victims, Australia's Modern Slavery Act is mainly focused on the overseas supply chains of companies selling goods and services in Australia. 

The Act is meant to shed light on these hidden tentacles of commerce. To comply, companies with $100 million or more in annual revenue are required to publish an annual Modern Slavery Statement that outlines how the business is addressing the risks of modern slavery in its global supply chains and operations. 

But this process doesn't seem to be helping to reduce modern slavery overseas or domestically. Adherence to the reporting requirements has been spotty, and critics say the annual requirement has become a perfunctory exercise for many companies. There are no financial penalties for non-compliance. 

The overall quality of reports has been improving year-on-year, but many companies continue to flout the spirit of the reporting regime

Monash University experts have been evaluating the quality of these reports since the Act came into effect. Each year, the Monash researchers rate around 100 ASX-listed companies on a scale of A to F according to how well their reports satisfy the requirements specified in the legislation.

"Our framework evaluates the extent to which a statement provides a clear understanding of the company's operations and supply chains, its exposure to modern slavery risks, and the actions taken to address those risks," Monash researcher Dr Nga Pham tells CHOICE.

"In our assessment, we distinguish between basic disclosure and more comprehensive, meaningful reporting." 

The overall quality of reports has been improving year-on-year, but many companies continue to flout the spirit of the reporting regime. Utility and real estate companies have consistently scored the highest, while financial services, information technology and healthcare companies continue to file sub-standard reports. 

The treatment of labourers on construction projects can bear the hallmarks of modern slavery.

Lack of meaningful detail 

In the latest Monash evaluation, covering the financial year 2022, half of the statements received an A and 21% a B. (In FY2020, the inaugural year of reporting, only 3% were A rated and 12% B.)

"While most companies acknowledge modern slavery risks, many fall short in providing meaningful detail on how those risks are identified, assessed, and addressed, particularly beyond their direct, Tier 1 suppliers," Pham says. 

This means modern slavery could be occurring further down the supply chain and companies either don't know about it or are neglecting to report it. Many companies are also failing to explain how they measure the effectiveness of the steps they do take. 

But some are setting examples for others to follow.

"There are companies that are able to map out their extended supply chains with specific information about suppliers up to Tier 5," Pham says.

(Tiers in supply chains represent the series of suppliers down the line that provide materials for the company's products.) 

Statements receiving an E or F rating reflect limited effort to meet even the minimum expectations. We would consider them unsatisfactory

Monash University researcher Dr Nga Pham

"Gaining deeper insight into suppliers beyond Tier 1 is essential. Modern slavery risks frequently reside in these extended supply chains. Companies should actively engage with their Tier 1 suppliers to trace the origin of materials and assess practices through all tiers of the supply chain." 

Receiving a C or D rating in the Monash analysis clearly indicates shortcomings, but the companies have at least made an effort. Anything below that means the company's not even trying. 

"Statements receiving an E or F rating reflect limited effort to meet even the minimum expectations. We would consider them unsatisfactory," Pham says. 

Which company reports fared the worst in the latest Monash University evaluation? 

Companies that scored an 'E':

• Resmed Inc. (Australian medical equipment company based in San Diego, California)
• Steadfast Group Limited (Sydney-based insurance firm)
• Spark New Zealand (NZ-based telecom) 

Companies that scored an 'F':

• Harvey Norman (Australian retailer)
• Janus Henderson Group (London-based asset management firm)
• Block Inc (US-based mobile payments company)
• Virgin Money UK (financial services firm)

Tainted goods and services

In May 2023, the federal government tabled a report on the first three years of the Act, which made a number of recommendations, including introducing penalties for non-compliance and lowering the threshold for reporting requirements from $100 million in annual turnover to $50 million. (The recommendations have yet to be enacted.) 

Professor John Dumay of Macquarie University, who works with the organisation Be Slavery Free, took part in the three-year review.

"One of the issues that we have with the Modern Slavery Act is that it's very much a reporting and awareness raising piece of legislation, and I don't think it's gone very far in eliminating any form of slavery in Australia," Dumay tells CHOICE. 

The problem is that we do very little in Australia to combat the abuses

Macquarie University professor John Dumay

"So companies are now issuing these reports, and sometimes they're like a tick-the-box report, saying 'yeah, we've complied with the Act'. In fact, many of the reports are fairly low quality. The problem is that we do very little in Australia to combat the abuses. We mainly import modern slavery through the goods and services we buy." 

Australia's textile industry is an area of major concern for anti-slavery advocates.

Modern slavery in the textile trade 

New South Wales established its own Modern Slavery Act around the same time as the national one. Among other things, it focuses on NSW state and local government supply chains rather than those of global corporations. 

One area of particular concern for NSW anti-slavery commissioner Dr James Cockayne, whose five-year term began in 2022, is workers in the textile, clothing and footwear (TCF) sector in the state as well as the country as a whole. (There is also a national anti-slavery commissioner.) 

In a February 2024 submission to the Inquiry into the Ethical Clothing Extended Responsibilities Scheme 2005 (NSW), authors Cockayne and Justine Coneybeer write that workers in the TCF sector, especially those who work outside of factories, "exhibit significant indicators of vulnerability to workplace exploitation, abuse and immobility". They say that "TCF jobs are Hobbesian: nasty, brutish and short".

The 2005 scheme was designed to ensure that clothing retailers complied with the Ethical Clothing Australia Code and provided outworkers with fair wages, superannuation and other entitlements that most Australians take for granted. For a time it appeared to have improved supply chain transparency and enabled assistance for vulnerable outworkers, but the scheme has fallen into disuse, Cockayne says. 

There is significant information suggesting textile outworkers in New South Wales are vulnerable to violations of their labour rights and even, in extreme cases, modern slavery

NSW anti-slavery commissioner Dr James Cockayne

As of February 2024, there were around 7727 businesses in the TCF sector in Australia, and 91% of them had a turnover of less than $2 million a year, a tiny fraction of the revenue of major clothing brands. According to data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, there were 5985 TCF workers in NSW. 

But Cockayne says this likely fails to include many people who work in their homes and off the books, a significant percentage of whom are female, over 55, and from a migrant and non-English speaking background. They're called outworkers or homeworkers, and the most common language spoken among them is Vietnamese. 

According to the submission, 10% of full-time TCF workers nationally are paid at a scale that puts them on or below the poverty line, and many have reported being threatened or coerced into working overtime without pay, often in inhospitable conditions. Homeworkers are injured on the job at three times the rate of factory workers, and children sometimes assist with the work. They are overwhelmingly non-unionised.

The conditions bear the hallmarks of forced labour, perhaps the most unequivocal form of modern slavery. 

"As the inquiry recently conducted by the NSW Modern Slavery Committee revealed, there is significant information suggesting textile outworkers in New South Wales are vulnerable to violations of their labour rights and even, in extreme cases, modern slavery.  Nearly all the goods they produce are locally consumed," Cockayne tells CHOICE. 

He added that he's "actively working with the NSW Government, the NSW Modern Slavery Committee, textiles unions and other stakeholders to strengthen protections for vulnerable textile outworkers". 

Lived experience is critical 

In December last year, as part of a review of the Modern Slavery Act NSW, the NSW Parliament's Modern Slavery Committee recommended that the legislation be strengthened in a number of ways, including by having survivors take part in anti-slavery efforts. 

In May 2025, the NSW Government declined to add that to the legislation for the time being, a move that Cockayne hopes will be reconsidered. 

"Meaningful engagement of people with lived experience is critical to effective anti-slavery work," he says. "It also plays a vital role in restoring agency to survivors. Policies are  more effective and more efficient when informed by those with lived experience." 

As of July 2025, the NSW Anti-slavery Commissioner's Advisory Panel will include equal representation of lived and learned experience. The Commissioner's Lived Experience Engagement policy will be released in the coming months.

Meaningful engagement of people with lived experience is critical to effective anti-slavery work

NSW anti-slavery commissioner Dr James Cockayne

Fiona David, founder and CEO of the advocacy group Fair Futures, says "peer support groups are central to honouring the experiences and voices of survivors to connect them with the practical support services they need. Providing peer support can be a valuable part of a survivors journey, as they use their lived expertise to support another person's recovery."

Meanwhile, modern slavery goes on. 

"Credible reports to my office, including through the 1800 FREEDOM hotline, indicate serious modern slavery risks across a range of sectors in NSW, affecting both temporary migrant workers and long-term residents," Cockayne says. "This includes horticulture, agriculture, meat-processing, light industrial manufacturing and services, cleaning, security, aged care, construction, nail salons, retail, hospitality, and commercial sex work."

Indicators are everywhere 

For Moe Turaga, the perspective of modern slavery survivors needs to be a big part of rolling it back.  

"I had never heard of modern slavery or forced labor or deceptive recruitment," Turaga says. "Back when I was a teenager, slavery was an African American in chains, something we saw in the movies. But when you start to learn about what modern slavery is, you start seeing indicators everywhere."

I wish Australian consumers were more engaged with who is actually making the goods they buy and who is providing the services they pay for

Modern slavery survivor Moe Turaga

Turaga says he gets hundreds of phone calls every year from workers in distress, mostly from people on the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility Scheme." (The scheme, also known as the farm scheme, authorises Australian businesses to employ workers from nine Pacific islands and Timor-Leste for up to four years.) 

"I wish Australian consumers were more engaged with who is actually making the goods they buy and who is providing the services they pay for," Turaga says. "Australia's pretty slack compared to the US and the Europeans." 

Stock images: Getty, unless otherwise stated.

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