Is Australia is doing all it can to stamp out human rights breaches in our supply chains?

If you have ever bought Australian fruit, canned seafood, rubber gloves or landscaped your garden with sandstone, there is a considerable chance you are a consumer of goods produced with modern slavery. In this talk, Associate Professor Shelley Marshall asks if Australia is doing all it can to stamp out human rights breaches in our business operations and supply chains. She examines how Australia could be a better global citizen in this regard, and what Rotary members can be doing.

While Australia’s economy is not the most powerful in the world, some of our companies are heavy hitters. They can bring prosperity and great benefits to the communities they operate in and source from, but also effect considerable damage in the form of environmental and human rights breaches.

 The Australian Government’s most significant legal step to change business conduct is the Australian Modern Slavery Act which came into power in late 2018. The aim of this important legislation is to address one aspect of the responsibility of Australian business for human rights: unfree labour. When workers are indentured and bonded, when they are forced to work, and when they are trafficked or smuggled from one place to another to conduct work, they are known as modern day slaves.

Shelley will bring stories to you from her research across Asia with the most vulnerable and exploited workers, examining if Australia’s approach is helping them. In 2012, for example, Shelley’s research team travelled to the dry and rocky state of Rajasthan to observe and interview bonded and child workers who toil in open cut quarries to provide sandstone to floors and gardens around the world. She will assess the likely benefits of the Modern Slavery Act for these modern-day slaves, and what else we can be doing as a global citizens.

Associate Professor Shelley Marshall is an internationally respected expert on labour rights and corporate accountability. She is the Director of the RMIT University Business and Human Rights Centre, an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow and an RMIT Vice Chancellor’s Senior Research Fellow. She has advised and published on corporate accountability and business and human rights for 25 years, with a focus on the labour conditions of vulnerable workers and modern slavery.

Shelley left legal practice in 2001 to join the team setting up Ethical Clothing Australia. Her research has informed labour law reform in several countries and the policies of the International Labour Organisation. For example, over 2018-19 she made frequent trips to Thailand to advise the Thai Ministry of Labour on how to enforce labour laws for home-based workers. Shelley was a co-founder of the Australian Corporate Accountability Network, which has over 100 civil society and academic members from across Australia, and is on its Steering Committee. Her most recent book is Living Wage published by Oxford University Press in 2019.

Shelley frequently appears in the media to comment on the conditions of vulnerable workers and what can be done about it. A selection of her media commentary can be found at her website: www.shelleymarshall.net