Australia exposed to modern slave labour imports and many businesses ‘ignoring the facts’, commissioner warns
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The scale of Australia’s trade with blacklisted companies, revealed in Guardian investigation, prompts anger across the Uyghur community. Australia’s new anti-slavery commissioner has called on the government to urgently address the “inadequacy” of its forced labour laws after revelations that it had allowed thousands of imports from Chinese companies blacklisted for their alleged links to Uyghur workers.
Guardian Australia revealed on Monday that Australia had received thousands of imports from Chinese companies blacklisted by the United States over alleged links to Uyghur forced labour. Details gleaned from trade records, obtained by the Guardian via freedom of information laws, showed eight US-blacklisted companies were named as suppliers on 3,347 declarations made by Australian importers.
It is the first time the scale of Australia’s trade with blacklisted companies has been revealed and it has prompted anger among the country’s Uyghur community, whose relatives have been detained in the Chinese Communist party’s crackdown on the ethnic minority in Xinjiang.
The former federal Labor minister Chris Evans started his term as the country’s inaugural anti-slavery commissioner last month. Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news email. He told the Guardian the revelations demonstrate “the inadequacy of Australia’s current approach to addressing modern slavery risks in supply chains”.
