- Adding to small business compliance burden reduces productivity
- Reform should enable businesses to prioritise serious risks
- Stronger regulation, smarter targeting required.
Australia’s response to modern slavery should improve prevention, protect workers, deliver practical outcomes and encourage businesses to identify and address risks.
The Minerals Council of Australia in its submission to the review of the Modern Slavery Act 2018 (Cth) supports strengthening Australia’s response to modern slavery.
This response should improve prevention, protect workers, encourage businesses to identify and address risks, increase transparency and access to remedy, and deliver practical outcomes.
Australia’s minerals industry already reports against and takes action to comply with existing modern slavery legislation.
The Federal Government’s proposed approach to changing the Act – including a corporate failure-to-prevent offence – will not create any better outcomes or protect workers to a greater degree than existing laws.
In particular, the proposed failure-to-prevent offence would impose considerable compliance obligations on small businesses in the Australian minerals sector supply chain.
Mining spends around $161 billion through its supply chain with more than 60,000 suppliers, who are already under pressure from adverse tax changes and having to absorb credit card surcharges.
Adding to their reporting burden will reduce productivity and increase compliance costs, especially for smaller regional suppliers in the Pilbara, the Hunter, Queensland’s Bowen Basin and central Victoria.
Every hour spent complying with an increased government compliance burden is an hour stolen from small businesses who supply to Australia’s minerals sector and reduces their ability to grow their business, attract new customers and make a profit.
These proposals also create the risk of larger mining firms taking supply contracts away from small businesses because of increased risk and directing those contracts towards businesses with bigger compliance teams.
Risk-based due diligence would direct compliance towards actual modern slavery risk through stronger regulation with smarter targeting.
