According to the Global Slavery Index, about 15,000 people in Australia were living in “illegal conditions of modern slavery” in 2016. In the 2015/16 financial year, 169 alleged human trafficking and slavery offences were referred to the Australian Federal Police (AFP), including alleged cases of forced marriage, sexual exploitation and forced labour. In 2017, the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions had prosecuted 19 people for slavery-related crimes since 2004, and several more prosecutions were pending. [84] Modern neoliberal globalization flows directly from these post-emancipation racialized transformations. This is obscured by the celebration of the abolition of British slavery in 1833, which had the effect of objectifying the forced/free dyad as it is sometimes called. The enduring cultural power of the images and arguments of the abolitionist movement—such as the stereotyped chained and whipped black slave, the brutal perpetrators, and the abolitionist hero—continues to obscure this more complex history and its legacies. This is the critique of the “new abolitionists” who are now fighting against a series of exploitative practices grouped under the umbrella term “modern slavery”. Popular narratives about transatlantic slavery and its historical stereotypes have mobilized work against exploitation, but have also obscured important differences from the past and may therefore hinder attempts to prevent exploitation. In Queensland, the Aboriginal Opium Protection and Restriction Act 1897 and successive laws have allowed the Aboriginal Protector to withhold wages from funds that have never been paid. [18] From 1897, no one was allowed to employ Indigenous workers in this state without the permission of a protector. The protector, usually a police officer or government official, had full control of the contract with the employer.
Fraud was common, with protectors working with employers, primarily ranchers, to underpay or not pay Indigenous workers. Those who refused to work were detained, threatened with deportation or denied access to food. Aboriginal institutions were used as depots for cheap labour, where a 20 per cent tax was levied on prisoners` already meagre salaries, while the rest was held in a ministry escrow account. The money in this account was subject to additional taxes, bureaucratic corruption and was also used for government spending. The interest also went to the government, not to the employee. Indigenous workers had to obtain permission from the Ombudsperson to make withdrawals, and questions about their money were often resolved by having them imprisoned or otherwise punished. This system was called “economic slavery” and existed in the same form in the state until the mid-1970s. [19] [17] [20] Australia was subject to the Slave Trade Act of 1807 and the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, which abolished slavery in the British Empire. As early as the 1860s, anti-slavery activists began invoking “charges of servitude and slavery” to describe Aboriginal working conditions in northern Australia. The coalition of human rights groups and academics is calling on the government to strengthen anti-slavery legislation. With the cessation of transportation of convicts to New South Wales in the late 1830s, settlers needed cheap replacement labour.
In 1837, an immigration committee identified the possibility of importing coolie workers from India and China as a solution. John Mackay, owner of indigo plantations in Bengal and a distillery in Sydney, arranged for the importation of 42 coolies from India, who arrived aboard the Peter Proctor on 24 December 1837. It was the first major transport of coolie labour to Australia and Mackay hired most of them as shepherds to work in John Lord`s underground estate north of Dungog. [2] The contracts included a contract period of 5 or 6 years with food, clothing, payment and shelter, but many fled because these conditions were not met. Coolies were also victims of attacks, slavery and kidnappings. [3] On 1 January 2019, Australia enacted the Modern Slavery Act (Cth) 2018. Companies of a certain size must publish an annual “Modern Slavery Statement” outlining the steps they have taken to assess and address the risks of modern slavery. Prior to this Act, Australia had no legislation protecting against slavery.
When slavery was banned in 1901, unions banned Pacific Islanders from working on farms, and many were simply deported.