Knowing Your Supply Chain
Three ACRATH members attended the Implementing Australia’s Modern Slavery Act: Knowing Your Supply Chain Conference held in Sydney 26-27th June 2019. Australia’s Modern Slavery Act requires businesses with an income threshold in excess of $100 million are required to report on incidents of slavery in their supply chain and the measures they are undertaking to overcome them. The conference offered really carefully constructed expert panels, mostly drawn from large companies, thoughtfully moving the 450 attendees through the process of acknowledging the issues to writing the report to the federal government. So many industry leaders encouraged collaboration as the only possible way forward. A whole-of-conference call was for companies to avoid tick-box compliance in favour of an honest look to find and name the slavery we know is there and so impact over compliance is the preferred approach.
Over the last two years ACRATH has been working on a project in collaboration with St Vincent’s Health Australia. We therefore appreciated experiencing this conference with a member of the ACRATH/SVHA Project Working Party.
ACRATH is grateful to the staff from the Department of Home Affairs, Business Engagement Unit, for providing such an excellent conference that engaged representatives from Australian and International Governments, Civil Society and Businesses.