Greg Fleming: National MP on the cross party support for the Modern Slavery Bill

National and Labour are joining forces in support of legislation to tackle modern slavery. 

Their bipartisan backing means the Bill can be introduced in Parliament, bypassing the ballot system. 

The proposed law would require large companies to report their measures to avoid slavery conditions in supply chains, and fine those not complying or acting to mislead. 

National's Greg Fleming told Mike Hosking they’ve taken learnings from overseas, particularly Australia, and will be going with template forms and the like to ensure this does add value, rather than just cost.  

He says a lot of responsible businesses are already looking into the working conditions in their supply lines, so this is just aimed at the recalcitrants. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
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Speaker 2 (00:16):
Proving we can all agree on something. I guess the
Nets and Labor have joined to speed up the process
of modern slavery Members Bill now the keys that's some
members bill. Essentially, it forces large businesses to report how
they identify and managed slavery risks in their supply chains.
Greg Fleming is the national impid charge of this particular
builders with us, Greg morning, good morning you in complete
alignment or is it all in the detail?

Speaker 3 (00:38):
Pretty much in alignment, but there will be a bunch
of detail threasts out at the Select committee stage, which
hopefully we'll get in too.

Speaker 2 (00:45):
Fast just to explain people but without boring them because
it's a members' bill process, no time debate, speed of bill,
et cetera. If you can get the sixty one on board,
we're in business. That's how it works, right, It's correct.

Speaker 3 (00:57):
Yeah, just basically means that we skip the biscuit tin.
It also means that we ask the Business Committee to
throw us up to the top of the order paper,
which means we should be able to heir first, reading
first Member's Day about two and a half weeks, we'll
go for a hopefully a shortened Select Committy process, and
the aimers that we'll be able to have this in
law by a sort of third quarter.

Speaker 2 (01:15):
Do you understand ax objection?

Speaker 3 (01:18):
I sure do. Yeah. Yeah. So I've been working on
this for several years, and in part of that, I've
done and of consultation with businesses that will be affected
by this, and I do hear their concerns, and I'm
certainly not a fan of regular business regulation for the
sake of regulation. So what we've done is taking a
lot of learnings from overseas experience, particularly in Australia, because

(01:39):
they've been at this for about seven or eight years
now and have had a substantive review quite recently. And
so we're going to be going with templateforms in the
light just to ensure this really does add value rather
than just cost.

Speaker 2 (01:51):
Well, see, this is the weird thing. It seems esoteric
to me. I mean, so you go to the warehouse,
how far down the chain, how many countries, how many
factories do they need to explore to convince the authorities
whoever they are, that there isn't modern slavery and the
Air five dollars ninety nine t shirt.

Speaker 3 (02:05):
Well, it's about getting businesses actually looking at it. So
a lot of responsible businesses already are in which case
this is actually going to be quite a simple process
for them. It's like any kind of frameworks in law,
it's always aimed at those the reculcitrants. And so you
just create a culture within a business where this is
actually something that they take account of when they are
setting out and renewing their supply chains.

Speaker 2 (02:26):
Who's enforcing it?

Speaker 3 (02:29):
This will sit within MB and then the commissioner role
will sit within the Human Rights Commission.

Speaker 2 (02:38):
Good on you, n Ie, talk to you, Greg Greb
Fleming Modern So it's good. It's it's got social media
band written all over it, hasn't it. You'll feel good
on a Friday night at the pub with your mate too.
Look what I did in reality does at work. I
wouldn't have thought. It stands a.

Speaker 1 (02:53):
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