Tell me the minimum I need to do (Part 1)
Australia is proposing to hold businesses criminally accountable for failing to prevent modern slavery. Here are my thoughts, in 3 parts.
Part 1: what’s been proposed.
Part 2: whether it’s enough.
Part 3: what businesses are actually expected to do.
Business are getting nervous
Since the announcement that the Government intends to introduce a failure to prevent modern slavery offence, I am hearing the same concern.
The worry is that businesses will get nervous and stop looking. They will narrow risk assessments and treat transparency as a liability. And instead revert to some variant of this question, “tell me the minimum I need to do to be legally compliant”.
There is a lot going on in the world. I know that feeling of overwhelm, the instinct is somewhat understandable. But it is classic short-term thinking. And if this mindset takes hold in businesses, there is a risk this reform will do the opposite of what it is meant to do.
So here’s my attempt to answer the question, but spoiler - the answer won’t be about an annual statement or compliance checklist.
As let us not forget. The minimum has always been respecting the internationally recognised human rights of people, and treating them with dignity, respect and equality.
What the Government has proposed and what remains unknown
In July 2026 the Government announced an intention to introduce a criminal offence for companies with annual consolidated revenue above $100 million that fail to prevent modern slavery in their supply chains. It foreshadowed a defence for companies that can demonstrate they took reasonable steps to prevent it, alongside penalties for non-compliance with existing reporting obligations under the Modern Slavery Act 2018 (Cth).
At this stage, this is a policy announcement. The Government has confirmed it intends to consult further on the design of the offence and on enforcement options. The timing of that consultation has not been announced and there is no draft bill yet.
But this policy direction didn’t come out of nowhere.
Australia already has a failure to prevent offence on the statute book, being the corporate failure to prevent foreign bribery offence with a defence where the company can prove it had adequate procedures in place.
A civil duty to prevent modern slavery was advocated for by the Human Rights Law Centre as part of the McMillan review.
UK experts at BICCL published a report on how the Bribery Act model could be transposed into a “failure to prevent human rights harm” model.
The UK Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner published a model bill in 2025 proposing liability for failing to prevent serious human rights harms unless the organisation can prove it took reasonable measures to prevent them (the UK Government has not indicated support for it yet, despite a flurry of recent Westminster debates).
Many commentators expect that the Australian modern slavery offence will very likely be built around similar frameworks, particularly the bribery framework.
The sky did not fall after the bribery frameworks in UK and Australia were introduced. We can walk a similar path with modern slavery.
We did not know because we did not look
Let’s go a little deeper on the bribery model. A company can be prosecuted even where it did not know about the bribery and did not authorise it. The conduct happening is the trigger, not the company’s awareness of it. But it is a defence if a company can prove it had adequate procedures designed to prevent that conduct. These procedures must be proportionate, risk-based systems that are implemented, monitored and improved over time.
And this is the central logic and beauty of a failure-to-prevent model. A company’s lack of knowledge is not automatically protective, particularly where that lack of knowledge reflects a failure to identify and manage foreseeable risk.
It is important to acknowledge that bribery risk mostly sits with people you employ or engage directly, and you can see them. Yet, modern slavery risk sits with people not always, but often several tiers away. This is where we need experts to help translate this architecture to be fit for purpose for the nature of the crime of modern slavery.
Either way “we did not know because we did not look” is not an effective risk management strategy.
So that’s what’s on the table. Read Part 2 to consider whether this proposal is good enough.