Thousands of workers in Australia are slaves, says Andrew Forrest

Australia has thousands of slave workers, including in some “very large” businesses, says mining chief Andrew Forrest.

Australia has thousands of slave workers, including in some “very large” businesses, says mining chief Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest.

But most Australians are unaware of it and don’t see it, the Fortescue Metal Group chairman said in London, in an interview timed to coincide with the release of the latest Global Slavery Index.

Mr Forrest said Australia has some 4300 people enslaved, including workers in forced prostitution, and forced migrant labour in tomato farming and some food processing operations.

He said slavery existed in modern countries like Australia despite the fact that people believed it couldn’t happen here.

“You would like to think that slavery only came into a country like Australia informally through some very small businesses but there are some very large business on both the east coast and the west coast where there has been clear evidence of forced labour and abusive labour practices including incidences where migrant workers are having their passports withheld,” Mr Forrest told The Australian.

“It exists on the west coast of Australia in some farming, particularly tomato farming, and some food processing operations in the eastern states,” he said.

He said the incidences of slavery in Australia included migrant workers who passports were being withheld and who were working for very low wages for fear that they would face charges for overstaying their visas.

“That is defined as modern-day slavery,” he said.

“And it needs to be completely stamped out.

“Slavery only exists in Australia because people think it is logically incoherent — that it can’t exist here,” he said.

“But most people are not aware of it and they don’t see it.

“But when a tomato farmer is consistently producing tomatoes on a mass scale much cheaper than anyone else, they could be using forced labour,” he said.

Mr Forrest said he was not talking about backpackers and foreigners working in agriculture in Australia. Instead, he was talking about migrant workers who came to Australia to work to find themselves in slave-like conditions of low wages and fear of being prosecuted by immigration officials.

“These people come in from overseas and if they overstay their visa they can’t leave.”

Australia needed to change its attitude to these workers and not treat them as criminals for overstaying their visas but to treat their “slave masters” as the criminals, Mr Forrest said.

“We shouldn’t make them the criminals. They are the victims,” he said.

He said modern slaves in Australia also included women who had been brought into the country for forced prostitution.

The Global Slavery Index is funded by the Forrest family charity Walk Free and prepared with the help of the Gallup polling organisation,

Mr Forrest said the new survey showed there were 46 million people enslaved in the world including people in forced labour, forced marriage and prostitution.

Of the 167 countries studied, India continued to be the country with the highest incidence of slavery. There, 18.35 million people were enslaved, followed by China with 3.39 million people.

North Korea had the highest incidence of modern slavery per head with an estimated 4.37 per cent of its population enslaved in some way, followed by Uzbekistan with 3.97 per cent and Cambodia with 1.65 per cent of its population enslaved.