In 2018 the Commonwealth Government introduced the Modern Slavery Act requiring all businesses operating in Australia, with an annual consolidated revenue of more than $100 million, to annually report on the risks of modern slavery in their operation and supply chains, and to put actions in place to address those risks.
This week Aspect released its Modern Slavery Statement. Aspect is already committed to acting ethically and operating responsibly and complies with labour rights standards, legislation and statutory requirements in Australia, however, this statement commits us to actively identifying, reducing and reporting on the risk of modern slavery in our business operations and supply chains on an annual basis. By better understanding our own social impact, we take a positive and important step towards eliminating modern slavery in all its various forms.
Modern Slavery is defined as the exploitation of people for personal or commercial gain and it comes in many different forms. The most common forms are:
- Human trafficking
- Slavery
- Servitude
- Forced marriage
- Forced labour
- Debt bondage
- Deceptive recruitment for labour or services; and
- The worst forms of child labour (meaning situations where children are subjected to slavery or similar practices, or engaged in hazardous work)
40 million people are estimated to be trapped in modern slavery around the world, with more than 1 in 4 suspected to be children and more than 3 quarters of them are women or girls. The purpose of the Modern Slavery Act is to establish a requirement for businesses in Australia to better understand and address the risk of knowingly or unknowingly contributing to modern slavery via their day to day operations or supply chains.
Aspect’s Modern Slavery statement for 2020 outlines the actions taken over the past 12 months to identify modern slavery risks and what actions we will be taking now and into the future to ensure that we are doing all we can to identify prevent modern slavery in our business.
The full statement can be viewed here.
