Today in Parliament, Abigail passed a motion calling out the failure to establish a labour hire licensing scheme leaving NSW exposed to modern slavery conditions and the exploitation of migrant workers.

Abigail said:

I move: 

1. That this House notes that: 

   • Investigations conducted by ABC Four Corners, broadcast on Monday 3 August 2026, are the latest to show the prevalence of modern slavery conditions being faced by migrant workers in Australia, with Australia’s growing reliance on temporary migrant labour fuelling a booming labour hire industry, with contractors sitting between employers and workers, often recruiting, transporting and housing them,
     

   • The NSW Anti-Slavery Commissioner, James Cockayne, has repeatedly highlighted the regulatory gaps that enable unscrupulous labour hire syndicates to prey on vulnerable temporary migrant workers, including in the 2024 report ‘Be Our Guests: Addressing urgent modern slavery risks for temporary migrant workers in rural and regional New South Wales’ and ‘Building Freedom Together: NSW Anti-slavery Commissioner’s Annual Report for the Financial Year 2024–2025’. The Commissioner has made the following recommendation ‘Workers are vulnerable to dodgy labour hire companies, some of which are moving to NSW from other states because there is no licensing scheme here. The NSW Government should, by the end of 2025, announce a plan to ensure effective regulation of labour hire companies in NSW. This could involve commitment to a single national hire regulation framework, or a homegrown solution. Given the risks vulnerable workers face right now, the NSW Government should, as an interim solution, immediately introduce a mutual recognition arrangement, requiring labour hire companies to be licensed in either Victoria or Queensland,’
     

   • The Anti-Slavery Commissioner has today publicly released a further public submission titled ‘We are all pretending not to see the elephant in the room: Addressing the system of labour exploitation in Coffs Harbour and the Nambucca Valley.’ This report details, amongst other things, techniques used by syndicates to evade detection and enforcement, including the active intimidation of producers, workers and community actions that speak out too loudly against them or whom they perceive may expose them. According to the report, intimidation of workers appears endemic amongst the workforce controlled by these syndicates. In the conclusion the report states ‘Producers in the region, and those that buy berries from them, have real questions to answer about what they knew, and when, about the mistreatment of workers by the labour hire syndicates on which they rely. Have they turned a blind eye to ongoing signs of exploitation and modern slavery? Government agencies and political representatives also have questions to answer. Local stakeholders, and external actors, including the Fair Work Ombudsman and union actors, have been drawing attention to systemic labour law violations in the region for many years, yet systemic exploitation persists. Local stakeholders recount frequent complaints to local councils, police, political representatives and regulatory bodies, with no meaningful systemic response reported. There is no doubt that the absence of any system of labour hire licensing in NSW is a central contributing factor to modern slavery risks in Coffs Harbour and the Nambucca Valley. I have urged the NSW Government to introduce labour hire licensing for several years. The lack of urgency in efforts to introduce a licensing scheme suggests a failure to understand that modern slavery is happening right now, in this state – wreaking havoc in the lives of vulnerable workers,’
     

   • The McKell Institute’s July 2026 report ‘Exploitation Magnet: Why the absence of labour hire licensing in NSW is attracting unscrupulous employment practices’ found that NSW’s absence of a labour hire licensing scheme ‘gives bad faith operators an incentive to relocate from the jurisdictions that have one. That risk is sharpened by the state's exposure in its agricultural regions, with the Coffs Coast and the Riverina in particular long associated with widespread breaches of labour law.’ The report finds that as many as 63 businesses operating in NSW have had their labour hire licenses cancelled in either Victoria or Queensland, yet remain open for business in NSW,
     

   • Numerous other reports and pieces of research have made similar findings and recommendations, including ‘Off the Books: Inside Australia’s Hidden System of Migrant Worker Exploitation’ from the Migrant Justice Institute, and ‘Closing the front door: Labour hire reform in NSW’ from Giles Fryer of the Law Society of NSW,
     

   • Evidence from Queensland and Victoria shows the efficacy of labour hire licensing as a way of curtailing labour exploitation, and
     

   • Efforts to establish a national labour hire licensing scheme have not materialised, leaving NSW exposed.
     

2. That this House calls on the NSW Labor Government to:
   

   • establish a standalone labour hire licensing scheme for NSW during this current parliamentary term, and
     

   • In the interim, immediately introduce a mutual recognition arrangement, requiring labour hire companies to be licensed in either Victoria or Queensland.

Every State on our borders now licenses labour hire. Queensland has since 2018; Victoria has since 2019; South Australia extended its scheme to all industries this year; and the Australian Capital Territory [ACT] has licensed labour hire since 2021. New South Wales, the largest State economy in the country, which should be a nation leader, is instead a laggard with no scheme to regulate labour hire at all. When one jurisdiction regulates and its neighbour does not, the unregulated side becomes a magnet for bad faith actors. When dodgy operators are shut down in other States, they do not leave the market when they lose that licence; they just up sticks and relocate across the border into New South Wales. The national Anti-Slavery Commissioner has confirmed exactly that, telling a parliamentary committee that both the Victorian and Queensland authorities provided information that dodgy providers were moving into New South Wales as a direct result of this State's absence of enforcement.

The McKell Institute sought to quantify the scale of this issue. Its report entitled Exploitation Magnetexamined every cancelled labour hire licence in Queensland and Victoria and found 63 businesses—around one in 20—whose licences had been cancelled interstate yet show evidence of still operating in New South Wales. As those researchers make clear, that is almost certainly an undercount. Those figures represent real stories of real abuse and exploitation. The NSW Anti-slavery Commissioner has laid it out for this Parliament in heartbreaking detail. In the berry fields of Coffs Harbour and the Nambucca Valley, a system of exploitation proliferates.

Labour hire syndicates target the most vulnerable migrant workers: Pacific, Vietnamese and Timorese workers; international students; and the undocumented. Those syndicates run vertically integrated operations by controlling recruitment, transportation, accommodation and pay. Some workers do not know who has employed them. A WhatsApp group tells them where to go and then they receive a bank transfer with no payslip or justification for the rate of pay. Because there is no licensing system in this State, there is no barrier to criminals or people with a history of abuse simply setting up shop and preying on vulnerable workers. They do not even need to be in the country.

The commissioner detailed operations being run offshore, using encrypted apps with a departing international student's name and bank account as a disposable front. What that system produces should shame us all. Workers are overcharged for unsafe, unsanitary and overcrowded accommodation. Wage theft is so routine the commissioner calls it "rampant". It is achieved through a technique called pay‑splitting whereby one payslip is made to look legitimate while the wage behind it is quietly divided among several workers, defrauding auditors and clients alike. Passports are withheld. Mobility is restricted. Workers are told that they need permission to leave their lodgings. The commissioner has verified accounts of a worker who was too intimidated to seek medical help for a colleague with a life‑changing injury; syndicate members discharging firearms in workers' presence; recurring sexual harassment; and one site possibly operating as an illegal brothel involving forced labour. Around all of it is a wall of silence.

Producers who cooperate with authorities are threatened with being blackballed—cut off from the labour they need during a harvest. This is perhaps the most damning line in the whole submission. An informant told the commissioner, "We are all pretending not to see the elephant in the room. We all know there is a system of labour exploitation. But we are too scared to name it. And government agencies just can't see what is right in front of them." Workers are being failed by our lack of a licensing scheme. Communities are being failed and intimidated. There is no justification for delay. Victoria's Labour Hire Authority is funded entirely by the licence fees it charges the businesses it regulates. It runs a surplus. The sector pays for its own oversight. The only real cost to the budget is the initial set-up. After that the scheme carries itself, so there is no excuse.

We have been waiting for a national scheme, but it keeps failing to materialise. A national model was agreed in principle by ministers in December 2023. More than two years on and there is no enacted law, no operating regulator and no commencement date. Three different Commonwealth Ministers have held the portfolio. Negotiations for a nationally harmonised scheme broke down after the Queensland, Tasmanian and Northern Territory governments declined to participate further in October 2025. That was more than nine months ago. That is nine months in which the New South Wales Government could have progressed a scheme. Meanwhile, our workers remain exposed. What we know is that the people who have a say in shaping the national scheme, if it were to materialise, will be those with their own schemes.

By establishing a New South Wales scheme now, we will strengthen our hand in the national negotiations. The latest episode of Four Corners was a damning indictment on the state of play that the New South Wales Labor Government is presiding over—permitting worker exploitation of the most outrageous kind. For years the commissioner has urged the Government to act. He says the lack of urgency suggests a failure to understand that modern slavery is happening now. It is wreaking havoc in the lives of vulnerable workers. The case for waiting has run out. This Government has left its workers, and the honest businesses that compete against those exploiting the workers, without anyone to defend them. The simplest thing we can do is provide a scheme.

Motion agreed to.

Read the full debate in Hansard here.

5 August 2026