INTHEBLACK February 2024 - Magazine - Page 30
F E AT U R E
AAP Image/Flavio Brancaleone
Right: Moe Turaga was
enslaved on a fruit farm in
Australia at age 17, having
left Fiji to earn a living
for his family. He was not
paid for his work, and his
passport was confiscated.
Turaga is now a modern
slavery survival expert and
an advisory panel member
for the Office of the NSW
Anti-slavery Commissioner.
“Scrutinise the numbers and follow your instincts if
it doesn’t seem right — nine times out of 10, there will
be something there. An accountant has a
responsibility to find out the story behind the
numbers, and it may indicate underpayment or
workers not being treated well.”
PATRICK VILJOEN CPA, CPA AUSTRALIA
READ
an INTHEBLACK
article on Australia’s
responses to modern
slavery
LISTEN
to a With Interest
podcast on ESG
issues, including
modern slavery
30 INTHEBLACK February 2024
identify what you’ve done to mitigate those
risks,” she says.
She argues that taking a broad approach
to identify how well the workers are likely
to be treated, both within our own
organisations and within supply chains, is
a good starting point.
“Identifying modern slavery is more
accessible to people when you think about it
as being a spectrum – from the worst cases of
child labour, for example, to red flags about
workers who are not being well treated.
“If you can identify that, then you can ask
further questions that may then uncover
incidents of modern slavery – and there are
a whole lot of datasets that people can use to
identify where the risks lie that are specific to
their industry,” McGaughey says.
Accountants have a professional responsibility
to ask the hard questions, Viljoen says.
“Scrutinise the numbers and follow your
instincts if it doesn’t seem right – nine times
out of 10, there will be something there. An
accountant has a responsibility to find out the
story behind the numbers, and it may indicate
underpayment or workers not being treated
well,” he adds.
For example, an accountant may have
a client in the hospitality business. If the
prices paid to a produce supplier seem
excessively low, a conversation should be
had around modern slavery issues. The
accountant could ask the client what they
know about working conditions and whether
they have conducted a site visit or asked
the supplier to complete a survey about
the baseline treatment of its workers.
ACT, DON’T REACT
If there are red flags indicating modern
slavery in a business’s operation, the next
step is to work with the business owner to
address it. Terminating a contract is not
the recommended first course of action,
McGaughey says.
“Understandably, people don’t want to
be associated with anything that looks like
modern slavery, but the challenge with
that is it leaves those people in exactly the
same situation, and the supplier takes no
responsibility for what has happened.
“Instead, it is better to engage with the
supplier to raise the concerns to see if they
are open to cooperation,” she says.
If they are not cooperative, the issue should
be reported to authorities, such as the AFP,
who will then decide whether further action
needs to be taken.
“Essentially, if it looks too good to be true,
it probably is. One of the key drivers for
exploitation and modern slavery is economics.
“If an accountant can see that the number
of workers or the price of a product doesn’t
match up with the market rate, then there is
a problem, and they should do something
about it,” says McGaughey.
