Locke Keith: Customs and Excise (Prohibition of Imports Made by Slave Labour) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Locke Keith: Customs and Excise (Prohibition of Imports Made by Slave Labour) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:656;Page:5292] 
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party strongly supports this bill. We are pleased with the response of both Labour and National on this issue. As Maryan Street said the Green Party presented a minority report when the petition by Geoff White and 17000 others came before the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee. As she said further discussions in the Labour Party have brought Labour and the Greens together in promoting such legislation. 
I was pleased with Tim Groser’s phrase “the conversation continues.” I hope the conversation continues within National and hopefully at some point we will have consensus in this House on proceeding with such legislation. The big objection of National is that it will be difficult there will be disputes and some countries might disagree. Surely that is the way progress happens. 
Hon Steve Chadwick 
: We can provide leadership. 
KEITH LOCKE 
: We can provide leadership. In some ways there is a bit of a movement from National whereby it is starting to talk about guidelines of a voluntary nature. But why not go beyond that to the Belgian system which has a law that provides a social labelling system for companies that want to sell products that are not made by slave labour? National could at least move forward to that kind of system. 
The House has already shown the importance of community action in relation to legislation because today we referred a biofuels bill to the select committee. There will be disputes over what are sustainable biofuels and that question will carry over into community discussions. For example there has been a debate over Cadbury’s using palm oil in its chocolates. That whole discussion has forced companies to think more ethically and in the case of this bill remove slave labour products from their manufacturing distribution system. To address Tim Groser’s point when there are a whole lot of components in a product it will force the final producer and retailer of that product to take out the bits that are produced by slave labour if they want to sell the product. 
It is not just the implementation of a law; it is also the discussion in the community which as the House recognises is against slavery and is prepared to discriminate against any products that embody slave labour. That is exactly what has happened with the existing international legislation be it the Belgian legislation on social labelling or the US legislation where the two Acts—the US Alien Tort Claims Act and the US Tariff Act 1930—are taken together. Three non-governmental organisations including Global Exchange actually have taken a case against Nestlé under that US Alien Tort Claims Act. Trade Aid in its submission said that it wants to see the right to private prosecutions under this legislation. That should be included because it is the pressure of the non-governmental organisations under the laws—if we pass them—that will be effective. 
In terms of what Tim Groser said about the difficulty of tracing back to see whether products have been made by slave labour it is the assistance of non-governmental organisations through their links back to various countries—India China and African countries like the Ivory Coast—that will allow us to determine whether products have been made by slave labour. No doubt some Governments will say that is a restraint of trade. China will say it is a restraint of trade if we say slave labour and prison labour have been used to produce certain products. India might say it is a restraint of trade if we say bonded labour has been used to produce certain products. But as a country we have to fight those battles and in doing so we will have allies around the world. 
This House agrees that we do not want to be complicit in any way in products being produced by slave labour. The Green Party is very much in support of the bill.