Australia's Proposed Modern Slavery Reforms: From Reporting to Reasonable Steps and What This Means for Businesses
By Megan Pepper, Head of Sustainability, givvable
In July 2026, the Australian Government flagged proposed reforms that include the introduction of a new criminal offense for failing to prevent modern slavery in supply chains. The announcement itself was brief, a single-page press release, with details to follow through consultation. But the direction it signals is clear enough to start planning around now.
What's shifting
The proposal includes a new criminal offense for large companies (those with annual consolidated revenue over $100 million – the same threshold for reporting under the Modern Slavery Act) for failing to prevent modern slavery in their supply chains, with a defense available if a company can demonstrate they took “reasonable steps” to prevent it. It also proposes new civil penalties and enforcement powers for non-compliance with existing Modern Slavery Act obligations. The approach builds on the corporate liability model introduced in Australia in 2024 with the “failure to prevent” foreign bribery offense. We don't yet have details on timing, with consultation still to come.
What matters more than the detail, for now, is the shift underneath it: a move from transparency and reporting, telling stakeholders what you know, to action, demonstrating what you did. Legal commentary on the proposal has pointed to a risk-based approach as the most credible way to satisfy the reasonable steps defense, though the government itself hasn't yet confirmed what it will expect.
Australia isn't moving in isolation. The EU's Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive and Forced Labour Regulation, proposed amendments to the UK's Modern Slavery Act, Canada's Bill C-35 consultation, forced labor import bans taking shape across Asia, including Indonesia, Malaysia, Bangladesh, India, Vietnam, Taiwan and Cambodia, and US Section 301 tariff action all focus on tackling modern slavery in supply chains. For businesses, the practical consequence will be an uplift in frameworks and processes: organizations will need to formalize risk assessment, due diligence and evidencing in ways that reporting-only obligations have not yet been required.
New South Wales (NSW) already offers a preview of what that looks like in practice, and it's a useful one to get familiar with.
What does “reasonable steps” actually mean?
The federal press release doesn't define “reasonable steps.” For now, the clearest working definition in Australia sits with NSW. The NSW Anti-Slavery Commissioner, Dr James Cockayne's, Guidance on Reasonable Steps to Manage Modern Slavery Risks in Operations and Supply-Chains (GRS) has been in place since January 2024 and is built on the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. Given the Commissioner's national profile in this debate, NSW's approach is a reasonable signal of where the federal bar may ultimately land.
The GRS sets out seven steps for preventing, identifying, mitigating and remedying modern slavery:
- Commit: engage stakeholders, identify salient risks, and adopt a formal modern slavery policy and risk management plan
- Plan: identify and assess risk to inform sourcing strategy before contracts are signed
- Source: apply due diligence at the point of supplier selection and adopt a shared responsibility approach to contracting
- Manage: monitor and manage supplier performance on an ongoing basis, not as a one-off check, with supplier engagement built into that process
- Remedy: provide access to effective grievance mechanisms and take steps to remediate any harm
- Report: report transparently, with a victim-centered approach
- Improve: learn from performance and train your people
The GRS calibrates effort to risk: “heightened due diligence” applies where risk is greatest, not uniformly across every supplier. In addition, it makes it clear that it isn't a one-off exercise that is done and filed away. It's ongoing throughout the procurement process: risk identification feeds sourcing decisions, which feeds contracting, supplier engagement, management and reporting, and back again.
How givvable supports this shift
Being able to demonstrate that reasonable steps have been taken depends on knowing where risk actually sits, and increasingly, on knowing what suppliers are doing about it, not just what they say in a self-reported survey.
That's a shared responsibility, not one that can be outsourced downstream. Taking reasonable steps means working with suppliers to identify and manage risk together, which is itself built into the GRS.
givvable's data and tools map directly to the steps most organizations find hard to operationalize:
- Commit & Plan: risk-based visibility across the supply base, to focus effort where it's warranted and inform your sourcing strategy, rather than spreading it thin
- Source: due diligence data built into supplier selection, not bolted on after contracts are signed
- Manage: ongoing, evidence-based visibility into supplier performance over the life of a contract, paired with engagement that helps build supplier capability rather than simply auditing it
- Report: an evidence trail that supports reporting and a credible demonstration of reasonable steps
- Improve: insights drawn from data and reporting that feed back into better sourcing and management decisions over time
In an Australian context, this is an area compounded by geography. While over 41,000 people are estimated to be living in modern slavery in Australia (Global Slavery Index), much of the modern slavery risk in Australian supply chains sits offshore, in manufacturing and raw material supply chains across Asia, where consistent, verified supplier data has traditionally been harder to access than in domestic markets. givvable currently tracks sustainability data across more than eight million suppliers, with a supplier engagement model designed to support and incentivize suppliers rather than shift the burden to them.
Reasonable steps aren't about transferring risk to suppliers or absorbing it all internally. It's a shared, ongoing practice. The organizations that invest in genuine visibility and supplier engagement now will be the ones best placed as expectations continue to tighten.
Looking ahead
The details of Australia's reforms are still to come. But the direction of travel is clear, and NSW has already shown what good looks like in a risk-based, action-oriented world. Building or updating frameworks, policies, processes and practices now will put organizations in a stronger position to demonstrate reasonable steps, whatever form the final reforms take.
Megan Pepper is Head of Sustainability at givvable.
To find out more about how givvable can support you through Australia's Modern Slavery Reforms, get in touch.