Modern slavery: Will New Zealand legislate the model Australia just outgrew?
By Sarah Holden, Founder and Director Oxygen Consulting
Published July 2026
The Australian Government recently announced it would strengthen its modern slavery laws. The Attorney-General, Michelle Rowland, set out three changes: a new offence for large companies that fail to prevent modern slavery in their supply chains, civil penalties for companies that ignore their existing reporting obligations, and more practical guidance for business. The Government also signalled it will consult on remedies for the people modern slavery actually harms.
For anyone watching the trans-Tasman regulatory picture, the timing is worth pausing on. New Zealand's own Modern Slavery Bill is before the Education and Workforce Select Committee now, and it's moving quickly, with the aim to pass it before the November 2026 election. That bill is built on the model Australia has just decided isn't working.
What Australia changed
Australia's Modern Slavery Act has been in force since 2018. Like the UK's, it runs on transparency - companies above a revenue threshold publish a statement each year describing what they're doing about modern slavery risk. The theory is that disclosure creates market and reputational pressure, and pressure drives action.
The problem is that it hasn't. A 2023 independent review found the Act had not yet caused meaningful change for the people it was meant to protect. Reporting turned out to be easy to satisfy on paper and easy to treat as a box-ticking exercise, and there were no penalties for companies that simply didn't bother.
Australia's response moves in two directions at once. First, it's adding teeth to the existing reporting regime through civil penalties. Second, and this is the significant part, it's introducing a positive duty - large companies will have to take reasonable steps to prevent modern slavery in their supply chains, or face an offence if they don't. Companies that can show they took reasonable steps have a defence. It's the same ‘failure to prevent’ structure Australia already uses for foreign bribery.
There's a trade dimension too. The US has reportedly threatened a 12.5% tariff on Australian exports over the strength of its modern slavery response. Whatever one makes of that, it's a signal that supply chain integrity is becoming a question of market access, not just ethics.
What New Zealand's bill does
New Zealand's Modern Slavery Bill - a cross-party member's bill sponsored by Camilla Belich and Greg Fleming - would require entities with consolidated revenue over $100 million to publish an annual modern slavery statement and lodge it on a public register. Directors can be personally liable. Failing to report, or reporting falsely, can attract a fine of up to $200,000 or a pecuniary penalty of up to $600,000. The Crown would also be barred from paying money to entities convicted under the Act.
On enforcement, this puts the New Zealand bill ahead of Australia's current law. The penalties and the procurement bar have force behind them, and they're the enforcement mechanisms Australia is only now introducing.
But look closely at what New Zealand offences attach to. They punish failing to report, not failing to prevent. A company could publish a detailed, well-written statement describing very little actual effort and stay fully compliant. The bill encourages due diligence, and it defines due diligence well, but it doesn't require it. The obligation is to describe your actions, not to take them.
That's the same transparency model Australia has just concluded doesn't move the needle on its own.
Where this leaves New Zealand business
New Zealand has an advantage Australia didn't - hindsight. The 2023 Australian review is on the record, and the direction of travel internationally is clear. The EU's due diligence rules, a growing set of national laws, and now Australia's positive duty all point the same way, from ‘tell us what you're doing’ toward ‘you must take reasonable steps.’ The standard is shifting from disclosing risk to acting on it.
There's an irony in the sequencing. New Zealand is on track to enact its reporting-only law late this year, while Australia is still consulting on its positive duty. So, New Zealand may lock in the older model just as its closest comparator moves beyond it. With submissions already closed and the timeline built around beating the election, the realistic route for New Zealand to catch up isn't this bill, it's the review the Act builds in, with a first review due within three years of commencement. That review is years off, well after the market has moved.
For New Zealand businesses, three things follow:
If you operate on both sides of the Tasman, the higher standard will reach you regardless of what New Zealand legislates. An Australian parent, subsidiary or major customer subject to a positive duty will push that expectation down its supply chain, and into New Zealand.
If you sit below the reporting threshold, you won't be exempt in practice. Larger reporting entities and offshore customers will ask you for evidence, contract terms and assurances. The threshold defines who reports; it doesn't define who gets asked.
And if you treat this as a compliance exercise - a statement to publish rather than a risk to manage - you're building for the model regulators are already moving away from.
What I'd do now
My advice to clients is the same whether or not New Zealand eventually follows Australia toward a positive duty: invest in real supply chain due diligence rather than a well-drafted statement.
That means knowing your supply chain, identifying where the real risk sits, having a way to act on what you find, and being able to show your work. The reporting requirements will ask you to describe exactly this. Do the work first, and the statement writes itself. Do it the other way around, and you have a disclosure problem waiting to happen.
On the current path the New Zealand Modern Slavery Act would come into force in 2027, with the first statements likely due around 2028. That is less runway than it looks. Building supply chain visibility and a working due diligence process takes time, and the expectations flowing down from Australian-linked customers and parents will land well before your first New Zealand statement is due.
New Zealand's bill is a member's bill, and its passage still depends on clearing the House before the election. But it's on track, and the commercial reality it responds to doesn't depend on the exact final wording. The businesses that come out of this well will be the ones already managing modern slavery as a supply chain risk, before any statement is due.