Sam Sachdeva

Sam Sachdeva is Newsroom's Associate Editor based at Parliament and he talks to me about how it came about and what comes next. What will happen now is it will go through a select committee process. The public will have a chance to share their views and whether or not it can get passed all the way through before the election might be a little bit tough given...

We've only got a few months left, I guess, before Parliament needs to rise. But I think there is agreement from both major parties, certainly, and some others, that this is a very worthy issue and something that does need to be addressed. So they've actually managed to hammer out the basics of the bill. They are in agreement on those basic steps.

That's right. It's Kamala Bellich from Labour and Greg Fleming from National. They've been working on this for a few years now actually. I remember talking to Greg in 2024 about this and he was saying that the pair of them were trying to write up something that could get support from both their parties. It took them a while to get to that point. They announced it earlier this year but...

I think they've said, look, here are the things that we are both comfortable with, where we think it will help to reduce the risks of modern slavery in the supply chains of New Zealand businesses, and in theory they think it won't be overly onerous and it will be more of a help than a hindrance. So yeah, it's kind of nice to see that.

Can you explain to me where both of those people are coming from, Greg and Camilla? What do they have in common? Did they approach this from different angles? Yeah, look, I think it's interesting. They've sort of aligned on this issue, but probably coming at it from different worldviews. I mean, Greg Fleming, before he came into Parliament for National, was involved with a number of Christian charities, so I think sees it from a...

you know, Christian social justice point of view, whereas for Camilla Belich, you know, being part of the Labour Party, very focused on workers' rights and union rights, I think it's kind of in that space, looking after workers and making sure they aren't exploited. So I think they, you know, agree on the fact that this does need to be addressed and there is a common good for New Zealand, but it's kind of nice that they can look at it through different lenses perhaps and arrive at the same conclusion in terms of taking action.

And there's another aspect of this bill that's quite historic, isn't there? The way that it was introduced. Can you talk to us about Standing Order 288? The Rule of 61. It's quite fun, actually. Yeah, this was introduced a few years ago. So for those who don't know, MPs who are not ministers can put bills into a member's ballot, the biscuit tin, as it's called.

informally known and that is drawn every few weeks and there was a view that well actually if you get a bill that is where there's enough agreement and bipartisan support actually you shouldn't have to wait for it to be drawn out of the tin, that it should be able to automatically be put onto the order paper and dealt with in Parliament so

The agreement was that if 61 non-ministers, so normal MPs, if 61 of them supported a bill, then it should be fast-tracked into Parliament for a first reading. And there have been a few different MPs who have tried to do this and have been unsuccessful. So this is quite historic, the fact that you manage to get a large enough majority vote.

And by definition, or almost by definition, if you reach the 61, it means you've got both the government and opposition behind it, because it was hard to get to that any other way. So yeah, it was quite a milestone, and I think there's some hope that maybe this sets a precedent and we can see more MPs following and more bipartisan laws that do get moved ahead with fast.

I think you have to give them a lot of credit because I imagine for each of their parties you might not necessarily want to give your opposition a win. So for Labour, do they really want to have National's name on this and does National want to have Labour's name on it?

Look, I think they both have strengths. I think Greg Fleming is maybe more on the fringe of his party in a sense, if you look at some of his stances and views on things. But the fact that they've managed to do this work and convince their caucus, because it ultimately requires the sign-off of the caucus, so you've got to be able to get all your MPs or enough of them behind you. So I think having them doing that

That's right. So, as you say, you can't keep slaves in New Zealand, there are laws on the books, but this is more about the supply chains of New Zealand businesses, increasingly interconnected global economy. Yes, you might be making, I don't know, t-shirts or backpacks or something in New Zealand, but that relies on materials and labour from all over the world. So,

If you're working in Asia or Africa or something like that, are you doing enough due diligence to make sure that the people who are involved in that supply chain, getting things from raw materials to the finished product, that they are not being exploited and subject to substandard conditions. So the proposal or the bill will create this mandatory reporting regime for companies that earn more than $100 million a year in revenue.

and you'll need to sort of publish these annual reports and say look this is this is what we're doing to to deal with um the risk of modern slavery here are any incidents that we've picked up and so on so it's it's a transparency mechanism as much as anything else and i think the idea is that if you force businesses

to turn their mind to this and say, look, you are going to have to produce these records and we will publish them. So if you are knowingly or unknowingly enabling this, the public will know and they might, you know, act in terms of what they buy as a result. So it's putting a spotlight on it and some sunlight on the issue that I think they hope will help here.

We have started to lag a little bit behind the rest of the world in this space and that was a source of anxiety for charities like World Vision, some unions and the opposition, the Labour Party. It was the Labour government that first started working on a modern slavery law in the dying days of the Ardern government. They didn't get it across the line in time.

Yeah, Australia has a regime, the EU, I believe, does, the UK, and you mentioned the sort of the trade deals that we have. And, you know, as part of those trade agreements, we do have to report to them or share information on what we're doing in this space. And I think there was a sense that, you know, maybe we were starting to lag behind, so we needed to...

do something to catch up or, you know, risk affecting our international reputation. And, you know, there are New Zealand businesses who have made that point that actually this is important for us to be able to sell our product overseas and say, yes, we are on top of this. We are, you know, looking at modern slavery and making sure that it's not on our supply chain. So I think there was sort of business appetite for action as well as political appetite.

Yeah, so some businesses were doing it anyway, weren't they? I believe they were not opposed to this legislation. Yeah, yeah. Look, I don't know that there would be a uniform view across all of business, but certainly there were some who had written to the government and said, look, we're supportive of action in this space and fund managers and so on.