The Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment called for submissions on their consultation on modern slavery and worker exploitation.

We advocate in the public interest on policy areas impacting our profession and the wider business community. The profession has a role to play in supporting businesses improve transparency over their supply chains. We believe respecting and protecting human rights enables individuals, societies and businesses to flourish. We are supportive of the underlying policy intent of the Consultation.

CA ANZ is a reporting entity in Australia under the Modern Slavery Act 2018 (Cth) and we operate in six other jurisdictions including the United Kingdom and New Zealand. We prepare modern slavery statements in compliance with the Modern Slavery Act 2018 (Cth) and the Modern Slavery Act 2015 (UK). These statements set out how we manage and minimise the risk of modern slavery in our business and supply chains. In minimising this risk, our areas of focus are prioritising supplier engagement, streamlining policies, procedures and processes, building supplier capacity and creating shared value. Our modern slavery statements reflect our commitment to promoting responsible business and upholding high ethical standards in all aspects of our working process.

We acknowledge that this Consultation represents just one of many steps towards developing New Zealand’s modern slavery and worker exploitation legislative regime. With this in mind, our submission sets out some specific comments regarding the proposals in the Consultation.