Goods linked to modern slavery

Consumers are unwittingly spending more than $1700 a year on products linked to child labour or modern slavery.

The sobering statistic comes from new research by World Vision, which found more than $3 billion worth of ‘‘risky goods’’ are imported to New Zealand every year.

Among the most commonly imported products are clothes, toys, bananas, furniture and coffee. ‘‘They’re in our wardrobes, in our toyboxes, in our kitchens,’’ World Vision director Grant Bayldon said.

While the label ‘‘risky’’ doesn’t mean all these goods were definitely produced through forced labour, there’s a high probability they were.

It’s difficult for people to avoid buying these products because New Zealand businesses aren’t required to check their supply chains or publish any findings, the research said.

It’s what Bayldon calls a ‘‘don’t ask, don’t tell’’ approach. It means ‘‘it’s currently almost impossible for Kiwis to have confidence that what we buy and use is slavery-free’’, he said.

The links between forced or child labour and goods like clothes, shoes and electronics are fairly well known. But this research shines a light on the scale of the problem, for what Bayldon thinks is the first time.

Clothes made up 40 per cent of the risky goods imported to New Zealand in 2019: $1.3b worth.

Of the 142 million risky garments imported, more than two-thirds – 95 million garments – came from China, where they are potentially implicated in the forced labour of Uyghur people.

The next two biggest offenders were electronics and footwear. In 2019, more than 20 million pairs of risky shoes were imported – four for every person in New Zealand.

In the same year, more than 500,000 toys were imported from China, potentially made by child or forced labourers. Risky toys included electric trains, jigsaw puzzles, musical instruments, scooters and stuffed animals.

The bananas you pick up with your weekly grocery shop could be the fruit of child labour. Eighty per cent of bananas sold in New Zealand come from Ecuador, where the industry uses child labour.

The figures in the report come from publicly available data on imports, matched against the United States Government’s list of goods produced by child or forced labour. A product will appear on that list if there’s evidence it’s produced by child or forced labour, coming from a country where these

Dozens of household goods have been linked to the forced labour of Uyghur people in China. practices are known to happen.

The list used only goes as far as breaking things down by category, which is why specific brands or manufacturers aren’t included in the report.

‘‘The fact that it’s very difficult to get information on specific products, coming from specific suppliers into New Zealand, is really the reason that we need a modern slavery act [of Parliament],’’ Bayldon said.

World Vision is calling on the Government to urgently introduce such legislation, which would require businesses to understand

the risks of modern slavery in their purchasing, to report on those risks and take action to address them.

In March, some of the country’s largest retailers signed an open letter calling on the Government to act, and Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Michael Wood said policy work had started since then.

An action plan to tackle modern slavery was released in March, which ‘‘includes exploring’’ legislation, he said.

‘‘Since then, policy work has started and I’ve been speaking to officials and international experts to understand how effective a law would be in practice here in New Zealand.’’

An announcement on the next steps was due in the coming months, he said.