Australia's growing reliance on temporary migrant labour has fuelled a booming labour hire industry, with contractors sitting between growers and workers, often recruiting, transporting and housing them.
While some operate legally, others prey on vulnerable migrant workers, paying them cash, well below the minimum wage.
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The Modern Slavery Act, introduced in 2018, requires companies with annual revenue above $100 million to file a report each year, identifying the modern slavery risks in their operations and supply chains and what they're doing to address them.
It was designed to encourage transparency and improve corporate behaviour.
Four Corners used data analysis tools to analyse hundreds of annual modern slavery statements from 50 food companies between 2020 and 2025.
One in four contained sections that were more than 80 per cent identical to previous reports.
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Former Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chairman Allan Fels has dedicated a lot of time to the plight of migrant workers. […]
He describes the Modern Slavery Act as a symbolic and tokenistic law. "It's the sort of law you pass when you want to look as if you're concerned about something, but you don't intend anything to happen," he says.
An independent review of the Modern Slavery Act handed to the federal government in 2023 concluded Australia's framework should be strengthened.
"The report spells out what's obvious to regulators like me — that the law was never intended to be associated with any real action. It was just a law you put on the books as a sign of concern, but with no intent to take serious action," he says.