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S4E8 - Beyond Compliance: Addressing Modern Slavery w/ Cam Bower
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Modern slavery isn’t just a global issue—it’s happening in our own communities and supply chains.
In this episode of Infrastructure Connections, Cam Bower, Managing Director of AME Investigations and former police detective, about the hidden reality of modern slavery across Australia and New Zealand.
The conversation explores how exploitation can occur in industries including construction, infrastructure, hospitality and agriculture, why migrant workers are particularly vulnerable, and the warning signs organisations should never ignore. We also examine the role of ethical procurement, supply chain due diligence and stronger accountability in preventing exploitation.
Whether you’re a business leader, procurement professional or simply interested in creating more responsible supply chains, this episode offers practical insights into recognising risk, protecting vulnerable workers and building a more ethical future.
“You shouldn’t need legislation to decide whether you’re going to be a good citizen.” – Cam Bower 👉 We'd love to hear your feedback, share your questions or comments below.
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Website: https://www.iscouncil.org/
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#podcast #infrastructure #sustainability #buildingtomorrow #modernslavery #humanrights #ethicalsupplychains
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Transcript
Understanding Modern Slavery
00:00:00
Speaker
We bring our and all our communities down when we're allowing it to happen because we're looking for the cheap rent.
00:00:08
Speaker
Are you willing to accept modern slavery to get the lowest price? Because right now, chances are, you are. And though you may not see it, modern slavery is happening all around you, right now, today.
00:00:21
Speaker
So the next question then is, what are you willing to do to clean up our supply chains? And I don't mean those distant manufacturers overseas. I mean your neighbors, the restaurant down the street, the infrastructure contract you just signed.
00:00:36
Speaker
To find out more about how close to home this is, we spoke with Cam Bauer. Cam is the Managing Director of AIM Investigations and a trustee of the Migrant Exploitation Relief Foundation.
00:00:48
Speaker
He previously served as a senior investigator at New Zealand Immigration and a police detective with the New Zealand Police. His background highlighted the risk to business reputations and national reputations, where supply chains are not routinely verified or audited.
Survivor Stories and Exploitation Conditions
00:01:04
Speaker
Well, hey Cam, welcome to the show. Thank you, mate. Thank you for the invite. So you've you've interviewed quite a few survivors and what was their experience like? How did they describe being in the situation?
00:01:18
Speaker
Yeah, so thousands of hours of interviews and hundreds of workers across supply chains. Infrastructure, for instance, they're generally around your medium-sized companies um or contractor companies, installation companies, groundworks, and been in supply chains for for a long time, five plus years.
00:01:41
Speaker
And the severe exploitation occurs where people
00:01:46
Speaker
Their hours of work are extremely long. They're working across multiple industries just to get by. Their debt bondage is constantly um being renewed at the end of every month as soon as they're paying back some money.
00:01:59
Speaker
They're working on site and instead of working wherever the person who they're working for wants them to work next. They might be working 18, 19 hour days.
00:02:11
Speaker
um They're getting paid when it works out in some of the worst cases, $3 hour. They're living in terrible, terrible conditions such as and not that long ago, we so found five that had made their own, that had come forward to us and had made their own types of accommodation. one they turned a chicken coop into ah a bedroom at the back of a house in central Auckland.
00:02:39
Speaker
He was staying beside a guy who built his own shelter out of plywood and other bits that he had taken from the Bill construction site. And then ah um another one of the guys was bunking with his friends in a caravan that had no doors, no windows, no nothing, and they were just parked up on on a property that had been rented by the company.
00:03:00
Speaker
In the most severe cases we've had in infrastructure, the employer's come up with his own magical...
Migrant Challenges and Cam Bauer's Journey
00:03:08
Speaker
formula that's increased the debt bondage monthly as to how they figure someone should be paying for their job and I understand in most cases it's it's someone they know, or that could be a relative or cousin or someone that knows their family back home, for example.
00:03:25
Speaker
Yeah. Sometimes it could, it's generally a village ah connection. um So someone that's grown up in that same village as them or the same area that they've been involved in where we've dealt with people that are brother-in-laws, cousins, parents,
00:03:44
Speaker
whatever it might be, good family, friends, right through to people they don't know and they've just recruited from their village or other areas or word of mouth through friends that have come here. Is this largely a migrant problem or is it also a local problem?
00:03:59
Speaker
No, it's generally a migrant problem um in ah and a sense of the word, I guess. um Well, tell us about your background in investigations. How did you first get interested in migrant affairs and how did that come into focus for you?
00:04:13
Speaker
and I was a detective in the police down in South Auckland. Then I went to emig immigration and investigated exploitation and trafficking of persons.
00:04:24
Speaker
ah From there, I've just started a ah sort of a medium, small business that responds to... to risk for companies. So we identify, investigate, respond to worker exploitation, respond to organised crime and supply chains, um as well as more civil matters that we give advice on. So and why our migrant and work for me is it's more of the fact that we have
00:04:58
Speaker
well They're underdogs really and no one's on their side and the laws don't help them. Our visa system doesn't help them. They're on a sort of a really a hiding to nothing. um And people don't understand it.
Supply Chain Complexity and Exploitation Risks
00:05:10
Speaker
You have internal mechanisms, compliance mechanisms that are designed to help them, but they're least visible to the systems that have been designed because people just don't get it.
00:05:22
Speaker
that don't understand what the risk factors are and um how to prevent it from happening and how a supply chain should look and what look what makes a healthy supply chain, it just isn't there. We don't think about it.
00:05:36
Speaker
I think that's absolutely true. When I first heard of modern slavery, I thought that was something that happens overseas, far away in third world countries. I didn't really think it was something that happens here at home, right next door. What are the industries that are seeing this more often than other industries?
00:05:57
Speaker
Multi-tied supply chain industries really, where there's invisibility within the supply chain. um Restaurants. Restaurants have large ear like have areas where people just don't see. You go in there and you eat meals.
00:06:12
Speaker
Construction. Construction has large sites where, just to be honest, people just don't don't look, aren't thinking about it, don't care. um Viticulture, horticulture, um infrastructure. Any... any it's It's throughout all of our industries in some way. um Wherever there's migrant um labour, then you're going to you're going to get it. and the
00:06:48
Speaker
The one thing that where a minority can control a supply chain, you're going to get that organised crime aspect and that control of people and the use of people as a commodity.
00:07:01
Speaker
and So yeah, it's across every support chain. Yeah, i know that in the construction industry, there are contractors who hire subcontractors who hire subcontractors, and you've got those layers happening in addition to being on closed sites.
00:07:17
Speaker
Is that what makes it right for modern slavery conditions? Yep, exploitation exists in that because of the cash payments and cash rotations through it, invoice writing, cash wagered schemes, the ability to launder money and made in other nefarious ways.
00:07:39
Speaker
So it sounds like these networks are pretty sophisticated. absolutely. Yep. Hence why you need to know what you're looking for and how to react to it properly.
00:07:50
Speaker
um because it isn't a little bit of under being paid under the table anymore or or cash payments. These are big business and it's big industries and it's a lot of money we're talking about.
00:08:04
Speaker
I was reading a figure that said something like 47,000 people in Australia are in modern slavery conditions. I don't know how many of there are in New Zealand. what What are those numbers that you're aware of roughly?
00:08:17
Speaker
and i don't actually know. To be honest, we're getting numbers from lawyers and consultants that really don't, they don't offer much. We also get told that we don't have much of a problem in New Zealand and Australia, whereas we're dealing with it every day.
00:08:34
Speaker
That seems like a pretty big problem to me. um It's the head in the sand um mentality that we have um is is pretty bad and how we deal with it as a business community is even worse.
Identifying and Addressing Modern Slavery
00:08:50
Speaker
So it sounds like this is largely invisible and is deliberately invisible to most people, including or people working in the same organization as these workers. um If you were a project manager or someone on site, is there anything that would give you an an indication that this is happening?
00:09:08
Speaker
How would you even know? It's a hard one because it happens in so many different forms um and I wouldn't expect someone that's just there to do their job to be able to identify something that's taken me years to understand and and identify and is still hard.
00:09:24
Speaker
The best way is when someone wants to talk to you, listening to them and making them feel like they're heard. Other than that, groups of migrants that showing up together? Are they constantly just talking and ah their own language with each other and with no one else?
00:09:43
Speaker
Are they unkept? Are they wearing the same clothes in day in, day out? Are they being dropped off or are they coming to work, ah and like I said before, as ah as a group?
00:09:55
Speaker
Are they being collected from work? Do they have adequate safety gear? Do they even understand what you're talking about in ah in a health and safety briefing? um Are they unwell and injured while they're working is is a big one because these guys don't get sick leave, they don't get annual leave, they don't get that ability.
00:10:15
Speaker
yeah they don't look very healthy or well or don't have lunch or anything like that um you know when you don't know too much about them it's probably there's a reason for that and it's probably better to ask that That makes sense if you're looking at your supply chain, especially from a health and safety standpoint. there You would expect them to meet the same health and safety standards or same well-being standards as the rest of your team. um So let's say you've seen something like that happening on your project. You have some suspicions, or at least you want to dig into a little bit further. Or even if someone has actually come out and said, hey, i'm I'm in this situation. Can I get some help? What would be the next step for a person? Who do they talk to first and what triggers maybe an investigation?
00:11:04
Speaker
Putting it, sending it up the flagpole and trying to get a response and making people aware that it is happening on the on the site they're on um because it will be against any contractual obligations that that they have with whoever the main contractor is.
00:11:21
Speaker
It will be against the values of their company. It's against the law. um So that would be my only advice is figure out where in your company this is meant to go to.
00:11:32
Speaker
And I understand um a lot of the people who are survivors of this, they have the problem that then they become prosecuted themselves for, say, visa overstays or um any possibly illegal work that they were forced to do while in the modern slavery situation. Does that complicate it that they don't have any kind of amnesty for being whistleblowers?
00:11:56
Speaker
um I think that if someone has been exploited against, they should be given the ability to start again. They get their visa and they work their their way through to to residency and citizenship as they thought they were going to get when they came here.
00:12:08
Speaker
Because a victim of a crime is a victim of a crime. and But um at at the end of the day, there is also that awful um ability for them to fall straight back into a and into exploitation because we just don't have the support in this country.
00:12:24
Speaker
So what are some of the resolutions that you've seen you're actually most proud of? Residency given to some victims that we've had. um Although we were let down on the prosecution stage, the victim actually got an apology and from the regulator um and went through the whole process and and and is now, a I still talk to him today, and but he's got residency and yeah, he enjoys life in New Zealand.
00:12:51
Speaker
um One of the ways that modern slavery continues is by people simply saying, I didn't know it existed, I wasn't aware. And that works all the way up to the CEO. what is Why is this a reputational risk and a core business risk?
00:13:05
Speaker
It is a race to the bottom when you have supply chains that are feeding off
Business Risks and AIM's Solutions
00:13:10
Speaker
the best dollar. and Yes, I didn't know it existed or the other one I hear a lot is it's better than where they come from, which is a horrific thing to hear when you're talking to large businesses or are using public money to to do large construction or exports whatever it might be.
00:13:30
Speaker
It is a reputational risk and that's probably what we look at at the moment, but there's also other crimes. There is huge fines now um for aiding companies to operate where there's breach of visa conditions.
00:13:43
Speaker
um We bring our all our communities down when we're allowing it to happen because we're looking for the cheap rate. We have health and safety risks and they go up the chain, especially when you have serious injuries or or death because someone didn't actually understand. You have insurance implications. You have and banking implications when people, when there's crime happening on your sites.
00:14:07
Speaker
The other thing you've got to consider is sites being shut down for search warrants for that criminal activity or immigration um are on site doing inquiries and, you know, business, the the continuity of the site because everyone, you have people jumping over fences and and are scared and and are running off.
00:14:30
Speaker
And that happens quite often. So tell us what what AIM does for organizations to mitigate that risk. We ah basically offer a a private policing of a supply chain. We allow your so supply chain to harden and fight back against organised crime and trafficking and migrant exploitation.
00:14:50
Speaker
ah promotes victims or promotes people that are working within the supply chain. And we basically give you assurance, an assurance model that allows for ah it allows for evolution when we're finding criminal offending, because it's going to happen and it's not going to stop.
00:15:05
Speaker
It responds, it investigates, it looks after the workers, and then it prevents from those issues occurring again within that supply chain. and that's what our compliance system is all about. What's the system that you use? I understand you've developed a ah specialized tool.
00:15:23
Speaker
Yeah, we have our own um risk and compliance hub, I guess you'd call, which allows clients to monitor their supply chain, who's in their supply chain, what their supply chain looks like. It gives you a end-to-end grievance system that properly deals with victims, asks the right questions, is in a survey, and gives you a case management system tool that then collects intelligence and actually allows you to start building a robust supply chain that you want people in and it keeps the bad actors out.
00:16:00
Speaker
And it's all cost recoverable for companies so they don't have to keep worrying about how much money they're spending on compliance. what sets us apart from any other product in the world, we have a end-to-end intelligence system that is continuously looking at the information we're getting and making you know making good decisions that benefit the client's supply chain.
00:16:23
Speaker
And it's a shared Intel system. It's one-stop certification and verification. Sounds like this might set up a conflict because ethical companies will do what's right, but then it becomes a competition issue for them if price is the only weighted factor. So and especially recently, as we're continuously going after the lowest price and the lowest price wins the tender, um that encourages bad actors, it sounds like.
00:16:47
Speaker
Certainly does. and Like I said before, a race to the bottom. yeah I guess you pay for what you get. Well, you don't put any boundaries or or hurdles in that people have to go through to to actually verify that they're a good part of your company or your supply chain, then you're going to open it up to crime. In New Zealand, it looks like it's about to pass a new law around modern slavery, but it really focuses on reporting and rooting out that modern slavery in the supply chain, increasing awareness. But critics are saying that that's just a paperwork issue.
00:17:20
Speaker
But that's kind of exactly what worked with carbon and climate action was initially reporting, getting people to recognize that it's an issue. Where do you see this legislation changing the scene in New Zealand?
00:17:32
Speaker
Look, I support anything that would change the outcomes for victims in supply chains. um Like the one thing we need to concentrate on is the people and not the businesses, because happy people in a supply chain generally make for better outcomes across any project.
Legislation and Future Challenges
00:17:48
Speaker
um Hence, things get done quicker and more money is made. Where it comes to reporting activities, basically there's no um there's nothing in there to say that the people are just are actually looking into what they're doing. There's no um accountability within those the reporting mechanism.
00:18:07
Speaker
and There might not be any credibility to what they're reporting on and it hasn't been collected independently. it's been ah You're basically reading a story that someone wants you to tell um and that's always going to be self-serving, isn't it?
00:18:22
Speaker
Australia already has modern slavery legislation and the UK has had it for quite a long time now. Is there anything that you see them doing that you wish was implemented here? No, they are they're quite behind on the times in their initial, hence why I don't really want just reporting in this country.
00:18:41
Speaker
It has taken so long for them to be able to evolve their modern slavery legislation. We have legislations here around health and safety and that you could adapt that would essentially provide that due diligence piece that you actually need to um you know, for for safety for companies and people.
00:19:04
Speaker
and This is what Australia and the UK are now moving to, is that due diligence-based evidence. um And we ah we haven't, in my opinion, haven't quite reached a decent threshold for that in the legislation that we're putting across Well, it sounds like quite a complicated process between immigration issues, finance issues, pricing issues, contractor issues. What's giving you hope that this modern slavery will be dealt with in the future?
00:19:39
Speaker
that we have learnt from how other and jurisdictions have done it and realised what the best way to do it is. i mean, I talk about AIM, um obviously I'm biased, but we have something that we've built over thousands of hours of investigations across all types of industries that is not a tip box.
00:20:00
Speaker
It is not a a product that is just a nice to have. This is an investigative and compliance product. And as far as I'm aware, it's the only one in the world that utilizes key um enforcement qualities to make a supply chain safe and and respectable around the world. Well, what's one piece of advice you'd give our audience to act on moving forward?
00:20:26
Speaker
Ask for when you need it because these are people's lives that
Collective Responsibility and Conclusion
00:20:31
Speaker
we're dealing with. And it's organized crime that we're only empowering to be able to be hidden. We're all a busy we're all a community.
00:20:38
Speaker
We all want our kids and friends' kids and whoever they are to grow up in a safer environment. So everyone needs to start doing their piece and you guys hold valuable information that if you and collect it correctly, you can absolutely play a major part in making... um our supply chain's safe, stopping and people getting hurt, trafficked, money being laundered.
00:21:04
Speaker
but And that should be everyone's responsibility. You shouldn't need legislation to dictate you're good citizen and or not. That's right.
00:21:15
Speaker
That's right. You shouldn't need legislation to decide if you're going to have a good citizenry, a good country. Absolutely. Yeah. And it should just be what everyone wants. Well, I really appreciate you being on the show. Thank you so much.
00:21:30
Speaker
No, thanks for inviting me. um It's always good to talk about this and it's quite an important topic to me.
00:21:39
Speaker
And thank you for listening to another episode of Infrastructure Connections. Please take a moment to follow us wherever you get your podcasts and we want to know your feedback. Leave a comment down below to let us know what you think.
00:21:51
Speaker
Stay tuned for the next episode of Infrastructure Connections.