Slavery In Our Suburbs

There were almost 400 cases of modern slavery and human trafficking reported in Australia in a single year.

Not in Kabul. Not in Khartoum. But in Australia.

Between 2023 and 2024, the Australian Federal Police recorded 109 child trafficking matters, 91 forced marriages, 89 forced labour cases, 59 instances of sexual exploitation, and 21 domestic servitude cases. The AFP says those numbers are likely just the visible edge of a much larger problem. That should have triggered national outrage. Instead, it triggered a whisper. Why?

Because this crime collides with a sacred cow: multicultural policy.

Forced marriage does not arise organically from a society built on consent, equality before the law and individual liberty. It takes root where family authority overrides personal choice, where communal honour trumps individual rights. In other words, it stems from cultural practices in Muslim, African, and Indian Subcontinent nations.

Point that out, and you’ll be accused of something: racism, Islamophobia, hate speech. Take your pick.

Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act looms in the background. New federal and state hate crime expansions reinforce the message: Speak carefully or don’t speak at all. Most choose the latter.

Legacy media runs the numbers but avoids the pattern. Politicians, apart from the brave but maligned few, tiptoe around the issue. And the authorities call for “culturally appropriate responses.”

When officials describe forced marriage as a “culturally sensitive” issue requiring specialised services, they are acknowledging what they dare not say plainly: this practice is embedded in particular cultural traditions that arrived here through migration.

The Australian Government is explicit that a forced marriage is modern slavery. It may occur in Australia or overseas. It can involve religious, cultural or civil ceremonies. It carries penalties of up to seven years’ imprisonment for coercing an adult. Laws were strengthened in 2013 and expanded in 2024 to broaden the definition of coercion and improve protections for victims.

If you're wondering why the laws have continued to escalate on this front, consider this: According to the Australian Institute of Criminology, forced marriage has been one of the fastest-growing slavery-related offences detected in Australia over the past decade. The majority of identified victims are young females, many under 18.

These are not abstract statistics. They are young girls in your suburb.

And yet public discussion tiptoes around the obvious policy question: if large-scale migration from regions where forced marriage remains culturally entrenched continues without adequate integration safeguards, should we be surprised when the practice appears here?

This is not an indictment of all migrants. But immigration policy must be judged by outcomes. Scale matters. Cultural compatibility matters.

The Department of Home Affairs publishes forced marriage guidance material aimed primarily at newly arrived communities for a reason. It is an act of administrative realism. We do not distribute such warnings to long-established Anglo-Australian community groups because the practice is not rooted there. Pretending otherwise insults our common sense.

A confident nation should be able to say: in Australia, marriage requires consent. No exceptions. No cultural carve-outs. Instead, we get euphemisms.

The AFP says modern slavery is everyone’s responsibility. That includes media organisations and political leaders who prefer not to disturb the ideological furniture. Because shielding multicultural orthodoxy from scrutiny does not protect vulnerable girls. It protects reputations. And reputations, unlike victims, do not bleed.

If modern slavery is occurring in our suburbs, then silence is not neutrality. It is complicity.

Australia now faces a choice. Will we defend a policy narrative, or defend those trapped by practices we were too timid to confront?

You cannot do both.

“One word of truth shall outweigh the whole world.”
– Alexandr Solzhenitsyn