Most people, when they hear the phrase modern slavery, picture something that happens somewhere else. In supply chains on the other side of the world. In countries with weak laws and weaker enforcement. Not here.
That assumption is wrong.
Modern slavery is not a historical term.
It is a broad description for a range of practices where people are exploited, coerced, or controlled in ways that strip them of their freedom.
Forced labour. Human trafficking. Debt bondage.
Situations where someone is working but has no real choice to leave, no access to their own money, and no one to turn to.
It happens here. And New Zealand has the court cases to prove it.
In 2020, a Hawke's Bay man named Joseph Matamata became the first person in New Zealand to be convicted of both slavery and human trafficking charges together. His victims, including one who was just twelve years old, were brought from Samoa and put to work on orchards near Hastings. They were kept behind a tall wire fence, had their passports taken, and were never paid. The offending spanned more than two decades. He was sentenced to eleven years in prison and ordered to pay $183,000 in reparations to his victims.
More recently, in late 2025, a jury in Auckland found Moeaia Tuai guilty of two slavery charges and seventeen other offences against two young Samoan siblings he had helped bring to New Zealand. He took their wages, kept their passports and bank cards, forced one of them to take out a loan, and used the threat of deportation to keep them in line.
The jury heard that he had taken an estimated $78,000 or more in wages from one victim alone. His own diaries documented the hours she worked and the beatings he administered as punishment.
On 12 February 2026, he was sentenced to sixteen years and four months in prison, with a minimum of eight years before parole. Justice Wilkinson-Smith said his actions constituted modern slavery and that he had felt entitled to his victims’ income.
These are not isolated cases.
They are simply the ones that made it to trial.
Researchers and prosecutors working in this area are consistent on one point: the cases we prosecute likely represent a fraction of what is actually happening.
Migrant workers who depend on their employer for their visa status are in a particularly difficult position. Many do not come forward because they do not recognise themselves as victims, or because the person controlling them has convinced them that speaking out will result in deportation.
The 2023 Global Slavery Index estimated that on any given day in 2021, around 8,000 people in New Zealand were living in conditions that meet the definition of modern slavery. A ministerial advisory group reported in 2024 that serious migrant exploitation complaints had nearly quadrupled in a single year.
I have already written to my own MP about this Bill. I will explain why in a moment.
New Zealand has been slow to act.
Australia passed its Modern Slavery Act in 2018. The United Kingdom had one before that.
Four years ago, more than 100 New Zealand businesses signed an open letter asking our government to introduce equivalent legislation. A working group was established and then dissolved. The issue sat in the too-hard basket through two changes of government.
That has now changed.
In February 2026, a bipartisan Modern Slavery Bill was introduced to parliament, co-sponsored by National MP Greg Fleming and Labour MP Camilla Belich.
The cross-party support is genuine and the sponsors have said they intend to pass it before the November election.
What the Bill would do is straightforward.
Organisations with annual revenue of $100 million or more would be required to publish an annual modern slavery statement covering the structure of their operations and supply chains, any risks or incidents they have identified, what they have done about those risks, and how they assess whether their actions are working. Those statements would go on a public register.
The penalties are real.
Companies that fail to comply, or that make false or misleading statements, face criminal fines of up to $200,000 and civil penalties of up to $600,000.
Directors and senior managers can be personally liable if they knew about offences and failed to act. That last point goes further than most comparable overseas frameworks.
Around 300 New Zealand companies are already doing some version of this work because of overseas reporting requirements. For them, the Bill formalises and extends something they are already doing. For others, it will require genuine change.
If you invest in large New Zealand companies, or in global funds that hold shares in businesses with supply chains in higher-risk regions, modern slavery is already a material investment consideration, whether or not it appears in annual reports.
Supply chains are long and often opaque.
A company that sources goods from parts of the world with weak labour protections carries risk, both reputational and regulatory.
A forced labour scandal in a major supplier can move from an ethical concern to a financial one very quickly. We have seen this pattern play out in Australia and the UK since those regimes came into force.
Mandatory reporting changes the information available to investors. It makes it harder for companies to simply not look. That is the point.
For clients who invest with values in mind, this Bill matters directly.
One of the practical challenges in ethical investing is the gap between what companies claim and what they can actually demonstrate.
Voluntary disclosure tends to produce carefully worded statements that say very little of substance.
Mandatory reporting with real penalties is a different proposition. It will not solve everything. No reporting regime does. But it shifts the baseline.
The Bill has had its first reading and will go to a select committee for public submissions over the coming months, with the aim of passing it before parliament rises ahead of the November election.
I wrote to my MP because this is the kind of legislation that benefits from knowing there is public support behind it. S
elect committee submissions are also open to the public and are a genuine way to influence the final shape of the law.
If you would like to make a submission and are not sure where to start, get in touch.
New Zealand has been late to this. But the Bill is well-designed, the cross-party support is real, and the window to get it over the line is open.
