Human Trafficking Laws in Australia: Why Convictions Are So Rare
An estimated 50 million people are living in conditions of modern slavery worldwide, according to the International Labour Organisation — a figure that includes victims of sex trafficking, forced labour, forced marriage, and debt bondage. In Australia, the picture is less visible but no less serious. Research from the Australian Federal Police suggests that for every victim of human trafficking and slavery identified by authorities, four more go undetected.
The laws exist. The question is why they so rarely deliver justice.
What the Law Says in Australia
Human trafficking and slavery offences are governed federally under Divisions 270 and 271 of the Criminal Code Act 1995 (Cth). The framework is comprehensive in scope, covering trafficking persons into, out of, or within Australia; sexual servitude and forced labour; forced marriage; debt bondage; deceptive recruitment; organ trafficking; and child trafficking.
Penalties reflect the gravity of the conduct. Debt bondage carries a minimum of four years’ imprisonment; slavery and child trafficking carry maximum sentences of up to 25 years. Where aggravating factors apply — such as the victim being a child or the offender subjecting them to cruel or degrading treatment — penalties increase further under section 271.3 of the Code.
Investigations are led by the Australian Federal Police, which maintains specialist human trafficking teams. Prosecutions are handled by the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions, whose own guidelines require all victims of slavery and sexual servitude offences to be referred to its Witness Assistance Service.
On paper, this is a serious and considered legal response.
Why Convictions Are So Rare
That is the fifteen-year record of Australia’s human trafficking framework, from 2004 to mid-2019, as reported by the Commonwealth DPP. The Organised Crime Index recorded in 2023 that two-thirds of Australian prosecutions did not reach court.
Several systemic failures drive this gap.
Victims are reluctant — and often unable — to testify. Many survivors do not initially recognise themselves as victims of trafficking, particularly where exploitation developed gradually through manipulation, debt, or coercive relationships. When they do come forward, testifying is often traumatic, costly, and potentially dangerous. Non-citizen victims face the added complexity that access to the government’s Support for Trafficked People Program has historically been tied to their participation in the criminal justice process — a linkage that human rights advocates have long criticised as effectively conditioning care on cooperation.
The offence framework is unusually complex. As documented in the federal government’s own Targeted Review, Australia has 23 separate trafficking-related offences within Division 271 alone. The United Kingdom, United States, New Zealand and Canada each address the same conduct with one or two. While multiple offences provide prosecutors with options, they also create significant decision-making complexity: which charge fits this victim’s particular circumstances? Getting it wrong can mean a case collapses before a jury is empanelled.
Misidentification remains persistent. Trafficking offences are relatively new in their current legislative form, and investigative experience — particularly at state and territory level — is uneven. Victims can be misidentified as willing participants or, where prostitution-related offences apply, treated as perpetrators rather than survivors.
The Combs Case — What It Tells Us About Consent and Coercion
The 2025 US federal trial of music mogul Sean Combs illustrated, in a globally watched forum, how difficult it is to prosecute sex trafficking even when the underlying conduct is not seriously in dispute.
Combs faced five charges including racketeering conspiracy and two counts of sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion. As confirmed in the official verdict, the jury acquitted him on the sex trafficking and racketeering counts but found him guilty on two counts of transporting persons across state lines to engage in prostitution — Mann Act violations. He was subsequently sentenced to just over four years in prison and fined US$500,000.
The defence acknowledged that physical abuse had occurred but argued throughout the trial that domestic violence did not amount to sex trafficking. The strategy relied heavily on text message evidence in which the complainants appeared, on the surface, to be agreeing to and helping plan the relevant encounters. The prosecution’s case rested on arguing that these were not freely given agreements, but responses shaped by years of financial control, professional dependency, and psychological conditioning. The jury — on the trafficking counts — accepted the defence framing.
Despite the acquittal on the most serious charges, the defence itself did not deny that harm had been caused. As one CNN legal analyst observed at the time, Combs was convicted of two federal felonies — and yet, in practical terms, the most serious prosecution had failed.
The same interplay of power, dependency, and manufactured consent appears in cases involving institutional settings — schools, residential care facilities, and religious organisations — where authority figures exploit structural relationships over extended periods.
For advocates and legal practitioners working with survivors of institutional abuse in Australia, this is not an unfamiliar dynamic. The evidentiary difficulty of distinguishing coercion from apparent consent, particularly within long-standing relationships of dependency, is terrain Koffels engages with directly through its institutional abuse practice.
The Australian Picture — Where Trafficking and Institutional Abuse Intersect
Australia’s trafficking profile has shifted considerably since the early 2000s, when enforcement focused almost exclusively on sex trafficking involving women brought to Australia from Southeast Asia. The AFP now identifies victims across a far broader range: agricultural and hospitality workers in conditions of forced labour, children in institutional and residential care, and individuals trapped in forced marriages — often involving family members as perpetrators.
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse documented patterns of systematic abuse in residential care settings — including orphanages, detention facilities, and schools run by religious orders — that share structural features with trafficking: physical control, isolation from family and community, psychological conditioning, and the exploitation of children’s total dependency on institutional authority.
Many of the institutions examined by the Royal Commission are the subject of ongoing compensation claims. Koffels acts for survivors across a number of these institutions, including those connected to the Marist Brothers, Parramatta Marist High School, and others currently before the courts or in negotiation.
The overlap between institutional abuse and trafficking-adjacent conduct — particularly where children in residential care were exploited across multiple perpetrators or through structures that facilitated access — is an area where Australian law is still developing appropriate responses.
What Needs to Change
The gap between the law as written and the law as experienced by survivors has been recognised at the highest levels. The Australian government’s own Targeted Review of Divisions 270 and 271, completed in 2023, recommended streamlining the offence framework, increasing funding to investigative and prosecutorial agencies, and — critically — decoupling victim support from the requirement to engage with the criminal justice process.
That last point matters most. As long as survivors must participate in proceedings to access support, the system inadvertently places its own interests above those of the people it exists to protect.
Broader reform is needed in three areas: better frontline identification training so that victims are not misidentified or charged; a simplified offence framework that reduces prosecutorial hesitation; and a victim support model that is unconditional — available not because a survivor is a useful witness, but because they have been harmed.
These are not radical positions. They are the positions of the AFP, the CDPP, the Law Council of Australia, and survivors themselves.
If You Have Experienced Abuse
If you or someone you know has experienced sexual abuse, exploitation, or trafficking — whether in an institutional context or otherwise — confidential legal advice is available.
Koffels Solicitors & Barristers has extensive experience acting for survivors of institutional and sexual abuse across Australia. We understand the barriers survivors face in coming forward and approach every matter with the discretion and care it deserves.
Contact our team for a confidential, obligation-free conversation — 02 9283 5599.
This article was prepared by Koffels Solicitors & Barristers for general informational purposes only. It does not constitute legal advice. If you have a specific legal matter, please contact us directly for advice tailored to your circumstances.
