Anti-slavery Forum Agenda
Our agenda continues to evolve as we confirm speakers and sessions, please check back for the latest updates
DAY 1
5 November 2025
Wellbeing
& Arrival
07:00 AM - 07:30 AM
Beach walk - Depart from reception
08:15 AM - 09:15 AM
Registration and coffee
Day 1 opens
09:15 AM - 09:45 AM
Welcome to Country
Welcome to the Forum
Main plenary session
Day 1
09:45 AM - 11:00 AM
Keynote Address
Building Freedom Together
Session Outline
The NSW Anti-slavery Commissioner will present his annual report for FY 2024-2025 and reflect on the successes of the past year and challenges ahead.
Fostering lived experience engagement
Session Outline
How can we foster effective engagement by people with lived experience in our anti-slavery efforts? This session will introduce the new OASC Lived Experience Engagement Policy.
Building Freedom Together - Survivor voices
Session Outline
This unique presentation creates the opportunity for survivors to contribute their chosen messages about remedy and responses to modern slavery on their own terms. It weaves together the voices of a diverse group of survivors in a rich tapestry of reflections. It explores themes of healing, remedy, and response, in authentic and expressive ways - chosen by the survivors themselves.
Panel Discussion
Towards slavery-free renewable energy and EVs
Tea break
11:00 AM - 11:30 AM
Tea break and networking - Reflection and relaxation spaces available
Parallel sessions
Block 1
Day 1
11:30 AM - 12:45 PM
Prevention
Paths to prevention: Economic empowerment
Session Outline
Economic empowerment is crucial to both preventing exploitation and providing a pathway to recovery for people with lived experience. What skills and training are required for the anti-slavery movement to ensure survivors thrive?
Response and Remedy
Empowering local response [Workshop]
Session Outline
In this interactive Workshop, participants will discuss how local communities are responding to modern slavery in NSW, and what supports they need. How can NSW government help foster effective community response to modern slavery?
Lunch &
Wellbeing
12:45 PM - 02:00 PM
Lunch and networking
Therapy Dogs
Parallel sessions
Block 2
Day 1
02:00 PM - 03:45 PM
Responsible Business
Towards slavery-free domestic agriculture and horticulture [Workshop]
Session Outline
Temporary migrant workers are a vital part of NSW’s agriculture and horticulture industries, and contribute enormously to the economic and social health of rural and regional Australia. But exploitative actors and regulatory gaps have left some workers trapped in exploitative situations. This session seeks to answer: how do we ensure the workers who feed us are protected from modern slavery?
Prevention
Strengthening service capacity and coordination [Workshop]
Session Outline
The landscape of services available to survivors of modern slavery is evolving, with new referral pathways, programmes and the emergence of peer support. But coordination between levels of government and service providers remains patchwork, major gaps in service remain, and the sector is massively under-resourced. This session asks: what opportunities are there over the next year to strengthen service capacity and coordination, including by learning from other sectors in NSW and beyond?
Response and Remedy
Coercion, coercive control and exploitation
Session Outline
Coercion is a key element of many modern slavery offences, but is also a means of control in intimate, domestic and family settings, as well as in the workplace. This panel considers how coercive control, sexual harassment and modern slavery overlap, and how responses can be effectively aligned.
Tea break, Wellbeing &
Personal time
03:45 PM - 04:15 PM
Tea break and networking - Reflection and relaxation spaces available
04:00 PM - 04:15 PM
Guided Meditation
04:15 PM - 06:30 PM
Personal time - Free time for you to connect with other Forum participants
Closed Debrief
04:15 PM - 05:00 PM
Closed debrief for people with lived experience
Wellbeing
05:00 PM - 06:00 PM
Voluntary singalong
Celebration dinner
06:30 PM - 10:30 PM
A celebration of community. Commissioner's Commendations, music and dancing
DAY 2
6 November 2025
Wellbeing
& Arrival
07:00 AM - 07:30 AM
Beach walk - Depart from reception
07:00 AM - 08:00 AM
Yoga
08:30 AM - 09:00 AM
Registration and coffee
Day 2 opens
09:00 AM - 09:30 AM
Welcome to day 2
Acknowledgment of Country
Review of day 1
Session Outline
This opening session for Day 2 will welcome participants back, recap insights from Day 1, and prepare participants for the second day of conversation.
Main plenary session
Day 2
09:30 AM - 10:15 AM
Keynote Address
Session Outline
In this keynote address, Australia's first Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence Commissioner, Micaela Cronin, will reflect on how DFSV intersects with modern slavery, and what our national responses to these issues can learn from each other and achieve together.
10:15 AM - 10:45 AM
Panel Discussion
Tea break
10:45 AM - 11:15 AM
Tea break and networking - Reflection and relaxation spaces available
Main plenary session
11:15 AM - 12:00 PM
Ministerial Address
Speaker:
The Hon Courtney Houssos MLC
Minister for Finance, Minister for Domestic Manufacturing and Government Procurement, Minister for Natural Resources, Acting Minister for Education and Early Learning, Acting Minister for Western Sydney
Session Outline
An address by the NSW Minister for Procurement
12:00 PM - 01:00 PM
Panel Discussion
How can government, business and workers best cooperate to address modern slavery in supply-chains?
Session Outline
This panel of government, business and union leaders will discuss how cooperation along value-chains is changing the way we identify and address modern slavery risks, and consider the outlook for future cooperation and reform.
Lunch
&
Wellbeing
01:00 PM - 02:00 PM
Lunch and networking
Therapy Dogs
Parallel sessions
Block 2
Day 2
02:00 PM - 03:15 PM
Responsible Business
Strengthening engagement with workers
Session Outline
Systems which protect the rights of workers along supply chains must be based on engagement with, learning from, and involvement by workers. This session considers what this can look like in practice, drawing on examples of meaningful worker engagement in the cleaning, textiles and construction industry.
Prevention
Australia's implementation of the non-punishment principle
Session Outline
Australia has long championed the non-punishment principle on the international stage, advocating for the protection of victims of trafficking from criminalisation. The panel will explore the application of the principle in Australia and the region.
Response and Remedy
Tackling barriers to accountability
Session Outline
This Panel will consider the barriers to effective accountability faced by victims of modern slavery in NSW. It will consider litigation strategies and challenges, limits on access to effective criminal justice response and the Victims Rights Scheme, and challenges faced my migrant workers.
Tea break
03:15 PM - 03:45 PM
Tea break and networking - Reflection and relaxation spaces available
Parallel sessions
Block 3
Day 2
03:45 PM - 05:00 PM
Responsible Business
Sharing supplier information
Session Outline
Compliance burden is a key barrier to efficient and effective modern slavery due diligence. Creating systems to store and share supplier information across buyers significantly reduces this burden and improves supply chain transparency. This session will explore information-sharing initiatives and solutions, identify barriers, and suggest how these might be overcome.
Prevention
Training frontline workers
Session Outline
Having the knowledge and tools to identify and respond to modern slavery is critical to its prevention. How can we upskill frontline workers to identify, support and prevent modern slavery?
Main plenary closing reflections
05:00 PM - 05:20 PM
Wrap-up and close
Closed Debrief
05:30 PM - 06:00 PM
Closed debrief for people with lived experience
Closing dinner
05:30 PM - 07:30 PM
Networking and informal dinner
The Anti-slavery Forum starts in
Express your interest
The fourth edition of the Anti-slavery Forum, Building Freedom Together.
We acknowledge that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are the first peoples and traditional custodians of Australia and the oldest continuing culture in human history, and we pay our respects to Elders past and present.
We acknowledge that First Nations communities in New South Wales have survived practices that today we call modern slavery and continue to live with its legacies.