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NSW anti-slavery commissioner appointed
Dr James Cockayne has been appointed as the NSW anti-slavery commissioner to help combat the scourge of modern slavery.
Simon Levett
Dr Cockayne will commence his five-year term of appointment on 1 August 2022.
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Dr Cockayne has a wealth of experience addressing issues of modern slavery as an international lawyer and an academic. One of these appointments was as a professor of global politics and anti-slavery at the University of Nottingham.
As a member of the World Economic Forum Global Futures Council for Equity and Social Justice, Dr Cockayne founded both Finance Against Slavery and Trafficking and the United Nation’s anti-slavery knowledge platform, Delta 8.7.
Dr Cockayne also worked with United Nations University Centre for Policy Research, the US Council on Foreign Relations Working Group on Human Trafficking, the Center for Global Counterterrorism Cooperation, and the transnational crime unit at the Commonwealth Attorney-General’s Department.
Attorney-General Mark Speakman said that “Dr Cockayne has spent years developing policies which can help communities to identify and respond to modern slavery”.
He concluded that “NSW was the first state or territory in Australia to introduce standalone legislation to stop modern slavery and this appointment is the next step in facilitating compliance”.
The anti-slavery commissioner will have broad oversight over government policies addressing modern slavery, issue codes of practice and maintain a public register identifying government agencies that do not comply. The commissioner will also help identify and support victims of modern slavery, advocate for action to combat modern slavery and cooperate with businesses and non-governmental organisations combating modern slavery.
Under the laws, which came into effect on 1 January 2022, NSW government agencies and local councils are required to take reasonable steps to ensure that the goods and services they procure are not the product of modern slavery in their supply chains.
