This submission proposes that the ACCC establish a class exemption for industry cooperation on modern slavery due diligence. Such an exemption would address a critical area of regulatory ambiguity that currently hinders effective collaboration to combat labour exploitation in supply chains, while simultaneously imposing substantial and duplicative compliance burdens on small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

The current regulatory landscape creates a problematic tension: the Commonwealth Modern Slavery Act 2018 encourages businesses to collaborate and "enhance their leverage" to address modern slavery, yet competition law creates uncertainty about the permissibility of the very coordination necessary to achieve this objective. This uncertainty leads to compliance approaches characterised by duplicative audits, non-standardised questionnaires, and fragmented due diligence processes that impose disproportionate costs on suppliers.

A class exemption would resolve this tension by providing automatic legal protection for modern slavery-focused cooperation, without requiring businesses to navigate the burden of individual authorisation applications. This would enable industry-wide standardisation of assessment tools, coordinated supplier engagement, and collective leverage - all essential elements of effective modern slavery due diligence - while preserving competition on core commercial parameters.