What is the threshold for mandatory modern slavery reporting in Australia?

Generally, entities with annual consolidated revenue above $100 million, set under the Modern Slavery Act 2018 (Cth). The Act also covers certain Commonwealth entities regardless of revenue. Reporting entities must lodge an annual statement describing the risk of modern slavery in their operations and supply chains, and what they are doing about it.

How do I check if an Australian supplier has filed a modern slavery statement?

A lookup by the supplier's entity name or ABN against the Modern Slavery Register confirms whether they have filed, and returns the statement's metadata for further review. The register is public but is not built for scaled checks. A programmatic lookup produces a logged result with a retrieval timestamp, which holds up as a documented process in a way that a manual search does not.

How do I build modern slavery checks into a vendor onboarding workflow?

A filing status lookup can run as part of an existing onboarding step, the same way an entity or sanctions check would. The result is logged with a timestamp and request ID, so the check is documented rather than left as a manual note in a CRM.

What the Modern Slavery Act actually requires Australian businesses to report

Q: Why do investors and ESG teams care about modern slavery statement filing status?

A missing statement from a company above the reporting threshold is itself a governance signal. Investors and ESG teams want to know whether a company they hold, or might hold, is meeting its obligation at all, since non-lodgement is a compliance gap worth investigating further, not just an administrative oversight.

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Modern Slavery Act ESG Supply Chain Procurement

Large Australian businesses, generally those with revenue over $100 million, have to lodge an annual statement describing the risk of modern slavery in their operations and supply chains, and what they're doing about it. That statement goes into a public register.

Two different audiences care about this for different reasons. Procurement teams need to check whether a prospective supplier has actually lodged a statement, and what it says, before treating them as a compliance risk or clearing them as one. Investors and ESG teams want to know whether a company they hold, or might hold, is meeting its obligation at all, since a missing statement is itself a signal.

The problem with checking the register manually

The register itself is public, but it's not built for this kind of check at scale. Searching a supplier's name once is manageable. Checking a supply chain, or a portfolio, is a different problem entirely, and "we looked them up on the register" doesn't hold up well as a documented process if nobody kept a record of when the check happened or what it found.

Programmatic access to the Modern Slavery Register

Tech Compass provides programmatic access to the Modern Slavery Register, kept in sync with the register's own publication schedule, so a check against a supplier or a portfolio company is a logged API call rather than a manual search that leaves no trail behind it.

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