On Wednesday the 20th of November, Dr. Rhiannon Bandiera gave a presentation at the Faculty of Law & Justice, the University of New South Wales (UNSW), titled ‘”Knowingly profiting” from modern slavery? Australia’s Modern Slavery Act 2018 (Cth), the continuum of exploitation and the harms of state-corporate benevolence’. The presentation drew on case studies and an analysis of the Australian Parliamentary Hansard over a 14-year period to critically question whether state and corporate action on modern slavery in Australia is ‘benevolent’. By challenging the dominant discourse on modern slavery, which has typically focused on and criminalised ‘the other’, the presentation demonstrated the coloniality (and therefore harms) of modern slavery and its legislation in Australia, including its ‘past’/’modern’, racial, and gender binaries.
Rhiannon’s visit to UNSW to present was funded as part of the Faculty’s Visiting Scholar Program 2024. She was hosted by UNSW’s Centre for Criminology, Law and Justice (CCLJ) and its Director Dr. Maria Giannacopoulos from Friday the 15th to 22nd of November. In addition to the CCLJ, the Faculty of Law & Justice is home to the Australian Human Rights Institute and Migrant Justice Institute, among other research centres.
Rhiannon is a Lecturer in Criminology and Co-Director of the Research Centre in International Justice at the School of Law and Criminology, Maynooth University. She is a specialist in state-corporate crime/social harm, regulation, and their transnational dimensions. She publishes on a wide variety of interdisciplinary topics. Her upcoming book with Routledge, Neoliberalism, State-Corporate Power and Regulatory Failure, examines the harms of prescription and non-prescription medicines regulation in Australia and how these stem from neoliberal capitalism and its reinforcement of state and corporate power.