Ep. 05 -

Justin: Welcome to the responsible supply chain show where we explore the world of responsible sourcing, sustainable practices, and ethical supply chains. I'm your host, Justin Dillon. And in each episode, we'll dive into real stories, challenges, and solutions that companies are facing as they strive to build better supply chains. Let's get into it. Okay.

Episode five. Today, we are gonna get right into it. We've got an amazing guest, doctor James Cocaine. He'll he'll explain more about his name. It's not spelled the way that you think it is, but, interesting interesting path this young man has taken with his life.

He has one of the coolest titles I've ever heard, New South Wales antislavery commissioner. He gets to be a badass in a badass part of the world. Iron Bay. Like, we're all of ours, all The US Celebrities go and hang out. Amazing brilliant dude, trained in law, former, used to work, at the United Nations.

He's just got that resume. But most importantly, he's a very intelligent person who's easy to understand. And for a c c plus student like me, I appreciate that. In other news, did anyone notice that we've got World War trade happening? Anyone?

Anyone? I just wrote a, a here's a plug. I just wrote an op ed about it in the Financial Times online. Go check it out. About the Trump administration's leaning towards, more detentions of of goods shipped in The United States suspect it to be made of forced labor.

My prediction, my belief, and it's backed up by experts, so you can believe it too. My belief is that we are gonna see more and more shipments of goods suspected to be made with forced labor detained. The administration is stacked. Trump's administration is stacked with people who in their previous roles like senator Rubio, now secretary Rubio, even the vice president, very outspoken, very active around the belief that goods made with slavery elsewhere is cheating America, and that is true. It is slavery is.

Using slavery to make something is cheating. It's also cheating people. So we've got one of those rare opportunities where we can use really, really boring trade laws and TerraFAX to do good in the world. I'm I'm here for it. Little did I know, I knew about this something deep deep in my past that somehow influenced my understanding of tariffs and trades deep into my childhood mind.

I wonder I wonder what that was.

Speaker 2: In 1930, the Republican controlled House of Representatives, in an effort to alleviate the effects of the anyone? Anyone? The Great Depression passed the anyone? Anyone? The tariff bill.

Justin: Let's get into our interview with doctor James Cook. James, where am I finding you today?

James: I've gone from the sublime to a different type of sublime. I'm these days living in Byron Bay in the East Coast Of Australia.

Justin: We're told that that's lovely. Is it does it live up to the hype?

James: There was a period during, the pandemic when we would run regularly into not only our own local celebrities such as Chris Hemsworth, but, we'd run into Zac Heffron at the, at the local chiropractor or into, Matt Damon. There were a whole bunch of people from Hollywood who came out here for the pandemic because it's such a lovely idyllic, really setting to live in. I'm very lucky to live here on Bunchalung Country.

Justin: Well, that's fantastic. And as a Californian, I just wanna say you're welcome to have our expats for this season. Well, hey. You've just got quite the career. You're just you're one of I wanted to have you on the show because I feel like you're one of the most articulate, well researched, and practical minds and voices when it comes to the solving for modern day slavery.

And, specifically, we can talk about some of your, some of your past work. We'll certainly get into some of that. But I think for our listeners today, I've just got a few key questions that would really help you. I mean, you're you're, you're a teacher, you're a researcher, you're a writer, and and now you have this new remit that we're gonna wanna hear about. But at first, I just wanna just ask you some questions around the some of these modern slave regulations.

I mean, you have you have one that you help, resource companies, government with there in Australia, the Australian Modern Slavery Act. What are some of the key provisions of that act and that, you know, companies need to follow?

James: Yeah. So we actually have, we we do like laws apparently in Australia. We actually have two modern slavery acts, acts, both with that name, because like America, we're a federation, so we have both states and a federal level. So we have a federal modern slavery act, which requires companies that make, about a hundred million Australian, which is, at current rates, probably about $6,065,000,000 US, in annual revenue. They have to report every year to the federal government on what they're doing to identify and address modern slavery.

It's a reasonably light touch, regime.

Justin: It's Okay.

James: Pretty similar in some ways to The UK Modern Slavery Act and the, before that, the Californian, transparency in supply chains arrangements. So you can report that you've looked and you found modern slavery and you haven't really done much about it. And technically, you would, be okay under the act. The idea of the act was that by getting companies to be more transparent about their supply chains and activities and where they find modern slavery risks, this would drive a bit of a race to the top. But these days, there are some critics who say, well, actually, the information the market for information hasn't really emerged in the way that was expected.

And there are some quite practical reasons for that. For example, when companies report, they report in these lovely glossy, PDFs, but PDFs are very difficult to extract information from, as we all know. So we haven't really seen that accountability mechanism kick in. Then we have a separate modern slavery act at the state level. So I'm here in New South Wales, which is, as I like to say, people, a bit like the California of Australia, it's where we have the best beaches.

It's the largest economy. Sub nationally, it's often a bit of a leader on things just as California is. We have a separate act, which is not focused on companies. It's focused more on, government, buying procurement. So in New South Wales, we have about $30,000,000,000 US of government buying every year.

And we, have substantive due diligence obligations for over 400 government entities. So it's just just like companies. But instead of just having to report, yes, we are looking at they actually have to take what are called reasonable steps. So that sets a bit of a benchmark, what they have to do to ensure they're not buying products made with modern slavery. My role is partly about helping them develop those capabilities to, to source responsibly.

Justin: Okay. So this is a situation where the government's trying to lead by example. Do I have that right?

James: That's right. Yeah.

Justin: Okay. And how's that going?

James: Yeah. And it's only been in in force a couple of years, but already we're seeing some really interesting results. For example, around solar supply chains, there's a big push in New South Wales to try and increase the uptake of solar, and government has a very active role in the market. Yeah. That's obviously a very high risk, product category when it comes to modern slavery.

So there's lots of interesting active thinking going on behind the scenes about how governments can get more involved in helping support alternative slavery free supply of that product. We're also seeing a lot of agencies adopt new model contract clauses that that we've developed actually based on work first done by the American Bar Association that tries to help companies move away from just immediately terminating a contract when modern slavery arises to actually staying engaged with the supplier and working with the supplier to try and remediate the harm, but also remedy the remediate the the business practices that led to the modern slavery in the first place So that we're not just shuffling one slavery from one supplier to another or one buyer to another. We're actually getting to the root of the problem.

Justin: Interesting. And so you're working with the New South Wales law. The the Australian modern slave act is a bit older, about five years. Is that right?

James: Yeah. Five, six years. Years now. Yep.

Justin: Yeah. Yeah. And so what's the overall I mean, so so the the Australian Modern Slavery Act was after The UK. The UK Modern Slavery Act was after California. So the world's been living with kind of modern slavery regulation for, you know, about a decade, and some change here and there.

In Australia, where it seems like the law had the benefit of learning from others, What is the what's the sentiment in the business community that you're seeing? Because I understand you're a bit of a conduit between business and and and government. What is the sentiment where, you know, where companies feel like they're at? I know initially, I was there. I spent time there.

Companies were confused. Where are they at now?

James: Yeah. Look. I I would say that where they are now is they wanna see the regime be effective. If they're going to be asked to invest time and money in this compliance work, they want to actually be able to demonstrate that that leads to positive impacts on the incidence and development of modern slavery. And I think there's a growing sentiment actually in the business community as well as in, unions, civil society researchers, that the settings in the law at the moment, don't quite achieve that outcome.

So there was a review here in Australia. There's been a recent review in the house of lords in The UK of their act too, which came to fairly similar conclusions. That if you're gonna go this route of requiring companies to do this work to find and disclose the bond and slavery, you actually need to set clarity. You need to give them certainty about what they're expected to do when they find, those risks and how they're expected to manage that risk so that they can effectively integrate it into their broader risk management frameworks. And that's very much the direction of travel in in our law in New South Wales, but also elsewhere in the EU, for example, with the recent corporate sustainability due diligence directive, setting very clear rules about what companies have to do when they identify these risks.

So I think that's the probably the direction of travel here at the Australian national level as well. We'll know soon that the government's gonna release a response to that inquiry, fairly soon.

Justin: Everyone's talking about tracing and mapping their supply chains. Right. And, two or three years ago, that was tough to do. Data was there. It just wasn't pulled together.

And and and let's and and the reason for it was there just wasn't a market need. Now there is. And there's lots of ways to map your supply chain. And so I'm seeing more and more Australian companies like, yep. That's the next step.

We did our policies. We did our venue. We did everything we could on paper.

James: That's right.

Justin: Now we wanna get it to data. So let's just assume that everyone is doing that. Now you're opening up, you know, a a just a network, a web talking about solar panels and the tracing and all the rest of it. What is the government's guidance on risk one, two, three tiers back where there is actually no direct commercial relationship for a company in Australia or supply chains?

James: Yeah. Look. This is the big question. Right? Because that is more often where you are going to find modern slavery, forced labor.

It's gonna be at the informal parts of the supply chain. That's quite often offshore, but not always. We do have plenty of modern slavery, unfortunately, here in New South Wales and Australia, but often the hardest things to find and address in terms of modern slavery risk are gonna be in informal sites of production of raw materials and, and of low skilled manufacturers offshore. So the guidance we provide here in new south Wales after really extensive consultation with buyers is to is aimed at helping them work with trusted intermediaries along supply chains, try identify and manage that risk even when it's offshore. And it was really interesting in New South Wales.

When I came into the role just over two years ago, I had lots of agencies, government agencies lining up at my door saying, tell us what a reasonable steps are. That's their legal obligation to take reasonable steps, particularly in the kind of circumstance that you describe. And so we we had a dialogue with them about how far back they thought under the law, they should be looking in the supply chain. And the answer was actually they thought that the the way the law was written, they're expected to take reasonable steps no matter how far back in the supply chain, the forced labor. But of course, what is reasonable then might be different than what is reasonable if the forced labor is at tier one or tier two.

And this very much aligns with the international norms around the OECD guide guidelines, the UN guiding principles on business and human rights, that what you're expected to do depends on your, your leverage over your business partners, essentially. Yeah.

Justin: And that's, and we hear that a lot, right? You can, we hear from procurement leaders saying, look, you know, 80% of my spend is with 20% of my suppliers.

James: Right.

Justin: And our guidance is always like, there's, those are the ones to remediate. Those are the ones to work with. And I'm finding more and more that companies are looking for for data to be able to, educate their suppliers. It seems more and more that suppliers may not just have the data that quite frankly is a risk to their business. We're seeing that more and more where suppliers are recognizing that we call it reading your mail.

You know, we you can map anyone's supply chain whether or not they're looking. That's what customs and border protection is doing here in The United States is they're they're mapping people's supply chains who've never mapped their supply chains. If you could wave a wand and fill a gap, what for for for, for businesses in their, due diligence, what would that gap be? Would it be data? Would it be better policies?

What do you feel like is the thing that really needs filling?

James: Yeah. Firm level risk estimates. That that would be my answer.

Justin: Say more. What does that mean?

James: Yeah. So, you know, at the we're a bit like, the environmental movement twenty or thirty years ago in in this area of modern slavery and and labor exploitation risk. What I mean by that is twenty or thirty years ago, you know, there was a growing sense in the business community. Yeah. We need to we can see how we are connected to environmental risks, particularly around carbon emissions, but we're not sure what we're expected to do.

There's no clear benchmark on how we're supposed to measure this risk, let alone what we then do once we find it. And what we've seen over the last twenty, thirty years is the emergence of really clear standards and this idea of scope one, scope two, scope three carbon emissions so that everybody is measuring the same thing, and you can compare across any given firm what their carbon footprint is essentially. Yes. We don't have that in the forced labor, modern slavery space.

Justin: That's right.

James: So if you, as a buyer, want to know what the riskiness is of any vendor at any level of your supply chain, You've either gotta do it in the analog way that you really trace every single thing and you get out to site and make that assessment for yourself, or you go to a risk information provider that's in the market. And the challenge there is that a lot of them are not doing it by actually tracing. They're just using guesstimates. And the guesstimates are based often on where is a company domiciled rather than where its workforce is based. So the problem with that is let's take an example.

I'm not picking on anybody in particular, but let's say Nestle, Nestle is domiciled in Switzerland. If you're basing your risk estimate based on the fact that it's in Switzerland, rather than where its workers are and what kind of work they're doing, you're going to have a completely, you know, rubbish in rubbish out essentially in the way you estimate that risk. So if I could wave my wedge wand and give companies one thing, it would be more reliable, risk estimates at the company level. Because what that what would happen then, both for buyers and in and for investors, in fact, is they'd be able to get a much better handle more quickly on where they're likely to have risk in their buying portfolio or their investing portfolio. And then they could take their scarce resources for doing actual on the ground due diligence and tracing into those supply chains and focus more effectively on risk.

Because that's what we need to be doing to have, outcome at scale across the system

Justin: is we

James: need everybody to be focusing not just on where they're spending the most, but which business relationships present the greatest risk to people for that they're involved in.

Justin: Can we talk a little bit about that? Because I've met anyone other than traffickers who think it's a good idea to force someone to work for profit. And you've got you've spent some time researching I mean, you've got a deep background in understanding organized crime, criminal network. Tell us about how organized crime and crime networks, you know, apply to modern day slavery.

James: Yeah. This this thing called nominative determinism, which means you end up doing what your name suggests. And when you've got a surname like cocaine, it was probably inevitable that I ended up working on organized crime issues. So I worked on organized crime counter terrorism issues for for many years. And then you're right, Justin.

That is part of how my find found my way to, to dealing with modern slavery and human trafficking. One of the things I've really found in the decade or so that I've been working on those issues is that it grips you in a in a way because of the the human element. You know, what's at the heart of modern slavery and human trafficking is the removal of people's agency. And after you've met, some survivors of those, of that kind of exploitation and seen what that has meant in their life and what getting their agency back, and getting control of their life back can mean for them, how powerful that can be. It's, it's something that I think grips a lot of people.

What we, you know, what we see often is that people are exploited through modern slavery, when they're vulnerable and vulnerability is very contextual. So someone who's vulnerable in one setting may not be vulnerable in another setting because their gender or their nationality may play completely differently in those settings. The easiest way to think of that, for example, is migrants in their home country. They may not be vulnerable, but take them and put them in a foreign community where they don't have connections. Maybe have limited language skills, few safety nets, social safety nets.

They're much more vulnerable to exploitation. That's one element, but then you need, protective systems that are not effective, and you need an active exploiter. You need somebody, a person, an organization, a company that is prepared to take advantage of that vulnerability and that absence of effective institutional protections and then milk it at scale. And unfortunately we see all the time that there are new, there are very canny entrepreneurs out there finding new ways to exploit vulnerability, the growth, for example, of scams and, scam compounds in parts of Southeast Asia, which now have literally hundreds of thousands of people inside their razor wire, who were involved in these global scams. That was unthinkable ten, fifteen years ago because the business opportunity wasn't there.

Now it's there and you have really serious organized crime backed by very corrupt forces. In that example I gave, it's only able to operate really because of the lawlessness in Eastern Myanmar. But in other places too, around the fishing, for example, in Southeast Asia, that that leads to production of, of pet food, for example, through forced labor. Corruption plays a really key role in protecting the system that is exploiting people at scale because everybody knows this is wrong. So there has to be something in there that's protecting it and keeping it, out of the out of law enforcement system in order for it to operate sustainably at that kind of scale.

Justin: You and I have been working in this space for a long time. There is no shortage of interest of energy, and I think it's built over time. But it's I think sometimes, it gets you know, companies have a hard time kind of they're very complicated. They're very complex. They can get stuck in, you know, stakeholder meetings and and paralysis of analysis.

And so we're starting to see, as I know you've seen as well, some some of the European laws are starting to add penalties. And I'm I'm curious as to what as as someone who works as kind of a intermediary trained business and government, what is your perspective on the addition of penalties for for not complying with these laws?

James: Yeah. Look. I think it's very welcome. I think we there's a growing momentum, a wave, really, both from younger people coming through and I think think from more senior people in companies who've been involved in some of this compliance work for a while to see systemic outcomes, to see system level change. You know, what we were just talking about with the very sudden emergent of tech scams shows that if we're just constantly playing whack a mole, this is gonna be endless work that doesn't really achieve system level outcome.

So what we need to see is, getting serious about these arrangements so that the compliance effort and costs, let's be frank, costs, resources that companies are putting into this, they actually know it's contributing to a larger outcome. And part of that is that companies that are doing the right thing need to know that they're actually getting an advantage from that, that it's not just wasted effort. And without penalties for those who do the wrong thing, that's actually quite hard to substantiate. So the the whole idea behind a lot of this movement was if you get the right information out there in the market, consumers, investors, large buyers will begin to differentiate and reallocate their business towards the vendors, the suppliers that are doing the right thing. But I think what's been learned is, well, we haven't quite got the policy mix right yet.

We need to start bringing in a few, sticks as well as carrots to make sure the market is actually moving in that direction. And And I I think the penalties that we're beginning to see now, will will help with that so long as there is a clear benchmark set for companies. What what you don't want is a sanction attached to a very vague standard because that end will just lead to backlash against the whole, scheme, I would suggest.

Justin: Well, that sticks. So and you just referenced carrots and advantages. Say say more about that.

James: Yeah. I mean, I think we we would like to see in New South Wales investors doing more to, create a a capital discount, essentially, for companies that are doing the right thing in their own business activities and their supply chains to try and reduce the coercion footprint. We talk about the carbon footprint. We need to reduce the coercion footprint

Justin: Oh, that's good.

James: Of the products and services that are made.

Justin: Mhmm.

James: And there are ways that investors do that in the environmental space, things like sustainability linked bonds. So that's the idea that, the amount you pay to borrow capital depends on whether you meet meet certain sustainability benchmarks. There's no reason that kind of instrument couldn't be adapted into this space as well to to reward companies that are making positive upfront investments in bringing their coercion footprint down.

Justin: That's great. I I'm I'm picking up that you you've got a bit of a vision around, creating some type of a framework like like the environmental movement had around scope threes. And and I've honestly, James, I've never heard. That's why I love talking to you because I think these ideas are incredibly practical and incredibly scalable. The ability to start measuring the level of transparency that companies supplier networks.

When you're talking about $30,000,000,000 worth of spend that your government spends, I mean, that's you know, we've got US companies that are, your space companies that are spending that much and more.

James: Yep.

Justin: And there's just such an incredible lever to create more transparency and all the rest of it. If you get those if you get that balance right of stick and carrot, you're right. You can start to see this stuff really, really move at scale. Maybe tell us a little bit more about the role because I haven't asked you about that. What is tell tell us, like, what your job is.

James: Yeah. So I'm the New South Wales anti slavery commissioner, and it's only the second anti slavery commissioner role in the world. There's one in The UK and then me, and we're about to get one at the national level here in Australia. So what that means, a commissioner role is someone appointed by government, but I don't respond or report to the executive government. I report directly to the New South Wales parliament.

And in fact, there's a modern slavery committee in parliament that I work pretty frequently with.

Justin: Amazing.

James: So the role has a number of functions. One of them is around helping the, the new south Wales government get its, responsible sourcing arrangements, in place and effective as they relate to modern slavery risk.

Justin: But

James: then there's also other very different, other functions under the role. One of which is to provide direct assistance and support to survivors of modern slavery when they come forward and ask for that, so that I have to take off my responsible sourcing brain, or hat when I, when I'm in that mode and move into a completely different mode, which is much more about deep listening, understanding the needs of traumatized people, working with them to refer them to the kinds of, services and supports they need, and then helping them recover, their agency through that process over time. And that's a, that's a big lift. The people who come out of modern slavery, human trafficking are often deeply traumatized and have huge needs. We, we deal here in new south Wales with people who have very basic needs around food, shelter, access to, healthcare, legal support, immigration advice.

So we have a little, a little practice in my small team where we run a hotline as +1 800 you you recognize, that word there in the title. But +1 837-3336 here in Australia, of course, that's 4. And we get a lot of presentations through that line, and it's a really meaningful part of the work to get to engage with and and learn from, survivors among slavery. We're learning all the time about what's working, what's not, and how to help them more effectively. And then we feed that back into our policy work.

Justin: Well, tell me about that. That was gonna be my follow-up is okay. There's there's not a lot of policy or or people in in a role like that where you're hearing directly from, survivors and then advising, you know, to to the extent, you know, the business community? How does that inform your, advice to the business community guidance?

James: Hugely. So we have work underway with the business community here in in Australia at the moment about how businesses can safely and effectively engage with survivors, but also with people at risk of modern slavery. In order, for example, to do supply chain tracing, if you wanna understand where there's modern slavery in your supply chain, the issue, isn't just knowing the supply chain, where am I sourcing my widgets from? It's understanding the experience of workers in the, on the work sites that each of those stops along the supply chain. And to do that, particularly in countries where rule of law is low, it can be really difficult and it can be dangerous for the workers.

So, hearing directly from workers allows companies, to understand in a more timely and reliable way what's going on in their supply chain and whether there are risks. There's a whole new, sort of set of organizations and tools that are emerging about how to do that safely, sometimes through unions, sometimes outside a union context in some countries, unions, aren't effective or might be corrupted. So there's a whole range of things that businesses can learn from effective engagement with that stakeholder group. That's one example. I think the other area that that engagement with modern slavery survivors really informs our policy work is in talking to government and service providers.

So we, I have power under our act to, write reports directly to the parliament here in New South Wales, drawing their attention to particular problems. We've just used that power to draw attention to the sis the situation of temporary migrant workers here in New South Wales. So we have tens of thousands of temporary migrant workers, most of whom have a good time while they're here, sending money home to help, develop their local communities and support their families. But there's a small minority that as with temporary migrant workers, pretty much all around the world are very vulnerable and clearly are falling into situations of forced labor, debt bondage, servitude, even sexual servitude in some cases. So we've done some research over the last couple of years listening directly to survivors of this kind of exploitation and brought that to the parliament.

And the parliament, as a result, has decided to mount a formal parliamentary inquiry into these issues to figure out what's going on. So it's a very, I really feel very privileged to be in this position. It's a pretty unique position and, extraordinary responsibility.

Justin: Well, you you're the you're the when I heard about your appointment, I was like, there you go. That's that's good recruiting right there. That's a that's a good booking of talent, for that position. I'm curious, you know, a couple more questions. Where do you see laws going modern slavery laws going?

Whether more of them or improvements, you know, if you were to push out five years from now, where do you think the regulatory landscape? What do you think it's gonna look like?

James: Yeah. I think I think we're going to see, I think it depends a lot on what happens with broader geoeconomic trends. You know, if we see a kind of fracturing of the globalized economy into different blocks, which is quite possible, then I think what we'll see is that within certain blocks, certainly for example, European or transatlantic block, you'll actually see governments leaning in on this more. They'll have more stringent standards. If you wanna trade within that block or into those markets, you'll have to be doing quite a lot to demonstrate that your goods are not made with forced labor.

And I think the or your forced labor prevention act that you mentioned earlier in the podcast, Justin, is a really good example of what that's gonna look like. So getting a handle on your supply chain is going to be the price of entry into a lot of these markets, and, and the baseline really, and then there'll be companies seeking to differentiate themselves based on what they're doing with that information and how rigorous they are able to be about their sustainability credentials, including their human rights and modern slavery credentials. But then there might be other blocks internationally that are taking quite a different, more, more less say fair kind of approach, not requiring this, leaving businesses much more to their own devices as to how they source goods and material. I'd like to see, of course the first approach truly global, but I think that depends on on what happens with some big political and economic factors in play over the next few years.

Justin: Yeah. It's it the it's interesting. This is this need for, this need for transparency and responsibility in supply chains, it's almost like the human need for fitness. It has multiple benefits to the entity. If you are truly, truly taking care of yourself, you work better, you sleep better, you're better to your loved ones and all the rest of it.

And it seems the same way with supply chain responsibility, operationally, geopolitically, human rights, environment, all of that just really requires us like fitness in your supply chains. In closing, is there this this this show is called the responsible supply chain show, and our listeners really are sitting on a lot of responsibility. You know, typically, sourcing used to just be about get it there and get it on time, get a good deal. Now let's make sure it doesn't hurt people on planet. What types if there was any advice you could give to this generation of, responsible sourcing professionals, what would it be from where you sit?

James: Build a community of purpose. Find the people who are doing this kind of thing in your organization, in, in your competitors, even, in your peer organizations and, and go on the journey together. None of this work happens effectively. None of us succeed toiling away on our own inside an organization. We need those lateral connections.

We need a sense that there's a community that has a shared purpose, even if we have different roles and responsibilities driving this forward. And over time, what I think we'll see as we saw again in the environmental space is that that community will grow and branch out. And it won't just be in the specialized sustainability functions in organizations. You'll find that you have champions on the board or in the c suite or in investors who are beginning to push these things. And, actually, the work is gonna get easier over time.

This is gonna become more mainstream. Our tools are gonna become more sophisticated. We're at the beginning of a really pretty significant process of retooling, how we understand sourcing work and the kinds of impacts that it can have. And if you're listening to this podcast probably means you're already on that journey. And so you're an early mover, so well done.

Stick at it and and find other like minded fellow travelers and and keep in touch with them.

Justin: Well, James, just such a source of practical wisdom. If people wanna follow you or wanna find you and continue to to tap into this, are there any socials? Where where can they find you?

James: Yeah. Sure. They can find the office of the New South Wales anti slavery commissioner on LinkedIn, on Facebook. You can find me, James Cockayne, c o c k a y n e, on the same places. So great to be with you today, Justin.

Thank you.

Justin: Thank you so much. I know how busy you are. Thank you so much for coming on. This is the one thing where we take an idea from our conversation, and we drive it home for you. James talked about the need for a coercion footprint, a measurement for supply chains that would measure exploitation, like child labor, forced labor, or anything to do with social justice in a supply chain.

And, I I I'm I love words, and, I love the way that he put that together. It makes a lot of sense. Let's say, for instance, that that existed in the world, that you could empirically measure a coercion in a footprint. My question is, what would consumers do with that? Because the reality is a lot of supply chains have coercion in it.

It's just that the end users and even the end buyers, the brands themselves, can't see it. In fact, most links or suppliers in a supply chain can't necessarily see it. And in some cases, there are systems of as James talked about, there are systems of coercion that are meant to hide it. So my question is, what would consumers do? Would they care?

I had a firsthand experience with consumer sentiment years ago when, I was privileged to work on a project called slavery footprint where, the US State Department and Google and my organization worked together to build a slavery footprint calculator that could tell consumers exactly how many forced laborers it would take to run their lives. We did it empirically. Believe it or not, there wasn't a calculation for this before, but we did it. It actually became the core technology behind what our b to b app Freedom was built on. We took the commodities that go into different goods and and and from everything from a bicycle to a banana, and we determined the likelihood of forced or child labor in any one of those products, and we offered it up in in an app that consumers could take.

Essentially, a lifestyle survey where they could go in and put in the things that they buy in their life, and at the end, it gives them a very simple number. Now we didn't think a lot of people would wanna use an app called Slavery Footprint, especially because the front page of the website says, do you wanna know how many slaves work for you? But the response to that question is one of the reasons why this podcast exists and why Freedom Our Business exists. The response was phenomenal. As a matter of fact, millions and millions of consumers, and over a hundred million consumers answered that question, wanted to know the answer.

And to me, the answer isn't as important as the fact that consumers wanted to know. But here's the problem. They didn't know what to do because no one wants a supply chain with a little bit of coercion. People want supply chains with zero coercion, and we don't live in a world where that exists. So in order for us to build responsible supply chains and achieve the things that we wanna achieve, we have to get used to units of measurement that are not perfect or zero.

So we have to come around the idea that progress really is and we talk about this a lot on the show that progress really is perfection. Less coercion, less forced labor, less emissions, less of things we don't want in our world. And if we as consumers can get comfortable with companies that are making strides moving forward in this, then we actually might get somewhere. But if we all believe that a supply chain has to be perfect, then it doesn't matter what kind of footprint we put on it. It'll never walk.

Thank you for listening to this show. Please subscribe and let your friends know. See you next week.

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