This week, the Australian Federal Police released a statement indicating that a Sydney man has been charged with human trafficking offences, specifically exit trafficking charges.
The allegation is that this man “deceptively convinced his wife and child to travel with him to Pakistan in August, 2024. On arrival, he allegedly took the child’s passport and abandoned the pair at the airport. He returned to Australia by himself later that month. The man then allegedly fraudulently cancelled the Australian visa of his wife in November, 2024, and retained possession of the child’s passport.”
This was reported to the AFP in 2025 by the alleged perpetrator’s wife when she returned to Australia.
What is exit trafficking?
Under the Commonwealth Criminal Code, human trafficking includes practices of organizing or facilitating ‘the entry, proposed entry, exit, proposed exit, or receipt of another person’ (s271.2(1) (1A-C)).
Exit trafficking is not commonly a focus on the international stage, Australia is unique in the way this offence is reported: for example, the 2024 UN Office on Drugs and Crime Global Report on trafficking does not refer to this practice in its reporting of global data trends.
How big a problem is this?
Over the 2023-24 financial year, the AFP reported that it had received 382 reports of modern slavery and human trafficking offences, which included 109 human trafficking reports (this includes entry, exit and child trafficking).
These numbers capture a range of offences. But they are also the tip of the iceberg: a key issue, however, is that exit trafficking is a very narrow way to understanding abuse and exploitation and that while reporting may be increasing this is an underreported crime.
Connecting trafficking and domestic and family violence
My research focused on temporary visa holders in Australia has captured the complex reality of domestic and family violence that includes aspects of trafficking and slavery offences. This includes the range of forms of abuse that include border crossings as an aspect of this violence. Critically, abuse often begins before this occurs and abuse can continue after exiting Australia, particularly for example when women are returned to communities where the perpetrator’s family continue to wield power over the victim survivor and/or situations where the consequence of divorce or a failed marriage have ongoing impacts on women. These impacts are not captured when the narrow scope of the criminal justice system is the circumstances under which they exited the country.
What is also critical in this situation, is that the victim survivor was a temporary migrant, on a partner visa. This provides her with a pathway to permanency in Australia and the full remit of support for her and her son. It is well documented that many women are in Australia on temporary visas, including vistor visas and student visas, who are both denied access to the full range of support that they need and who are less well supported in circumstances such as this, to enable their return and/or to seek assistance. Significant advocacy continues across Australia to highlight that our migration system both enables and sustains domestic and family violence and undermines women’s safety.
What next?
Not all of the reports to the AFP that are classed as exit trafficking involve domestic and family violence. But this is an important moment to begin asking critical questions to rethink the status quo.
This begins with the response to trafficking and slavery in Australia, with the first federal Anti-Slavery Commissioner recently appointed and preparations underway for a new National Action Plan to Combat Modern Slavery.
Exit trafficking fails to capture gendered violence, and it undermines our understanding of what sustains violence. It is critical to look to the migration system and the continued failure to hold visa sponsors to account for their weaponisation of migration status as a key component of control and coercion. The migration system is weaponised by perpetrators of domestic and family violence in many ways that are well documented, and we can address this.
So too the opportunity lays for the Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence Commission to move beyond the recognition of the overlaps between domestic and family violence and slavery and trafficking offences, to consider how best to capture the reality of this violence and our response nationally and at a state and territory level.
This is an opportunity for rethinking how we understand what enables and sustains gendered violence. Exit trafficking situations such as that put before Liverpool Local Court are in fact symptomatic of more sustained forms of gendered violence.
While exit trafficking carries a significant potential conviction of 12 years imprisonment, much higher than for other forms of domestic and family violence experienced at high rates across Australia, this does not mean this approach is best practice for addressing the hidden realities of domestic and family violence that extends across borders.
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