From Mobsters to Magnates: Shifting Blame for Modern Slavery in Australian Parliamentary Inquiries

Policy problems are typically framed through a representation of those who have been harmed, and those who are to blame, with parliamentary inquiries playing a key role in setting the agenda by mediating between competing problematisations. In order to reveal the politics behind policy-making through inquiries, it is necessary to examine both the aspects of the issue that are problematised and those aspects that remain unproblematised. Adopting modern slavery policy in Australia as a case study, this article utilises Bacchi’s ‘what is the problem represented to be?’ framework for analysing discourse in parliamentary inquiries on modern slavery between 2003 and 2018. I argue that across three clear phases of policy-making, problematisation has shifted and evolved, though blame has consistently been deflected away from the role of the state in contributing to the conditions that cause modern slavery.