This paper examines the ethics of the Australian business community’s responses to the phenomenon of modern slavery. Engaging a critical discourse approach, we draw upon a data set of submissions by businesses and business representatives to the Australian government’s Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade ‘Parliamentary Inquiry into Establishing a Modern Slavery Act in Australia’—which preceded the signing into law of Australia’s Modern Slavery Act 2018—to examine the business community’s discursive construction in their submissions of the ethical–political concept of freedom. The paper shows how the concept of freedom was employed by Australian business in a manner that privileged their own subject status and advocated for legislation with minimal burden. Relating this contemporary case to a longer historical context, we show how Australian business responses towards modern slavery map onto liberal and neoliberal ethics in which the freedom of the propertied takes precedent over that of the property-less. Further, we show discursive similarities in the arguments presented by modern Australian businesses and certain historical efforts by members of the business community to privilege commercial freedoms in responses to 18th and 19th Century abolitionist movements. Overall, our research makes two important contributions: first, it highlights the value of a critical discourse lens in business ethics research to show how business and other stakeholders in the field construct and shape their own and other’s ethically-laden understanding of reality; and second, it presents a case for considerable scepticism about the motivation of (Australian) business to employ the freedoms made available to it under neo/liberal discourse to confront a key human rights challenge.

本文考察了澳大利亚商界对现代奴隶制现象的反应的伦理。我们采用批判性话语方法，利用企业和企业代表向澳大利亚政府外交、国防和贸易联合常务委员会提交的数据集“议会调查在澳大利亚建立现代奴隶制法案”——签署之前纳入澳大利亚《2018 年现代奴隶制法案》的法律——检查商界在他们提交的自由的伦理政治概念中的话语建构。这篇论文展示了澳大利亚企业如何运用自由的概念，使他们自己的主体地位享有特权，并提倡以最小的负担进行立法。将这个当代案例与更长的历史背景联系起来，我们展示了澳大利亚企业对现代奴隶制的反应如何映射到自由主义和新自由主义伦理，其中有产者的自由优先于无产者的自由。此外，我们展示了现代澳大利亚企业提出的论点与商业界成员为响应 18 世纪和 19 世纪废奴运动而给予商业自由特权的某些历史性努力的话语相似性。全面的，我们的研究做出了两个重要贡献：首先，它突出了商业伦理研究中批判性话语视角的价值，以展示该领域的企业和其他利益相关者如何构建和塑造他们自己和其他人对现实的道德理解；其次，它为（澳大利亚）企业利用新/自由主义话语下提供的自由来应对关键的人权挑战的动机提出了相当大的怀疑。