"The process focuses on the victim's ability to participate in the criminal process, which relies on the strict distinction between voluntary labour and exploitation. For example, the Attorney-General ...."

Interesting double standard, because the Attorney-General's entire department is not funded by voluntary labour, is it?

So it seems that the problem with the human trafficking visa is that the requirement to participate in the criminal process acts as a deterrent to many women who were exploited, the evidence for which is presumably that they got work selling sexual services, but who don't want to go so far as to say that the work was not "voluntary labour".

Of course a lot of people, the federal government included, think that employment is intrinsically exploitative - hence their statutory overriding of the contracts of the parties in industrial relations legislation. So perhaps, to be fair, everyone in the world should be considered for residence in Australia on the author's grounds that these are exploited people "with complex economic and social needs"?

But I think first it would be a good idea to define exploitative.

Hundreds of visas have been handed out to teenage brides, from islamic countries. That needs a plug in it for a start. These kids have been ordered from 50 and 60 year olds.

I agree with the writer 579, although perhaps the bridging visas and the protection visas are being exploited by the prostitution trade, the degree of exploitation is miniscule compared to the vast number of below the age of consent mail order brides entering the country legitimately as consorts of Islamic men, often aged men, and in some cases, it is believed, as a second or third wife according with Islamic tradition.
It is well beyond time this Department of Emigration loophole was well and truly plugged.