Human rights
We believe in respecting basic human rights in everything we do.
Human rights
As one of Australia and New Zealand’s largest financial service companies, we have a broad range of activities and relationships through which we may influence and impact the human rights of various stakeholders. We have a responsibility to respect human rights across our activities and relationships, as well as opportunities to support and advance human rights.
Our Human Rights Position Statement and 2026 Action Plan (PDF 976KB) sets out Westpac Group’s commitments and approach to respecting and advancing human rights and the key actions we are taking to implement our Position Statement. This is our fourth Position Statement and it now integrates our position on child safeguarding.
Our human rights approach is focused on implementing our commitment across each of our roles as a:
- Financial services provider
- Lender
- Employer
- Purchaser of goods and services
- Supporter of communities
- Child safe organisation
Salient human rights issues
Salient human rights issues are those at risk of causing the most harm to people and of having the most severe negative impact on their human rights, as a result of our activities and business relationships.
One of the actions in the Human Rights Position Statement and 2026 Action Plan (PDF 976KB) is to review our salient human rights issues. As part of this, we intend to initiate a refresh of our salient human rights issues assessment, with the aim of bringing in internal and external stakeholder input to inform our understanding of our salient issues for FY23 and beyond.
In the interim, we report on highlights, progress and management actions against the salient issues identified in FY21 as part of our annual Sustainability Performance Reporting.
Modern slavery
Modern slavery covers a range of exploitative practices including human trafficking, slavery, forced labour, child labour and other slavery-like practices.
Our 2022 Modern Slavery Statement has been prepared to meet our reporting requirements under both the Australian Modern Slavery Act 2018 (Cth) and the United Kingdom’s Modern Slavery Act (2015) and describes the actions Westpac Group has taken to address modern slavery risk in both our operations and supply chains during the FY22 period.