When delivery driver Deepanshu Singla began to think he and his colleagues were being underpaid, his first instinct wasn't to raise the alarm.
"You don't want to upset things too much, [so] I tried to let it go," the Indian migrant said.
But over many months, the $3 dollars an hour he was missing out on quickly grew to more than $2,000 in lost wages.
"The first thing I felt was, 'why didn't anyone complain?' Because obviously it was something happening that wasn't legal," he said.
According to the Migrant Justice Institute, which advocates for the fair treatment of international workers in Australia, Mr Singla's experience is not isolated.
A report it released prior to the pandemic found three-quarters of migrant workers earned less than the minimum casual wage, and a quarter earned less than half the minimum wage.
"It is very clear that as more migrants now start to come in with the borders [open], and incentives for more skilled and unskilled migrant workers, that the levels of exploitation are going to go right back up to where they were before [the pandemic]," Laurie Berg from the Migrant Justice Institute said.
"It is monumentally unfair that the consequences for [migrants], if they come forward and report exploitation, are actually worse than the consequences for employers."
A senate inquiry earlier this year found wage theft to be 'systematic' in workplaces across the country, and according to the Fair Work Ombudsman, a disproportionately high number of people taking action to recoup stolen wages are migrants.
In 2020, nine of every 10 job ads targeting Chinese and Spanish speakers were found to be advertising pay rates below minimum wage.
Victoria and Queensland have introduced wage theft laws that could see companies that deliberately underpay workers face fines of more than $1 million.
The Northern Territory government is now also looking at strengthening laws around wage theft, commissioning the NT Law Reform Committee to investigate and report on any possible changes to current laws.
NT 'not going to wait for a national framework'
NT Attorney-General, Chansey Paech, said the wage theft report is expected to be completed by the end of January.
"The territory's landscape is unique, we have skilled migration, we have interstate transient populations, we have remote communities, all who participate in the workforce," he said.
"It's about how we best ensure that we have the appropriate laws to protect the rights of workers and to hold employers who are doing the wrong thing to account."
Mr Paech said the NT was looking into the issue "in the absence of a national framework" around outlawing wage theft.
"I have raised this issue with the federal attorney general and certainly it's a matter I do intend to raise at the next attorneys general meeting at the end of this year," he said.
"But the territory is not going to wait for a national framework."
Wage theft detection just as important as prosecution
The federal government last month lifted Australia's permanent migration cap by 35,000 to help businesses fill crippling labour shortages, which has been welcomed but also led to concerns about worker exploitation protections.
Tess Hardy from the Melbourne Law School said there needed to be a focus on detection of exploitation, as well as prosecution.
"The criminal prosecution process is generally focused on punishment of the wrong-doer [but] it's not as concerned with ensuring that the workers who have been underpaid recover those monies," she said.
"The evidence and research coming from overseas suggests that if criminal penalties are going to have any kind of deterrent effect, it has to be coupled with effective detection and expected prosecution."
Ms Hardy said she wasn't aware of any prosecutions that had been finalised in Victoria since wage theft laws came into effect.
For Mr Singla, reforms to workplace rules have come too late to prevent his own exploitation.
But he remains grateful for the opportunity to live and work in Australia.
"This is a beautiful country, and not all employers are the same," he said.
"There are many employers who do the fair things, they do follow the Australian laws.
"[Migrant workers] need to speak up more so that this stops and so employers can't exploit [them]."
