DAVID STRATTON INTERVIEWS DEE MCLACHLAN & VERONICA SYWAK

The Jammed Interview

DEE MCLACHLAN: I first read about sex trafficking in Melbourne in a small little article on page 7 and it was about these 20 girls that had been enslaved in a hotel in Kew in Melbourne and it was with quite disbelief that I read it, you know, because slavery was abolished 200 years ago and if it did occur nowadays it would sort of happen in - in far off places or far off lands. So, I just felt that this little article should have been on the front page and not on page 7 or page 8.I tried to go through the normal routes of the state bodies and the funding bodies and that's always a difficult and quite a long road but eventually I decided, okay, I'm going to make this. This is an important story. It needs to be told now. It doesn't - it can't go through the two or three years of development and the funding processes that most films normally do so I decided, okay, I'm just going to do it, so I'm going to do it on a low budget and I'll do it with whatever resources I've got. VERONICA SYWAK: I had to really face the reality of this world. I mean, preparing for this role I did a lot of door knocking on brothels; suburban brothels especially because that's where the problem is more hidden. It's kind of more apparent in the cities. And when I was speaking with one girl in a suburban brothel, I think in Burwood in Sydney, I was speaking with her about the issue of human trafficking and this was just - I have to clarify this was a legal brothel and the girls were there on their own accord and I was talking to them and they said - I casually mentioned that I was going to go up to the Cross to learn - to discover more about human trafficking and try and contact or try to come face to face with some of these girls who have been enslaved. And this woman said to me, she stopped, she said, "Sweetheart, if you go up to the Cross and ask about human trafficking, you're going to be dead by this afternoon." And that's when I kind of knew how important this film was to be made. And also from my research I learned that human trafficking has actually become more lucrative than the trade of narcotics because with drugs you can sell a drug once, but a girl, you can sell her 500 times.DEE MCLACHLAN: In the broad social framework I think in the next 20 years we're going to be challenged or the next 20, 30 years, we're going to - the world's going to be challenged by a few major issues and, you know, energy is one but they're different alternatives to energy. Global warming is another. And then the third one is really refugees and the haves and the have nots. As the haves get more and the have nots get less, refugees, human trafficking is going to be an increasing problem.

Head over to: http://www.abc.net.au/atthemovies/txt/s2002114.htm to watch the full video of Dee & Veronica on At The Movies.