Tim Ayres is the Assistant Minister for Trade and Assistant Minister for Manufacturing in the Albanese Labor Government.

He was elected as a Senator for New South Wales in the 2019 election. During the 46th Parliament, he was Chair of the Senate Standing Committee on Finance and Public Administration and Member of the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Joint Standing Committee. He led the work of several Select Inquiries including a Senate report on the capability of the Australian Public Service.

He was appointed as Assistant Minister for Trade and Assistant Minister for Manufacturing in June 2022, after the election of the Labor Government led by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

Before entering Parliament, Tim spent twenty-four years in the trade union movement, representing the interests of workers across a variety of sectors including manufacturing, defence, food processing, aviation and metal industries.

He held several elected leadership roles in the Australian Manufacturing Workers' Union.

He has been a long-standing member of the Australian Labor Party's National Executive.

Senator Ayres grew up on his family's beef cattle farm on the north coast of NSW and completed high school in Glen Innes. He studied industrial relations at the University of Sydney and lives in Sydney. 

Allyn Beard, Director of Sydney-based mattress manufacturer A.H. Beard is Chairman of the Board of Australian Made Campaign Ltd (AMCL)—the organisation that administers and promotes the famous Australian Made logo. Allyn was appointed Chairman in November 2020.

A.H. Beard, are passionate about sleep, and with 120 years of experience crafting quality mattresses. Five generations of the A.H. Beard family have been committed to continuous innovation to ensure A.H. Beard remain leaders in their field.

Allyn, along with his brother, heads the family-owned A.H. Beard business with manufacturing facilities in every state of Australia. The company employs over 400 dedicated and highly skilled people to produce up to 10,000 mattresses every week – sold in Australia and around the world.

Melina Morrison is the chief executive of the Australian peak body for co-operatives and mutuals, the Business Council of Co-operatives and Mutuals (BCCM). She was a driving force behind the formation of the BCCM in 2013 after heading up Australia’s Secretariat for the International Year of Co-operatives.

She has since led the industry to many historic achievements including the first national research project on the economic contribution of Australian co-operatives and mutuals; and Mutual Value Measurement, the first framework designed to measure the total value creation of co-ops and mutuals.

Melina’s advocacy for co-operative and mutual education has resulted in commitments of more than $24m in government funding to develop more co-ops and mutuals in agricultural and social care.

Her campaign for access to capital for co-operatives and mutuals helped create new laws in Australia to permit co-ops and mutuals to raise growth funding without demutualising. Since legislation was passed in 2019 more than $350 million has been raised using ‘Mutual Capital Instruments’.

Melina is leading a project to develop the first co-operative and mutual sector reporting framework for ‘ESG’.

Melina was educated and raised in the island state of Tasmania in Australia. She studied law and arts at the University of Tasmania and started her career in communications and the arts, before taking these skills into her work raising the profile and promoting cooperatives in Australia and internationally. She lives in Sydney, Australia with her husband, a journalist and her daughter, an intensive care nurse. The family lived and worked in London for seven years and she holds Australian and British citizenship.