Mickey O'Brien (Kumatpi) is a Senior Aboriginal Man. MickeyO, as he is called, is a descendant of the Kaurna (Adelaide Plains) and Narrunga (Yorke Peninsula) peoples. MickeyO has been sharing cultural engagement for a number of years now. It is a role handed to him by his father, Yerla Burka (Old Man of the Sea), a position he honours and respects greatly. He is a foster parent of seventeen years, to three beautiful children. MickeyO has travelled and worked across Australia, living and working in a number of Aboriginal Communities, delivering programs and benefits. He enjoys the opportunity to support the Aboriginal community, sitting on boards and advisory panels. At the 18th AWITC he will share his cultural knowledge and welcome to country with us. His father has told him “Aboriginal people have always welcomed people to this country, we just never told them to go home”.

Victoria Angove is joint Managing Director of her family’s business, Angove Family Winemakers. Victoria is a commerce graduate of the University of Adelaide and travelled and worked overseas before returning to work at the family business. She has been involved in a breadth of sales and marketing roles within the business including responsibility for exports to Europe and Asia, driving development in emerging markets, including China, and National Account management. Victoria was appointed to the Angove Board of Directors in February 2006 and commenced as an Executive Director in 2013 with involvement across the entire business. Victoria is a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and serves as a Director on the Board of the RAA of South Australia and as a Director of Australian Grape and Wine.

Saul Eslake worked as an economist in Australia’s financial markets for more than 25 years, including as Chief Economist at McIntosh Securities in the late 1980s, National Mutual Funds Management in the early 1990s, ANZ Banking Group (1995-2009), and Bank of America Merrill Lynch (2011-2015). From 2009 to 2011, he was Director of the Productivity Growth program at the newly-established Grattan Institute. In 2015, Saul started his own economics consultancy business, taking up a part-time position as a Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of Tasmania from 2016. He is currently a member of the Australian Parliamentary Budget Office’s Advisory Panel; the Australian Taxation Office’s ‘Tax Gap’ Advisory Panel; and is on the Advisory Board of Jamieson Coote Bonds. He chairs the CSIRO’s Decadal Climate Forecasting Advisory Board, is a non-executive director of the Macquarie Point Development Corporation and was previously on the Board of Hydro Tasmania (2008-2018). Saul has a first-class honours degree in Economics from the University of Tasmania, a Graduate Diploma in Applied Finance and Investment from the Securities Institute of Australia, and in 2012, he was awarded an Honorary LLD degree by the University of Tasmania. He has also completed the Senior Executive Program at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business in New York.

As the inaugural Special Representative for Australian Agriculture, Ms McCluskey will promote Australia’s commitment to sustainable agriculture, to the multilateral system and to the principles that underpin global trade in agricultural goods and products. Ms McCluskey is a senior business executive and company director with a strong background in agricultural policy, production and research. Ms McCluskey is the Director of Australian Unity, LiveCorp, Foundation for Young Australians, Australasian Pork Research Institute and Energy Renaissance. She is also a Commissioner for the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research, a government body supporting sustainable livelihoods and food security in the Indo-Pacific region and Africa. Previously, Ms McCluskey has been the CEO of the Regional Australia Institute and the Council of Rural Research and Development Corporations and the Executive Director of the Office of Best Practice Regulation. She has also held senior positions with the Business Council of Australia, the National Farmers’ Federation and the Australian Taxation Office. Ms McCluskey has been raising beef cattle for the last 30 years on a property just outside Canberra.

Tony Battaglene is the Chief Executive of Australian Grape and Wine Incorporated. Australian Grape & Wine is Australia’s national association of grape and wine producers, representing their interests at the national and international level. Tony Battaglene has had significant experience in the research, policy and agri-political space in the food and agriculture sector.