Tim Ayres
Tim Ayres (born 18 December 1973) is an Australian politician and trade unionist who was elected as a Senator for New South Wales at the 2019 federal election. He is a member of the Australian Labor Party and was previously a trade union official with the Australian Manufacturing Workers' Union (AMWU).
Tim Ayres studied industrial relations at the University of Sydney.
Career
Ayres worked as a union organiser in the Riverina until 2000, when he moved to Sydney. He was elected state secretary of the Australian Manufacturing Workers' Union (AMWU) in 2010.[2]
In July 2017, Ayres won preselection for the ALP Senate ticket in New South Wales, replacing retiring senator Doug Cameron. He defeated former federal MP Chris Haviland by a substantial margin in a ballot of NSW Labor Left factional delegates. According to The Australian, the vote was "highly controversial and acrimonious", and was boycotted by two major left-wing unions, the Maritime Union of Australia and the CFMEU.
Ayres was elected to the Senate at the 2019 federal election, running in second place on the ALP ticket in New South Wales.[He made his first speech to parliament on 30 July 2019, in which he offered that "a cruel pea-heart beats inside the chest of this mean-spirited government".
In 2022, following the ALP's victory at the 2022 federal election, Ayres was appointed assistant trade minister in the Albanese government Participatory Forum I
With Linda Burney
ALP Left
The Australian Labor Party's Left faction's national conveners are Victorian MP Julian Hill, NSW Senator Tim Ayres and MP Sharon Claydon.[1]
NSW Socialist Left representatives
Labor Left representatives who advocate the values and goals of the NSW Socialist Left faction in federal Parliament.
Anthony Albanese, Tanya Plibersek, Linda Burney, Stephen Jones, Susan Templeman, Pat Conroy, Sharon Claydon, Tim Ayres, Jerome Laxale, Jenny McAllister, Fiona Phillips, Anne Stanley.[2]
Young Labor Left
Bailey Riley, Tim Ayres, Will Simmons, Zebadiah Cruickshank, Mich-Elle Myers.
UTS Labor Left Club March 3 2022.
Thank you to everyone who came out to our Left drinks event on Wednesday! Alot of good chats were had. We'd like to thank Senator Tim Ayres, Rose Jackson & Jenny McAllister for giving some great speeches that stressed the importance of volunteering & making an effort if we want to see real change. Also a special shoutout to Mich-Elle Myers, Penny Sharpe MLC & Jo Haylen for coming along and chatting to our members.
NSW Left executive
Remembering Rob Durbridge
Tim Ayres described Rob Durbridge as a "thoughtful and influential comrade".
Celebrating Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons
ICAN Australia January 2022, 2021.
Celebrating the entry into force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
With the Tom Uren Memorial Fund, Anthony Albanese MP, Dr Helen Durham, Costa Rican Ambassador Armando Vargas Araya and Gem Romuld.
Robert Tickner, Jemila Rushton, Mich-Elle Myers, Tim Ayres, Sharon Claydon, Tilman Ruffin, Deidre Palmer, Andrew Giles, Helen Watt, Ruth Mitchell, Rose Read, John Stace, Karina Lester, John Lammey, June Smith, Kamala Angel, Andrea Mayes, Liz Freeman, Romina Beitseen.[3]
Australian Left Renewal Conference, 2013
The SEARCH Foundation's Australian Left Renewal Conference, 2013, was held, the weekend of April 6-7, 2013,University of Technology Sydney.
Workshop 12 Secure Work in a Green Future
Panel:
- Roy Green (UTS, Maunfacturing Report)
- Jill Biddington (ACTU Inquiry into Secure Work)
- Michael O'Connor (CFMEU) original. Replaced with Tim Ayres (AMWU)
- Rose Jackson (ALP Socialist Left, NSW)
Australian Left Renewal
Australian Left Renewal Conference, 2010, "From Global Crisis to Green Future" was organized by the SEARCH Foundation.
Democratic responses to the social and ecological failure of global capitalism
Panel:
- Cate Faehrmann (NSW Greens)
- Maree O'Halloran (Welfare Rights Centre)
- Tim Ayres (Australian Manufacturing Workers Union)
- Lydia Miller (Australia Council for the Arts)
- Debal Singha Roy (Indira Gandhi National Open University, New Delhi)[4] [5]
Walk Against the War Coalition split
After trying for months to split the Walk Against the War Coalition (WAWC), the ALP finally managed to get its way on August 18. 2003 At a special meeting of the coalition, attended by close to 100 people, the ALP mustered the numbers to force it to wind up.
The vote was 56 in favour of closing down the WAWC and dispersing its funds, with 31 voting for it to continue. The NSW Greens and the Australia-East Timor Association abstained.
The special general meeting was called after WAWC co-convener Nick Everett alerted the 70 WAWC affiliates of the move by the two other co-convenors, Bruce Childs (former ALP senator) and Hannah Middleton (leader of the Communist Party of Australia), to dissolve the WAWC without consultation.
Childs and Middleton, with others, had formed a new organisation — the Sydney Peace and Justice Coalition (SPJC) — in secret. They believed that this gave them grounds to disband the WAWC. As Childs put it at the August 18 meeting: "We [the ALP] run the show".
Everett, local peace groups and a number of other WAWC affiliates were neither notified of, nor invited to SPJC meetings. They made it clear they had no argument with the right of affiliates to set up whatever organisation they wished, but that this did not make the WAWC redundant, especially given the ongoing war of occupation in Iraq.
Childs argued there was a need for "a change in the arrangements", and that Everett had been offered a "principled settlement" to close WAWC down.
In July, Everett and Luke Deer from the International Socialist Organisation and the Sydney Network for Peace, had refused a third of WAWC's funds offered by Peter Murphy of the SEARCH Foundation. They argued that neither he, nor anyone else, had the right to disperse funds collected from the movement for the coalition.
Childs and others made out that the WAWC had been racked with insoluble divisions. Yet, as others pointed out, it was the most successful anti-war coalition in the history of the movement, mobilising the biggest numbers ever in Sydney before a war had even started.
Middleton seconded the motion to disperse two-thirds of WAWC's funds to SPJC. "We're now in a different stage", she said, later arguing that the movement had to refocus from the occupation of Iraq to the US threat to other countries, and domestic issues.
Everett's unity motion, seconded by Deer, received strong support from unionists and activists from local peace and solidarity groups. They argued the need to campaign against Australia's role in the occupation, and to build support for Iraqi self-determination.
"If we're to win, we need more unity", Everett said, adding that the three groups that originally came together to form WAWC were "only a small nucleus" of the movement. He said that the coalition's funds should not be dispersed, and that the "Socialist Alliance -No War group", which had been nominated by Childs and Middleton to receive a third of the funds, did not exist.
Deer reminded people that the unity established in 2002 between the different peace groups — the Palm Sunday Committee, the Sydney Network for Peace and NoWar — had resulted in a diversity that had become its strength. Splitting the coalition would damage the movement, he said.
In the ensuing discussion, in which nine spoke for the split and nine against, some revealing comments were made.
Martha Ansara, for the SEARCH Foundation, spoke of a secret meeting of a handful of people at the Wayside Chapel in 2001, discussing reviving the Palm Sunday Committee. She said that the group "just couldn't work with the NoWar group". (The Palm Sunday committee refused to allow a number of radicals to join, including Nick Everett and Pip Hinman, who were twice ejected.) Ansara said the decision last year to work with the other peace groups was made under sufferance. "It just hasn't worked", she claimed.
Tim Ayres, president of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, criticised the WAWC for its reliance on "sloganeering" and "peace haiku". He also accused "Socialist Alliance-No War" members of "attacking our delegates on the job".
Anna York from the National Union of Students blamed Books not Bombs for demoralising the student anti-war networks on campus which, she said, were getting smaller and smaller.
Peter Murphy of the SEARCH Foundation , said that "to oppose motion [to close down WAWC] was to slow down the movement". He said the debate was "not about left versus right, but about how to work with the ALP and the labour movement". "We will have to co-operate", he conceded, "but at arm's length".
Lindy Nolan, representing the NSW Teachers Federation, said those calling for unity were not "self-critical". Bruce Cornwall, representing the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist), said that the split would allow the SPJC "to get on with the job of building the peace movement".[6]