Two new faces join Australian Wool Innovation board as election results revealed
Australian Wool Innovation has elected two new directors to its board, but once again there was a low voter turnout.
Two new faces will feature on the Australian Wool Innovation board after election results were released on Friday.
But only a tiny portion of the nation’s wool growers voted on who they wanted to direct spending on research and development.
Less than 1000 growers gave their proxy votes to the chairman to use, while 106 viewers watched the meeting on line.
There is an estimated 40,000 wool growers in Australia.
Current board member Dr Michelle Humphries was re-elected and will be joined by Chris Mirams and Anthony Uren.
But well known wool researcher and former AWI head of research Dr Paul Swan missed out, as did wool grower Drew Chapman.
All three successful candidates were officially supported by AWI, which followed the instructions of the board nominating committee.
Mr Mirams was a skills-based nominee, and has held roles with Sheep Producers Australia and Meat and Livestock Australia.
He is a southern NSW-based consultant.
Mr Uren has worked in agriculture for three decades both in on and off farm roles. He is
He is currently operations manager for AJ & PA McBride Ltd.
Dr Humphries is a sheep veterinary specialist and pioneer in the commercial application of artificial sheep breeding technology research as well as being an owner of a Merino breeding enterprise in southern NSW.
She has been on the board of AWI since 2019.
Outgoing AWI chairman had control of 83,000 open proxy votes, and said they had been directed towards the board nominating committee picks.
Mr Uren scored the highest number of votes for his election at 104,864, followed by Dr Humphries with 88,492 votes and Mr Mirams with 80,575 votes.
Votes for those who missed out were 43,392 for Dr Swan and 31,076 for Mr Chapman.
The votes were announced by retiring AWI chairman Jock Laurie. The new board will be headed by George Millington, who was elected unopposed.
