But unfortunately, Australian-made does not always mean ethically made. Of those 4400 businesses manufacturing in Australia, fewer than 60 are certified as having met their legal obligations to and standards for workers, including machinists, outworkers and pattern makers throughout their supply chain, according to industry body Ethical Clothing Australia.

With fair wages, decent working conditions and regular hours, Zheng is one of the luckier workers.

''Ginger & Smart pay very well; we are a very good team here and we make nice fashion garments,'' she says.

Others are not so fortunate. The word ''sweatshop'' is often associated with countries such as China and India but many clothing workers in Australia, particularly home-based workers, are paid as little as $3 or $4 an hour and do not receive entitlements such as superannuation or annual leave.

Such workers are predominantly migrant women for whom English is a second language, compounding their isolation and a lack of recognition of their plight.

The national manager of ECA, Simon McRae, says: ''The women who are working on these clothes are skilled workers, from the pattern makers to the machinists and seamstresses, and they should be paid fairly and treated right and we should be proud of them.''

In an effort to highlight the skills of garment workers and advocate for their fair treatment, ECA is launching a national campaign called Meet Your Maker next month. Brands that have been accredited as ethical by ECA will use special Meet Your Maker swing tags that feature a QR code or URL for smartphones to take consumers directly to the ECA's website for the individual story of the key maker involved with producing that particular garment.

''What we are trying to highlight is that there is a whole hidden workforce out there that people are unaware is being exploited,'' McRae says. ''By highlighting the people doing the right thing, we want to show that we can have both an ethical industry and a viable industry in Australia.''

Ginger & Smart, Cue, Nobody and Otto & Spike are among the companies taking part in the Meet Your Maker campaign, which is the latest stage of ECA's longer-term effort to encourage fashion companies to become compliant with its accreditation and labelling system.

Lisa Ho, Collette Dinnigan and Ginger & Smart are among the companies that have already received accreditation by opening up their supply chains to independent audits to ensure they meet minimum legal obligations to their workers under the Federal Textile, Clothing, Footwear and Associated Industries Award.

Accredited brands are able to display an ECA trademark on Australian-made products, providing consumers with a way to support ethically produced garments.

Genevieve Smart is the first to admit the accreditation process, which costs from $300 to $6000 a year, is time-consuming and labour intensive.

''It's a big decision for a company of our size to take on the auditing process,'' she says.

''It's not easy, because there are so many people involved in the [manufacturing] process but when a garment leaves our hands to be made by somebody, it's important for us to know that it's in the right factory being made by the right people in the right working conditions.''

Alexandra Smart says the duo decided to embark on the accreditation process because ''it matters to us personally that the people who work with us in the process of production are well looked after'' but adds that achieving accreditation also delivers a selling point with consumers.

''More than ever in this current retail environment, consumers are looking for authenticity,'' she says. ''They want to feel that the people who contributed to the garment have been looked after and even if it doesn't result in a sale, [the ECA accreditation] strikes up a discussion about how something was made and that's a good discussion to have.''

The co-founder of Nobody, John Condilis, says his decision to gain ECA accreditation was based on the values with which he has operated his denim company since its inception 12 years ago and a desire to continue manufacturing in Australia.

He says: ''We are a family-owned business and it became apparent in the mid-'90s that the textile industry was going through drastic changes, which forced clothing companies to source offshore and led to a dramatic decline in Australian manufacturing.''

He says the fair treatment of workers will help keep an industry here and ''in three to five years, I think this will be second nature for everyone''.

Though exploitative practices mean cheaper labour, McRae invokes the popularity of the slow-food and ethical trade movements as points of difference to which Australian clothing manufacturers could aspire.

''We can never compete with a company like China in terms of volume but we can say in Australia that we do it the right way,'' he says. ''It's amazing to see how educated people have become in terms of fair-trade coffee and wanting to find out where their food comes from, so why not educate them in the same way about fashion?''

As the co-ordinator of advocacy body Asian Women at Work, Lina Cabarero works to empower the 1700-plus Asian women workers who are members of her organisation.

She applauds the ECA's Meet Your Maker campaign as ''a good idea to make the companies accountable'' but says fundamental issues are yet to be addressed.

''The supply chain has to cleaned up a lot more,'' she says.

''It's all about money. If people are interested in bringing about justice to outworkers then this exploitation must stop and they have to start treating them as real people, as employees, not slaves. There are still some labels who sell their clothes for over $1000 and they pay their women $9 an hour.''