Australian Advisory Board on Competitiveness and Charles Kiefel AM Host Delegation Mission to Australia

Published on Thursday July 31, 2025

Last week, GFCC Board Vice-Chair and Australian Advisory Board on Competitiveness (AABC) Chair Mr. Charles Kiefel AM, co-hosted a C-level delegation of U.S. industry and research leaders, organized and led by the Hon. Deborah L. Wince-Smith, President and CEO of the U.S.-based Council on Competitiveness (CoC), and GFCC Founder/President. 

The visit marked the launch of a second phase in the CoC’s growing U.S.-Australia Strategic Innovation Alliance — an initiative the CoC originally launched in 2019, following an MOU with several Australian government ministers. The CoC – along with Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) – inaugurated the alliance with a cross-Australia immersion engaging chief technology officers from industry, academia, and research institutes.

Similarly, this 2025 effort convened a delegation of CoC leaders to meet with leaders from across Australia’s political spectrum, as well as peers in research, innovation, and policy in Melbourne, Canberra, Sydney, and Adelaide. Punctuating a fast-paced week of meetings and visits to cutting-edge laboratories, was the high-impact, invitation-only, Sydney-based Strategic Innovation Alliance Dialogue on July 24, bringing together more then 60 leaders in global finance, industry, policy, and research from across Australia and the United States – where the CoC and the AABC released a concrete “Call to Action” for the two nations’ seniormost leadership to optimize their societies for innovation – the intersection of invention and insight, leading to the creation of social and economic value.

This trip advances a core priority identified by the Council on Competitiveness’ flagship initiative, the “National Commission on Innovation and Competitiveness Frontiers,” in the Commission’s latest report, Competing in the Next Economy: Innovating in the Age of Disruption and Discontinuity. To expand U.S. innovation capacity and capability—the engine of competitiveness, economic growth, wealth creation, and national security—the report calls for a renewed national strategy of robust international engagement, and science, technology and innovation diplomacy. Central to this is peer-to-peer partnering with strategic allies to co-develop and co-deploy the complex, dual-use platform technologies that will shape the next economy. Among global partners, Australia stands out — for its scientific excellence, aligned values, and commitment to innovation.

The senior delegation explored opportunities for joint work in areas including transformational computing (AI and quantum), energy (across a broad portfolio, including connections to advanced nuclear technology), and advanced biology (e.g., bioscience, biotechnology, and biomanufacturing), among others. A focus of discussions was optimizing the use of Australia’s abundant natural resources for long-term economic and security advantage — both in the United States and Australia.

During the trip, the Council-led delegation visited GFCC member Monash University in Melbourne and its cutting-edge technology precinct and innovation labs. Among other strategic meetings, the Melbourne leg included visits to CSIRO and the Aikenhead Centre for Medical Discovery (ACMD). As the delegation transitioned to Canberra, the focus shifted a bit – with key engagements with current Ministerial leaders – like the Hon. Madelein King MP, Minister of Resources, and the Dr. Andrew Leigh, Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities & Treasury – as well as a slate of “shadow” Ministers. In addition, the CoC’s delegation – in a series of sessions with the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (ATSE), and the Australian Council of Learned Academies (ACOLA) – met with the senior-most scientific and university leadership across Australia.

“Australia remains one of the most important and strategic partners to the United States,” said CoC CEO and GFCC President Deborah L. Wince-Smith. “The Council on Competitiveness and the Australian Advisory Board on Competitiveness are calling for a new, strategic innovation alliance – that spans private and public sectors – to find a way forward together; to become more open to one another, sharing in economic success and security; to become more experimental, and to embrace the unknown as strategic allies.”

The CoC will push forward to advance a deepening of the relationships formed on July 21-25, synthesizing key findings, and proposing next steps in the innovation alliance. On the immediate horizon, this includes: (1) helping to arrange a set of visits this September at 2-3 U.S. national laboratories for Australian Members of Parliament and the Chair of the AABC, (2) hosting GFCC member and Vice Chancellor of Monash University in Washington, DC on September 29, 2025, (3) setting up visits with key CoC members in Boston for the Monash Vice Chancellor, October 2-3, 2025, and (4) inviting Australian public and private sector leaders to the October 19-21, 2025 Pittsburgh edition of the Competitiveness Conversations Across America + GFCC Global Innovation Summit.