ADM Western Australian Defence Forum

On Tuesday 21 March, Cheryl Millar attended the inaugural ADM WA Defence Summit.

The highlight was the keynote speech from The Hon Pat Conroy, Minister for Defence Industry where he outlined Defence’s top 3 priorities:

  1. Science and Technology
  2. Infrastructure
  3. Workforce.​​​

 

The following sessions provided more context to those priorities with a continued theme on collaboration between Defence, Industry and Academia.

While the focus was on WA, there was intent for these collaborations to be across Australia and international, taking note of AUKUS and the recent submarine decision.

A rising concern across the presenters and audience was workforce, retention and growth.

A great presentation was provided by Kate O’Shaughnessy from USAsia Centre. She highlighted the threat from China’s perspective and from the rest of Asia’s perspective, but then also highlighted why China was a threat to everyone else. China’s technology gains are astronomical compared to everyone else, including the US.

It was a very interesting day with all participants wanting to work together to grow and support the industry.

Adash Janiszewski

Chief Executive Officer

Adash is Providence’s CEO and is responsible to the Providence Board and Providence’s clients for ensuring the timely delivery of outcomes through advice, guidance and mentoring to Providence’s staff.