Last night saw a very special Chamber event - a Business Dinner with Andrew Mackenzie, President of the German-Australian Chamber and CEO of BHP. Held at Melbourne's beautiful RACV City Club, the topic of the evening was: Free Trade: The Driving Force of the Global Economy. Dr Christoph Hein, Asia-Pacific Correspondent at Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, moderated the 'fireside chat' that followed Mr Mackenzie's keynote on free trade. This was a fantastic opportunity for members to hear from and even put questions to the Chamber President, live through an app that also provided the opportunity to vote on questions posed by other guests.
The dinner also offered the opportunity to officially welcome both the Chamber's newly appointed Executive Director Ms Alexandra Voss and Chairman of the Board Mr Jeff Connolly, CEO and Managing Director at Siemens Australia. We were also honoured that H.E. Dr Anna Prinz, Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany and Patron of the Chamber, joined the list of high-ranking guests.
We would like to thank our two sponsors of the evening, Winder Controls (represented by Managing Director Bernd Portugall) & uvex Safety Australia (represented by Managing Director Andreas Dammann) for their support, and would also like to acknowledge and thank our two event partners, the Australia China Business Council and the American Chamber of Commerce in Australia.