dialogue insights: how australia can remain an investable, high-productivity growth market | jun'26

At our June Abundium Dialogue at Baker McKenzie, Barangaroo, multinational leaders tackled two sides of the same question: how does Australia stay an investable, high-productivity growth market, and what can local leaders actually do to influence the outcome?

The timing was pointed. When we polled CEOs after our lunch with the Prime Minister earlier this month, 44% said their confidence pitching global HQ for investment had declined since the budget, with regulatory burden the leading reason. So this session was less about theory and more about the levers within your control.

We heard from Dr Nici Sweaney (Founder & CEO, AI Her Way) on AI-enabled productivity, and Productivity Commissioner Martin Stokie (Australian Productivity Commission) on the policy and capital picture. Across two very different vantage points, the practical and the macro, they arrived at the same conclusion: Australia's "forgotten time zone" is actually a head start, if local leaders choose to use it.

part one - dr nici sweaney: AI is a leadership decision

be the proof, not the afterthought

Nici opened by naming the position every leader in the room holds: your global headquarters makes the big calls on budget, mandate and investment while we sleep. But capital, she argued, is the most mobile thing on earth, it moves to wherever the results are.

With around US$1.5 trillion being spent on AI globally this year and an estimated 95% of enterprise AI showing no return, the opportunity is unusually stark. Your Australian operation might represent just 2–5% of global revenue, but if you pilot AI here, prove a return, and export it, you can account for a far greater share of the innovation your organisation adopts worldwide. Her analogy: Australia is the McCafé of McDonald's - trial it down here, away from the glare, iron out the kinks, then roll it out to the world.

treat AI as a leadership decision, not an IT one

The most common mistake Nici sees is treating AI as a tooling question - which licence, which model, build or buy. The real work, she argued, is change management. Leaders need to give their people two things: permission and guardrails.

She reframed governance as a steering wheel rather than a brake - clear boundaries that let an organisation move faster, not slower. It matters because the productivity is often already happening in the shadows: around 30% of employees use AI without telling anyone. Those wins sit in silos, they aren't systematic, and they never earn HQ's attention because they never show a measurable return.

climb the integration pyramid

Nici's central framework mapped five levels of AI integration:

1. Prompting large language models directly
2. AI Automations - Custom bots and agents that hold your instructions so work isn't rebuilt from scratch
3. Connected AI Assistants wired into your wider tech stack
4. AI Workflows - proces triggered automation that runs without a human initiating it
5. AI operating systems - agentic AI that works like employees, with memory, judgement and ownership of outcomes

Most organisations are stuck at levels one to three, which only makes humans faster. The genuine productivity unlock, and the rare opportunity for multinationals, sits at levels four and five.

Her practical advice for getting moving: pick one process that is repetitive, well-documented, low-stakes and frankly boring (meeting notes, inbox triage, calendar management). Measure what it costs you today, pilot AI against it, nominate an owner, and prove the return. "Slow is fast" - make AI earn your trust before you scale it.

the risks leaders own

Nici was clear that moving up the pyramid means owning the risks: algorithmic bias, data security, unauthorised action, the erosion of critical thinking, and the rise of deepfakes and malicious intent. Her guidance for leaders came down to four questions worth being able to answer of any AI system: do you know what it was trained on, do you know where your data goes, can a human trace and contest its decisions, and can you show how it decided? With Australian law tightening around AI decisions that affect people, the ability to trace and defend those decisions is becoming non-negotiable.

part two - martin stokie: the productivity and capital picture

a productivity problem that's really an income problem

Martin grounded the room in the macro reality. In the most recent quarter, national labour productivity fell 0.6% while hours worked rose 0.9% - Australians are working harder and producing less, and there is a limit to how hard anyone can work.

Zoom out and productivity has been essentially flat for a decade. Because productivity is causally linked to real wages, that stagnation has a direct consequence: as a nation, we can sustainably only pay ourselves what we earned ten years ago. As Martin put it, this is less a cost-of-living crisis than an income crisis. Australia has also slipped in the OECD rankings, with the United States the standout, a decade and more of technology-led transformation, now AI-enabled, opening up a widening gap.

the gains live in the boring 98%

One of the PC's most useful findings: only about 2% of innovation is genuinely new-to-the-world R&D. The other 98% is adopting and adapting existing processes. Yet policy tends to over-reward the 2% with tax credits and concessions, while under-investing in the prosaic process change that actually lifts an economy that is 80% services and overwhelmingly people-driven.

The biggest lever, Martin argued, isn't a new machine, it's management capability. When the room was polled, leaders saw 11–20% productivity upside (and in some cases more than 30%) from these "98% factors" alone, with technology adoption and regulatory burden named as their two biggest challenges.

why multinationals matter here

This was the throughline connecting both speakers. The gap between Australian and global enterprises is widening - and local firms operate in a single market, while the leaders in the room operate across many.

Martin's view: multinationals are uniquely placed to import world-best management practices, techniques and skilled people that Australian businesses simply won't otherwise see. He invoked the "see one, do one, teach one" philosophy — you can't adopt what you've never been exposed to. Capital deepening, skilled migration, and making better use of the highly capable talent already arriving in Australia were all flagged as national priorities. The case you make to HQ for capability and mandate doesn't just grow your operation; it lifts the country's investability.

a message of optimism

Martin closed as a self-described eternal optimist. Simply having the productivity conversation, he noted, is a useful starting point and even "an army of agents" freeing up capacity is a real improvement. It may not always show up as a headcount reduction; more often it shows up as a lower future headcount, with the same team doing more. Set against Australia's abundant resources, educated people and rule of law, his conclusion was simple: there is a huge future here, and the opportunity is what we make of it.

the takeaway for multinational leaders

Put the two sessions together and a clear playbook emerges. Australia's position on the edge of the global map is an advantage, not a limitation. The local operation that proves AI works, measures the return, and builds the management capability to scale it can do two things at once: strengthen its own case for mandate and investment with HQ, and help lift the productivity of the market it operates in.

The levers are more within your control than the headlines suggest. The question Nici left the room with is the right one to take back to your team: what does your global headquarters see when they look at you?

your quick links and resources

⬇️ Download: Nici's 5 levels of AI integration and get your AI readiness score

🔗 LinkedIn: Connect with Dr Nici Sweaney and Martin Stokie

🌐 Websites: AI Her Way | Australian Productivity Commission