JEDDAH: Khalid Al-Abdullatif has been a Saudi Shoura Council member since December 2016. Australian House of Representatives Speaker Tony Smith and Senator Scott Ryan received a delegation of the Shoura Council-formed Saudi-Australian Friendship Committee, headed by Al-Abdullatif, on Wednesday. The delegation was joined by the ambassador to Saudi Arabia in Australia Mus’aed Ibrahim Al-Saleem, Australian officials and Australian members of the Saudi-Australian Friendship Committee. The delegation also met with Australia’s minister of trade and tourism, members of the foreign affairs and trade committee, to discuss bilateral relations between the two nations. Al-Abdullatif was born in 1962 in Riyadh. He began his studies at Um Al-Qura University in Makkah in 1984, and later pursued a master’s degree in macroeconomics at Western Illinois University in the US. He began his career as an economic specialist and analyst at the Ministry of Finance and National Economy (now known as the Public Investment Fund) from 1984 to 1993. Al-Abdullatif then became the Shoura Council’s director of its economic and financial committee until 1998. He served for 11 years at the Ministry of Islamic Affairs as director general. He was promoted to become the ministry’s endowment affairs assistant undersecretary before becoming undersecretary in 2010, and has been serving in this post since. He sits on many director’s boards due to his role as a representative of the Endowments Supreme Council. These include: Makkah Construction & Development Co., Sahara Petrochemicals, and the National TriGeneration CHP Co.