ChangeMakers

Australia is in the middle of a national conversation that could transform our relationship with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. But how much do you know about the long story that sits behind the Voice to Parliament referendum?  Thomas Mayo is a Kaurareg Aboriginal and Kalkalgal, Erubamle Torres Strait Islander man, born on Larrakia country in Darwin. He shares with us his journey in...

Few people have been as effective at agitating for a stronger climate and environment movement as Bill McKibben. He has consistently pushed new strategies and thinking in the battle to save our natural environment and our climate.  In celebration of his agitator spirit, we are re-sharing this #InCaseYouMissedIt episode with Bill McKibben recorded in June 2022. In this chat Bill shares how he found...

Australian of the Year Grace Tame talks with us about her journey into change making and the challenges she has encountered. She talks about the power of even small action, and the impact that petitions had in the #LetHerSpeak movement. She talks about how the pathway to making change can be uneven, made difficult by the experience of trauma. It is a wide ranging conversation where, with a full he...

Today we talk with Claire O’Rouke - a former journalist, climate campaigner and author of Together We Can - about the diverse and creative grassroots movement of people around Australia taking action to respond to the threat of climate change.  Together We Can canvassed over 70 stories of Australians who have developed novel community based responses to help our climate, defying the logic that you...

So what do former Fire Chief Greg Mullins and Australian Cricket Captain Pat Cummins have in common? They both want action on climate change and they have both worked with Amanda McKenzie, CEO of Australia’s Climate Council, to build their strategy. Amanda is a climate communicator who has worked to catalyse different communities of people affected by climate change so they can become powerful cli...

Karen Iles is long time social changemaker, lawyer and victim survivor of aggravated sexual assault when she was a child. As a young adult she went to the police to lodge a statement so they would investigate the crime, only to be stymied at every turn. After almost 20 years of police inaction, she has launched a campaign to create a duty for police to investigate allegations of serious crimes lik...

Modern society tells subtle but powerful stories that shape how we think about how we should live together, make decisions together and what we should value. Jon Alexander has identified three of these stories - the subject story of the tyrant strong man, the consumer story of the modern market and the citizen story, as alternative ways we can be. In this chat we identify how these stories impact...

There is a powerful movement led for and by the trans and gender diverse community building in Australia - and today’s ChangeMaker Chat is with one of its founders. Jackie Turner is a trans woman and a long time social justice and climate organiser. This chat explores how organising in her community has given her a new lens on how and why we make change. She outlines the threats to the trans commu...

Today’s podcast looks at racism in the not for profit world. Aminata Conteh-Bigher has an extraordinary story; having developed powerful leadership qualities in Sierra Leonne civil war forced her to flee her home. In Australia she founded the Aminata Maternal Foundation to change the dangerous conditions that women face when giving birth in Sierra Leonne. Today she shares how this journey has plac...

One of the biggest hurdles to powerful climate action is changing our economy so it is no longer reliant on fossil fuels. Too often plans hatched by experts or environmentalists far removed from coal mining communities fail, because they are unable to bring affected communities and workers with them.  This episode comes from Collie Western Australia and talks about how the Australian Manufacturing...

Terri Janke is an Aboriginal and Torrest Strait Islander Lawyer who uses the law to protect and advance Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property. As a Meriam and Wuthathi woman who grew up in Cairns in northern Queensland, for over 20 years she has crafted a set of legal instruments that allow for the protection of Indigenous Culture. From an Indigenous perspective, Culture is the embodiment...

In the US midterm elections, one of the extraordinary outcomes was how many young people turned their back on some of the more extreme candidates that denied the 2020 election result. Yet should it have been so surprising? Young people have been organising like their lives depended on it for a while - including through the March for Our Lives movement against gun violence.  This episode is a re-re...

The city of Barcelona has lived with an unprecedented housing crisis, and in its wake the city created a new kind of radical and successful political party. Former housing activist Ada Colou was elected as the city’s Mayor in 2015, and again in 2019. What led to her success? This story, a re-release of our very first episode back in 2017, shares the story and its lessons from the streets of Barcel...

Jane McAlevey is a fierce advocate for winning social change through organising. Her organising method, grounded in decades of experience, mentorship and the battles of many movements across US history, is that workers and people need to lead their own change. She specialises in teaching how you can support people to do this.  For unionists, her work is well known - and this episode is a joyous jo...

One of the biggest challenges facing any change maker is how to enlist help from the state, especially when it comes to the fight for economic justice. Australian Labor Party Member of Parliament, Daniel Mulino, has written about the history and future of the welfare state, and in his recent book Safety Net proposes new (and old) ways for imagining the welfare state as a vehicle for managing perso...

In too many wealthy countries - political leaders are choosing harsher and harsher policies when it comes to refugees. But there is one country that has decided to treat refugees with basic human decency. Uganda doesn’t lock up its refugees. Instead they live in settlements with freedom of movement, access to land and education. What can the rest of the world learn from Uganda? We recorded this st...

In this ChangeMaker Chat the tables are turned and the person being interviewed is our host Amanda Tattersall. This is an interview previously recorded as part of the On Purpose Podcast, produced by the Muslim Womens’ Association. Interview host Feda Abdo canvases Amanda’s experience as an organiser, some of her research work on people power in cities around the world as well as her more personal...

Could there be a single lever in the global marketplace that could transform the stakes for climate change? Yes - the insurance industry. Over the past 5 years insurance has been turned upside down by a nimble network of climate campaigners that have set new rules to end insurance for fossil fuel projects. We are re-releasing this 2021 story of the Sunrise Project, the Insure our Future coalition,...

How on earth did all those community independents win seats in the May 2022 Election?  This ChangeMaker Chat talks to Katerina Gaita the Field Organiser and Volunteer Coordinator for Zoe Daniel’s campaign in Goldstein. She unpacks the long march of the independents, starting with Cathy McGowan winning in Indi to the ‘Wave of Teal’ in 2022. As a community organiser and community builder she explain...

While the world is striving to stop catastrophic climate change, there is plenty of conflict over how climate campaign goals are chosen and the language that is used to express them. A key fault line is between the Global North and Global South and whether campaigns about energy transition are imposed onto communities, or connected to solutions that create broader economic, social and cultural jus...

Lots of people say they co-design research and policy with communities, but how do you know when co-design is being done well (and when it isn’t)? We talk to one of the world’s leading autistic participatory researchers, Professor Liz Pellicano from University College London. She shares the elements of good co-design, such as the process of interdependence, the role of relationships and power in t...

This week we interview one of the world’s leading climate action warriors, Bill McKibben. Bill began as a writer, where his passion for the story and his love of nature drew him to write the first popular global book about climate change - The End of Nature. In the 2000s, dismayed at the lack of grassroots action to stop climate change he founded 350.org . Still fighting - his latest mission is to...

Australian party politics can seriously lack diversity. This conversation is about how that can be changed. Osmond Chiu has been pushing to increase cultural diversity in the Australian Labor Party for a while. Today he shares some of the triumphs, tribulations, and lessons about how change is possible - including some reflections on the highs and lows of the 2022 Australian Election. Osmond is a...

The 2022 Australian Election is all about the Independent ‘Teal' Candidates - but where did this Independent movement come from? Today we talk with Nick Haines, Voices for Indi activist, and son of Helen Haines, Member for Indi, about how it all began. He shares his family's story and how he helped support Cathy McGowan, the first of the Independent Candidates, to win the seat of Indi from S...

This is the first of two episodes about people power in election campaigns. Today we feature a campaign by the Australian digital campaign group GetUp. This independent community movement worked to change the electoral outcome in the Tasmanian seat of Bass in 2016. The story shares lessons about how people can work in elections to have their needs and issues heard, and the role that local relation...