How to build a better world

Elizabeth Mossop, founding principal of Spackman Mossop + Michaels and former dean of Design and Architecture School at UTS, knows quite a bit about flood disasters and their aftermath. She was deeply involved in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina when it hit New Orleans in the US in 2005 and she now heads up the academic side of the Living Lab Northern Rivers which is grappling with the reconstru...

 There’s good news for the built environment – one of Australia’s oldest and probably most respected environmental organisations, the Australian Conservation Foundation, will be paying a lot more attention to buildings and cities.  Host: Tina Perinotto Produced by: The Fifth Estate The Fifth Estate website: www.thefifthestate.com.au Sign up to the newsletter: https://thefifthestate.com.au/subscrib...

Alf Wheeler, founder of innovative plant based materials manufacturer Zeoform, won the Spanish Inquisition pitchfest at The Fifth Estate’s Circular Disruption event in November last year, before a jury of three, Jonathan Hannam of Taronga Ventures, Mick Liubinskas of Climate Salad and Kerry Series of NorthStar Impact. The prize was this article and a podcast interview. There are few people who can...

Parnell Palme McGuinness, as a former consultant for the Liberal Party and conservative-leaning columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, McGuinness jokes she’s the “diversity hire” for those left-ish leaning papers. These days, she’s also a senior fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies, a place where we would expect to find very few commonalities.  Host: Tina Perinotto Produced b...

Infrastructure work is going regional – in water, sanitation, roads and bridges – says Kaushik Chakraborty senior vice president, Asia Pacific & Japan with Bentley Systems in this podcast. It’s part of the big global drift out of cities and into towns and smaller cities that was bolstered by Covid. The trend is reversing the previous super trend that had captured demographers for decades. Host...

John King from JGKing Homes Steel, timber, windows and technology to build home. John runs a successful home building business in Ballarat that’s been going for 40 years and employs 350 people. What’s different about it is that it uses steel construction that it fabricates to specifications, and it also manages to produce 8 star NatHERS homes without many issues and virtually no extra costs. The s...

After 30 years Dave Higgon reckons he’s the longest serving employee relations manager in Australia. He started his career as a bricklayer for his father, before taking up small subcontracting work on the New South Wales north coast and into Queensland. In the early 80s, Higgon became an organiser for the Building Workers Industrial Union, where he developed a strong interest in social justice iss...

Martin Loosemore, professor of construction management is known for his Community of Practice for social procurement, which he started with his colleague Dr Suhair Alkilani at the University of Technology Sydney. Host: Tina Perinotto Produced by: The Fifth Estate The Fifth Estate website: www.thefifthestate.com.au Sign up to the newsletter: https://thefifthestate.com.au/subscribe  Support The Fift...

Nathan Hage is neither a developer nor an energy expert, nor anything else you might think would be crucial to retrofitting a group of 45 flats in Sydney’s inner south with solar and EV charging. He works in logistics, but the one qualifier that he firmly holds is that he’s a resident of the Zinc Apartments, and perhaps through his enthusiasm, the job fell to him to manage this ambitious project....

Amanda Steele is group executive, head of property for ISPT , a business with a strong sustainability profile in the built environment.  In her current role, Amanda is in the leadership team; but in the past she’s had direct sustainability roles at Stockland and CBRE and before that under the mentorship of our current Governor General Sam Mostyn when they were both at insurer IAG. In this podcast,...

Gabrielle McMillan kicked off Equiem in 2011 for Lorenz Grollo, developer and part owner of the Rialto tower in Melbourne who could see the enormous potential of adding value for occupants in the building through technology and social programs to create a kind of village in the sky, that made tenants sticky. Other people agreed. Today the business has blossomed and employs nearly 200 people over 1...

Sara Stace is an influential voice in the active transport and placemaking space. Recently she joined forces with Marc Lane at Vivendi Consulting to becomes its new joint directors of cities. Stace and Lane met at WSP, where the two shared an immense passion for designing for cities and streets. Stace and Lane are now working on housing strategies, active transport, net zero and urban design and p...

 As national president of the Australian Institute of Architects  Jane Cassidy juggles a lot of competing priorities – and they’re not all in the order you’d expect. There are the usual topics of aesthetics and the role of architects and how it’s been eroded over the past decades.  Host: Tina Perinotto Produced by: The Fifth Estate The Fifth Estate website: www.thefifthestate.com.au Sign up to the...

 Andrew Eagles, CEO of the New Zealand Green Building Council reports on an industry that wants to do better, wants green buildings and better regulation. This conversation is a breath of fresh air. Listen now!  Host: Tina Perinotto Produced by: The Fifth Estate The Fifth Estate website: www.thefifthestate.com.au Sign up to the newsletter: https://thefifthestate.com.au/subscribe  Support The Fifth...

Philip Graus has an omnibus cache of insights and history into how cities are formed, what keeps them growing or failing and how to make them sustainable. This podcast is a bit of rambling chat, weaving in and out the incredible number of influences that make a city tick – or not. Host: Tina Perinotto Produced by: The Fifth Estate The Fifth Estate website: www.thefifthestate.com.au Sign up to the...

Founder of Nightingale Housing Jeremy McLeod will no doubt go down in history as the man who managed to shift a truckload of preconceptions about what housing needs to look like – what it should cost and who it is for.  Host: Tina Perinotto Produced by: The Fifth Estate The Fifth Estate website: www.thefifthestate.com.au Sign up to the newsletter: https://thefifthestate.com.au/subscribe  Support T...

Melbourne based Liam Wallis founded boutique sustainable developer Hip V Hype with the idea of spreading the sustainability message by demonstrating viable exemplar projects. Today that notion has evolved into advisory work with other developers and a raft of government authorities, as well as the direct educational events he likes to host from his offices in Melbourne’s inner north Host: Tina Per...

At TFE Live, Tim Buckley director of Climate Energy Finance, and Heidi Lee, chief executive officer of Beyond Zero Emissions, delved deep into Australia’s potential as a global renewable energy superpower, how to transform our coal mining regions to clean energy and new jobs and how China is doing so much to decarbonise the planet. TFE Live Host: Maria Atkinson Talents this episode: Tim Buckley an...

On this episode of Transitions, Tina Perinotto talks to Rory Hunter about the announcement of his first project, which will tick all boxes, including using CLT (cross-laminated timber), being Passivhaus certified and building to rent. He is joined by architect Reade Dixon from Frasers & Partners, who is tasked with turning the vision into reality.  Host: Tina Perinotto Produced by: The Fifth E...

Host: Tina Perinotto Produced by: The Fifth Estate The Fifth Estate website: www.thefifthestate.com.au Sign up to the newsletter: https://thefifthestate.com.au/subscribe  Support The Fifth Estate: thefifthestate.com.au/support-us  LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/the-fifth-estate  Twitter: @FifthEstateAU Facebook: www.facebook.com/thefifthestateAu 

Good vibes were off the charts at our TFE Live event, brought on by Elena Bondareva, who’s on a changemaking arc following the release of her book Changemakers’ Handbook, her fellow guest Pablo Berrutti of Stuart Investors, whose passion project sustainable finance library Altiorem, and upbeat moderator Maria Atkinson. From the impacts of United States on Australia and the rest of the world, to ro...

Tina Perinotto interviews Michael Mobbs, a sustainability guru who founded the sustainable house in Sydney's Chippendale.   Host: Tina Perinotto Produced by: The Fifth Estate The Fifth Estate website: www.thefifthestate.com.au Sign up to the newsletter: https://thefifthestate.com.au/subscribe  Support The Fifth Estate: thefifthestate.com.au/support-us  LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/the-f...

Alison Scotland cut her professional teeth in the challenging world of Standards Australia. Today she runs the Australian Sustainable Built Environment Council.  So, you could say she’s had perfect training for the diplomatic minefield she now has to tread in her current job of getting agreement on built environment policy from a wide range of stakeholders.  Host: Tina Perinotto Produced by: The F...

This is the first episode of the Transitions podcast for The Green List on The Fifth Estate’s How to Build a Better World podcast feed. We interview Skipp Williamson, managing director of Partners in Performance, who shares insights into what happens in advisory and energy transitions at the big end of town. Skipp has led the ambitious company she co-founded for more than 28 years and speaks to us...

Jess Miller is well known to readers of The Fifth Estate - she’s been a brilliant and highly entertaining MC for several of our events now. Starting with our Urban Greening summits at the University of Technology Sydney in the past few years. But of course Jess has a much wider audience than ours. At a very young age, she became a councillor and then deputy mayor of The City of Sydney and then bec...