How to build a better world

Local governments are on the front lines of climate resilience, yet they are often the least resourced to manage critical infrastructure. In this episode, Rory Linehan, director of infrastructure policy advancement at Bentley Systems, joins us to discuss how technology is levelling the playing field. Linehan reveals practical ways regional leaders can safeguard assets, reduce long-term costs, and make informed planning decisions without requiring massive capital budgets or complex technical expertise to build enduring, climate-ready communities.

Host: Tina Perinotto
Produced by: The Fifth Estate
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Melbourne Lord Mayor Nick Reece is just two years into a job that that will be among the most challenging of a career that’s already spanned, policy, politics, economics and business journalism.

Host: Tina Perinotto
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Halfway through her second term as Deputy Lord Mayor of Sydney Jess Miller, who will take to the stage at our next Big Debate, Carbon Triggers, has wasted no time in tackling the glaring problems that annoy her and many others.

Among them are the “lazy” or empty spaces in many of the city’s commercial buildings, the housing that’s given over to short term/Airbnb style accommodation and the loss of places for arts and creative work.

Host: Tina Perinotto
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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 reconstruction of Lismore badly hit by two consecutive floods in 2022.

Host: Tina Perinotto
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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
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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 beat Alf Wheeler in an elevator pitch. At Circular Disruption, the audience saw firsthand why he’s already been quite successful in his business. Hear his insights on this podcast.

Host: Tina Perinotto
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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
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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: Tina Perinotto
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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 secret is high quality windows and window frames materials that break the thermal bridge, that allows about 50 per cent of the heat or cold in regular homes. In this podcast, he shares his secrets and views of steel versus timber.

Host: Tina Perinotto
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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 issues, then joined Multiplex, where he “inherited” responsibility for dealing with social procurement.

Host: Tina Perinotto
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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
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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.

Host: Tina Perinotto
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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, Amanda talks about the drivers of ESG, the success of ISPT’s retrofit of 500 Bourke Street in Melbourne, and the challenges that we can expect as the rollback of globalisation and political upheaval in the climate battle continue.

Host: Tina Perinotto
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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 18 Countries.

Host: Tina Perinotto
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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 policies that helps shape cities and precincts. Tune in to hear their insights on the good and the great of city planning.

Host: Tina Perinotto
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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 Perinotto
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