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The Sustainable Hour no. 588 | Transcript | Podcast notes
Our guest in The Sustainable Hour on 29 April 2026 is Samantha (Sam) Smith, who is the sustainability manager of advisory services for Development Victoria.
. . .
There is a growing sense that something has shifted in the way we speak to one another – in politics, in media, and in everyday conversations. Anger, agression and anxiety in the air. In this episode, The Sustainable Hour begins with counter-proposal: what if positivity is not naïve, but necessary?
At a recent Connection Café gathering in Geelong, a simple idea emerged – to send a letter of appreciation to someone in politics who is making a constructive difference. The result was an open letter to Senator David Pocock, expressing gratitude for his level of integrity and transparency and his clear focus on the public good.
Democracy is not only shaped by critique and pressure, but also by encouragement. Recognition, when it is genuine, can be a force that strengthens the very qualities we wish to see more of. If you’d like to add your name to the document, you can do it here.
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A world in flux – and signs of acceleration
From there, the programme moves into a global perspective. Colin Mockett OAM’s roundup begins, as it often does, with the realities of a heating planet – wildfires in the United States, driven by extreme drought conditions and sparked by something as small as a stray balloon.
Yet the broader picture carries a different momentum. The upcoming Earthshot Prize event in Mumbai points to a surge in practical solutions – innovations designed to restore nature, clean the air, revive oceans, reduce waste and stabilise the climate.
More striking still are the global energy trends. New figures suggest that renewable energy has now overtaken fossil fuels in meeting new electricity demand. Solar power alone is expanding at extraordinary speed, with China leading a surge that is reshaping the global energy system.
In Australia, this shift is becoming visible in everyday life. Record numbers of electric vehicles are being purchased, not just by early adopters but by what Colin calls “middle Australians” in suburbs and regional areas. At the same time, rooftop solar and home battery systems are being installed at unprecedented rates.
Taken together, these developments suggest that the transition is no longer just a policy ambition – it is becoming an economic and social reality.
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Designing for and with nature
At the heart of this episode is our conversation with Sam Smith from Development Victoria, whose work sits at the intersection of planning, sustainability and community impact.
Her role begins at the earliest stages of a project – when a site is first assessed and its future imagined. The challenge is immediate and complex: how do you improve nature while building on land that will inevitably be transformed?
The answer, she suggests, lies in shifting the mindset. Rather than asking how to minimise harm, the goal becomes how to give back more than is taken.
This involves working closely with Traditional Owners, embedding Care for Country into the design process, and understanding the ecological and cultural context of each site. It also means recognising that many development sites are already compromised – contaminated land, former industrial areas, or agricultural land under pressure from urban expansion.
Within these constraints, the ambition is to create outcomes that are not only viable, but regenerative.
Building communities that can withstand the future
A central theme throughout the conversation is climate resilience – not as an abstract concept, but as something deeply human. For Sam, resilience ultimately comes down to community. The ability to respond to shocks, adapt to change and recover from disruption depends on the strength of relationships between people.
This is what she describes as social sustainability. It is about designing places where people feel connected, safe and able to participate in shaping their own environment. It is about moving away from transactional approaches – where developments are delivered to communities – and towards relational ones, where communities are actively involved in co-design.
The physical design of neighbourhoods plays a crucial role here. If spaces are built primarily for cars, opportunities for connection are limited. But when space is given back to people – through walkable streets, shared public areas and accessible transport – something different becomes possible.
In one major project, allowing a natural waterway to expand and shift with flood risk has opened up new possibilities for biodiversity, cooling, and public space. It is a small example of how working with natural systems, rather than against them, can reshape entire communities.
The question of food
Amid discussions of energy, transport and housing, one issue stands out as both urgent and under-discussed: food security. Sam reflects on how this once-prominent concern has faded from the sustainability narrative. Yet the current global context – with fragile supply chains and increasing reliance on fossil fuels for food production and distribution – reveals just how vulnerable the system is.
There is a need to bring food back into the conversation – into planning, into communities, and into everyday life. Growing food locally, even at small scales, becomes part of resilience. It is another example of how large systemic challenges often point back to local, tangible actions.
Healing damaged landscapes
Our conversation also touches on the limits of what can be restored. Former mining sites, for example, present extreme challenges – contamination, instability and long-term environmental damage. In some cases, the cost and risk make rehabilitation unfeasible, at least for now. Yet even here, new approaches are emerging. Techniques such as bioremediation – using plants and natural processes to draw toxins from the soil – offer slow but promising pathways to healing. It is a reminder that nature itself holds many of the solutions, if given time and space.
Looking back – and moving forward
Reflecting on the past decade, there is a sense of unfinished progress. The optimism of earlier years has been tempered by political shifts, lost momentum and the sheer scale of the challenge. Yet the movement has not stood still. It has evolved, learned and, in many cases, become more grounded in practical action.
There is also a recognition that change cannot rely solely on influencing those in power. Stronger representation, deeper community engagement and new forms of leadership are all part of what is needed.
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Be brave – and stay connected
The 588th episode of The Sustainable Hour closes with a message that even though in times of uncertainty, when it is easy to become discouraged, our response, Sam suggests, is not to withdraw, it is to be brave. To keep building connections. To support one another. To remember that we are part of the systems we are trying to protect.
Communities that care for each other are more resilient. People who feel connected are more likely to act. And when that happens, change becomes not just possible, but inevitable.
In the end, the thread running through the entire conversation is this: we reshape our world, not only through policies and technologies, but through how we relate – to each other, to place, and to the living systems we depend on.
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OUR SONGS – from healing land to reshaping our world
Music continues to be part of how The Sustainable Hour tells its story – not just reflecting ideas, but translating them into something that can be felt.
In this episode, we revisit an earlier original piece, ‘Let the Plants Move In’ – a song about restoration, patience and working with nature rather than against it. Its message aligns closely with the conversation about bioremediation and regenerative design: that healing does not come from force, but from understanding natural systems and allowing them to recover.
Alongside it, a new song – our 59th – premieres: ‘Reshape Our World’. Emerging directly from the themes of this episode, it brings together the ideas of care, community and practical action. The lyrics echo the conversation with Sam Smith – building for people, not cars, reconnecting with nature, and recognising that change happens through everyday choices.
Where the earlier song looks at how landscapes can heal, the new one turns towards us – towards responsibility, agency and the quiet power of collective action. Together, the two pieces form a kind of arc: from restoring the land to reshaping the world we live in.
– A determined song about how we reshape our world, together, through care. Inspired by our interview with Sam Smith.
“Working in the Impact team, it feels like a lot of different threads of my interests over the years have come together where in the Impact team, we sit with the First Peoples Partnership. We have our own team that … People that build relationships directly with the traditional owners. As the state government, we are constantly reminded that we are always on someone else’s unceded country. And that’s where we start our projects. It’s building those relationships up front.”
~ Sam Smith, Development Victoria
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We at The Sustainable Hour would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we are broadcasting, the Wadawurrung People. We pay our respects to their elders – past, present, and emerging, and extend that respect to all First Nations people.
The traditional custodians lived in harmony with the land for millennia, nurturing it and thriving in often harsh conditions. Their connection to the land was deeply spiritual and sustainable. This land was invaded and stolen from them. It was never ceded. Today, it is increasingly clear that if we are to survive the climate emergency we face, we must learn from their land management practices and cultural wisdom.
True climate justice cannot be achieved until Australia’s First Nations people receive the justice they deserve. When we speak about the future, we must include respect for those yet to be born, the generations to come. As the old saying reminds us: “We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.” It is deeply unfair that decisions to ignore the climate emergency are being made by those who won’t live to face the worst impacts, leaving future generations to bear the burden of their inaction.
“The Indigenous worldview has been marginalised for generations because it was seen as antiquated and unscientific and its ethics of respect for Mother Earth were in conflict with the industrial worldview. But now, in this time of climate change and massive loss of biodiversity, we understand that the Indigenous worldview is neither unscientific nor antiquated, but is, in fact, a source of wisdom that we urgently need.”
~ Robin Wall Kimmerer, weallcanada.org
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TRANSCRIPT
of The Sustainable Hour no. 588
António Guterres, United Nations Secretary-General: (00:02)
Cooperation over chaos. We are all in this together.
Jingle:
The Sustainable Hour. For a green, clean, sustainable Geelong: The Sustainable Hour.
Tony Gleeson: (00:26)
Welcome to The Sustainable Hour podcast. We’d like to start off by acknowledging we’re broadcasting from the land of the Wadawurrung people who have been custodians of this land for tens of thousands of years. We’d like to acknowledge their elders – past, present and those who receive that great honour in the future. We have a great debt of gratitude to them for the way they nurtured, both their communities and their land, their country, for millennia before their land was stolen. While doing that, they accumulated a great amount of ancient wisdom, wisdom dominated by their care for country. And every opportunity, we will be pushing for that to continue because so many of the answers to the climate crisis come from there, from that ancient wisdom.
Mik Aidt: (01:33)
I don’t know if it’s just me, but I sense this growing negativity everywhere. It’s on our screens, it’s in the air. These giant people are angry. They’re angry with the direction of the country. Bullying, booing, people being nasty to one another. It’s spreading like thorny brambles, isn’t it? I mean, some of our politicians, that anger and constant complaining and some of them honestly look like they have spent a lifetime shaping their faces into sour gooseberries, always scolding and ready to lash out.
I think we can offer something that’s better than that. In fact, I think that would be far more powerful, even in politics. And it’s called positivity. It’s about showing care. It’s about choosing an optimistic approach to what we can achieve when we try to work together, when we accept and respect one another. It’s about trying to be good, instead of wanting to be one of the baddies, one of the bullies in the schoolyard.
On Friday, we met at our monthly Connection Cafe here in town, and someone there suggested something that I really think is powerful, even though it’s incredibly simple, which was that we should send a letter of positivity to one of our politicians. Why? Simply because we assume that that’s probably not something that these politicians receive very often, a letter of positivity. And we are talking here about someone who day after day is making a positive difference in the Australian parliament. He’s a community independent, he’s a former footballer, and his name is David Pocock. So here’s what we wrote:
Phoebe: (03:17)
Dear Senator David Pocock, we are a small community group based in Geelong, meeting monthly at our Connection Cafe gatherings. At our most recent meeting, we felt it was an important moment to write to you, to express our sincere appreciation for the work you are doing on behalf of the community in Canberra. We believe your efforts are not always recognised as much as they deserve. Your commitment, integrity, and clear focus on the public good stand out and we want to acknowledge the value of what you are achieving.
As a group, we are deeply engaged in community wellbeing, environmental issues and the growing impacts of climate change. We are currently working to build broader community support for stronger action from our local councils, the City of Greater Geelong, Surf Coast Shire and the Borough of Queenscliff, particularly in maintaining and strengthening their commitments to environmental sustainability and climate response. At the same time, we are closely observing the resistance faced by many of the thoughtful and forward-looking initiatives put forward by independent members of parliament. It is concerning to see how often these ideas are met with opposition that does not reflect the broader community interests.
We share a growing concern about the influence of lobbyists and about the role some parliamentarians play in spreading misinformation and lacking transparency. This undermines public trust and risks disengaging the very people whose voices are essential in a healthy democracy. For these reasons, we felt it was important not only to express our concerns, but also to say thank you. Your work gives us encouragement and reinforces the importance of continued community engagement and advocacy. And sending this open letter to you simply feels good. Please accept our sincere appreciation for your dedication and leadership. It does not go unnoticed.
Mik: (05:38)
So that’s the letter from the Connection Cafe here in Geelong. And because it’s an open letter, if you would like to add your name as well, before we send it off to David Pocock, you can do this this week. So we’ll put a link out in our show notes. Just go to climatesafety.info and look for this week’s podcast and you’ll find the link there. You can add your name on a Google document where the letter is put.
Enough about positivity, now it’s over to Colin Mockett, and I know, Colin, you usually have some pretty dark and gloomy news from around the world, but are you able to keep a positive attitude as well?
COLIN MOCKETT’S GLOBAL OUTLOOK:
Colin: (06:19)
Yes I am. I start with a little bit of bad news, but it’s what’s happening. But then it’s all positive for my World Roundup for this week. I’ll begin in Georgia, America, where wildfires have burned more than 39,500 acres and destroyed more than 120 homes. That’s the official figures.
Two major fires in the southeast of the state, the Pineland Road fire and the Highway 82 fire, prompted Georgia Governor Brian Kemp to declare a 30-day state of emergency in 91 of the state’s 159 counties. “Right now, conditions are so dry that even one small spark can quickly turn into a dangerous wildfire”, Georgia Forestry Commission’s Director, Johnny Sabo, said, “We’re in extreme drought conditions and wildfire activity has already surpassed our five-year average”
The fires began sprouting up on the 18th of April and Kemp declared a state of emergency four days later. It’s believed to have started when a foil balloon came into contact with power lines. Something as simple as that.
But now to Mumbai in India, which will host this year’s “Earthshot” Prize event in November. Founded by Prince William in 2020, the “Earthshot” Prize is the world’s most prestigious environmental award. It’s designed to discover, accelerate, and create solutions to repair and regenerate the planet. It sets out five goals that it calls Earthshots.
They are: 1) Protect and restore nature, 2) Clean our air, 3) Revive our oceans, 4): Build a waste-free world, and 5) Fix our climate.
Now each year, more than 400 nominations are reviewed by an expert panel. These are reduced to 15 finalists and they’ll meet in Mumbai. Each year, the five chosen winners receive one million pounds each, along with introductions to investors, corporates and policymakers that can accelerate their progress.
Last year’s winners included a system of combining crops growing under solar farms, a method of replacing plastic packaging with a seaweed substitute and the breathable fabric that’s made from pineapple waste. But you can find them all on www.earthshotprize.org.
This year’s Earthshot supporters will include Amazon, whose spokesperson said its participation highlighted its commitment to sustainability and climate leadership as part of de-carbonizing its operations.
Amazon has more than 40,000 electric vehicles in its global network and is investing $2 billion in a climate pledge fund which will help develop technologies to a low carbon economy. The initiative all comes at a decisive moment for the planet because scientific evidence shows that positive tipping points for the five Earthshots are right now all within reach, but only if action accelerates now. Therefore, for the next five years, the Earthshot Prize will focus its 75 finalists all on short-term goals. They want them all to concentrate on solving the Earthshots by 2030.
Now to Australia, where a quiet revolution is currently taking place under our noses. That’s the switch to electric vehicles that was triggered by the oil shortage that came after the US-Iran war closed the Strait of Hormuz. Now this brought in comparisons with the last oil shortage in Australia in 1979. But the difference is that in 1979, Australians had no choice but to absorb the shock. This time around, many who can are quietly moving away from petrol and diesel and towards electric.
Last month, electric vehicle sales in Australia reached a new record with around 15,000 sold. And that’s a significant 40 per cent higher than the previous month, February, went up 40 per cent in a single month. And industry figures show that it’s mostly what’s termed “middle Australians” that are moving to EVs, that’s Australians in the suburbs and the regions. And just as EV sales have lifted, so have other ways to move away from fossil fuels. Because like EVs, the cost of rooftop solar and battery storage has dropped considerably, causing a mass take-up by Australians.
A prime example is the astonishing success of the government’s Cheaper Home Batteries programme, since it was implemented last July. More than 250,000 subsidised units were installed just last month, during March, as part of that programme.
And a review of the postcards involved shows it was predominantly in outer metropolitan and regional Australia. Again, it’s the middle Australians that are doing it. And when you crunch the numbers, this meant that last month, 10 per cent of all household batteries sold globally were here in Australia. Such was the speed that people were taking it up during March.
And while we’re talking global figures, the take-up of solar panels isn’t just growing. The scale of its 2025 surge was the highest ever, by a massive amount. China alone added more solar last year than the entire world did in 2023. Solar’s world growth was 18 times that of gas last year.
The figures show that the world added enough new solar to displace every single unit of gas exports through the Strait of Hormuz. Now this means that the days of those floating bulk carriers, which are really floating bombs in a war situation, they’re now numbered. And the newly released 2025 figures show that for the first time in history,
Clean power met every single unit of new global demand. Fossil generation fell by 38 terawatts, while the global economy grew by 3.2 per cent. Solar alone met 75 per cent of new global demand. And renewables at 33.8 per cent officially beat coal generation at 33 per cent. These are world figures.
They’re not just Australians now. And that’s for the first time ever. Renewables are beating fossil fuels. So this is no longer a transition. It now simply makes good economic sense. It’s an electrotech revolution. As the saying goes, “if you’re betting on fossil fuels today, it’s like investing in whale oil in 1879 when Edison was turning on his first light bulb”.
And the good news hasn’t ended yet for Tony. At the weekend, the world’s greenest sports team, Forest Green Rovers, beat Morecombe 5-0, lifting them to seventh on their table. That’s one point behind Scunthorpe, who are in fifth position. There are still two games of the regular season to go, and the top five teams are moving to a playoff situation to determine which teams are promoted. So the Greenies are getting really excited in Gloucestershire and that winds up our round up for the week.
. . .
Jingle: (15:39)
Listen to our Sustainable Hour – for the future.
Tony: (15:46)
Our guest today is Sam Smith. Sam is the sustainability manager of advisory services for Development Victoria. The role sits in the impact team and shares a direct focus on creating resilient and nature-positive outcomes. So there’s a lot to drill down on there, Sam. Welcome! Thanks for coming on The Sustainable Hour.
Sam: (16:11)
Thanks, Tony! Yeah, no, it’s been a while since I’ve had to go, so it’s great to see you all. Yes, I suppose the bulk of my job starts at that master planning stage where we get a site. And Development Victoria is a state agency, it’s not a state department. So the way they operate is… They have to sort of, I suppose, sit financially or commercially balanced.
We don’t get handouts from the state government. We do get ministerial appointed projects. Like the house statement, which is a housing affordability estate which we deliver on, I suppose, state owned sites.
My focus specifically, I start pretty much with nature. I try to, I suppose, improve the quality of nature, which is really hard when you’re building a whole lot of projects, and you’re covering up Mother Earth with roads and housing lots, and more subdivisions. So it’s one of those strange conflicts, but I feel very privileged to, I suppose, have this opportunity on these big projects.
And working in the Impact team, it feels like a lot of different threads of my interests over the years have come together where in the Impact team, we sit with the First Peoples Partnership. We have our own team that … People that build relationships directly with the traditional owners. As the state government, we are constantly reminded that we are always on someone else’s unceded country. And that’s where we start our projects. It’s building those relationships up front.
The second line is, I suppose, looking at the state of nature, because a lot of the sites we get are contaminated. … We don’t build on greenfield sites. We would never go into a site that had, I suppose, let’s say, a forest on it, but we have got agricultural land. And that’s complicated too, because as our suburbs sprawl, what do we do with, I suppose, ongoing food security?
And then the third bit, I suppose, that I focus on is climate resilience. And for me that all boils down to community resilience: How do we build communities now? Think about communities now that are dealing with the conditions that we know are coming. It’s a… you know, we know climate change is here, we know that there’s going to be changes that we can’t really unpack now, but we know that the knock-on effects are going to hit us.
So they’re the things that I focus on at work. The other people in our impact team include the affordable housing team and social procurement.
So making sure that the dollar spend that Develop Victoria has is going to, I suppose, having an impact. And this is where the ESG markers come in. Are we procuring from Aboriginal-owned businesses? Are we making sure we employ people from disadvantaged backgrounds? Are we actually considering society’s needs and how we lift people?
So yeah, it’s been great. It has been a great opportunity. And also getting to work on some really big projects that I probably would never have had that opportunity before.
The other thing – what’s keeping me up at night, I suppose, is something I’d like to touch on with the current crisis.
I get to sit in on some, I suppose, state and federal, what do you call it, the think tanks, but updates. What is really keeping me up at night is food security. And it’s funny because you know ten years ago then the talk of peak oil and food security, that was a thing, that was a big thing.
And I feel like it’s dropped out of the narrative in sustainability lately, or maybe just in my world where it’s very much, you know, we’re built environments, so we’re building things and that concept of housing people seems to come over the need of where we’re getting to source their food from.
And the supply chain impacts of what is going on now are staggering. So for me, food security particularly, and yes, we do grow a lot of our own food, but we’re heavily reliant. We need diesel for irrigation. We need the resins to wrap the fodder to get to the stock. The knock-on effect is absolutely mind-blowing.
So that’s what I feel… I’ve probably always been on about food security, but to me I feel like we need to bring that back into our language and into our projects, and start getting people re-engaged in growing some of their own food. Because who knows how long this crisis is going on for, and for me, I hope it is short and sharp, but it has made me realise how fragile our entire system is.
Colin: (21:20)
Could you just give us an idea of how it works in practice? Do you get assignments from the state government?
Sam:
Yes
Colin:
Do you suggest to them or do they suggest to you? And you did say that you have really big projects. Could you tell us just one of those?
Sam: (21:31)
Yeah sure, one of the really cool projects… Or, I suppose I’ll take a step back. We don’t do schools or infrastructure, that’s different, and then there’s Homes Vic who are another agency, but we deliver work on their behalf.
So Development Victoria is a delivery agent, we’re project managers, construction project managers, and we deliver civics projects, including things like the Legacy Projects from the Commonwealth Games, the National Gallery redevelopment, the New 12 Apostles visitor centre, and we often do those in partnership and joint ventures with other organisations like Regional Development Victoria, or… I mentioned Homes Vic with the housing work.
We also do precinct development, things like Fisherman’s Bend. A site might come up, for example, a local council might say, “We’d really like to get on with this site.”
The site usually have complications, which is why other developers, I suppose, commercial competitors don’t touch them. And the other one is the housing. So a lot of that is around land release rather than the delivery of homes. And then there would be a joint venture, say, with the volume builders, a big volume builder that would take a parcel.
And what we do is we try and the… you know, we assess the site. Does it have an ephemeral waterway through it? Are we going to, you know, let’s apply the climate risks. Does that become a flood risk? Does it become a heat island issue? Does it become… you know, are we near a sea level rise issue?
So we assess those risks upfront, and we work closely with our traditional owners so that we build that, I suppose, sovereignty of decision making back in with the resources that are available.
We don’t always get the most excellent, you know… We’re developers. We develop, we don’t get handouts. We do get delegated sites that we’ve got to see if we can make it stack up that will still have outcomes that we’re, I suppose, delivering on behalf of the people of Victoria.
But if a site is too tricky, we have to also call that. So a lot of what we do is advisory back to the state, but also other agencies come to us as their delivery agency. So there’s a fee for service component of our work as well, where we might… The TAFEs might come to us or the council and say, ‘We’ve got this land, this is we’re gonna do with it. Can you do the feasibility?’
It doesn’t mean that we always get what we want, but we try and get the most contextual, nuanced, best result for the site. In the current state right now though, not much is stacking up. The escalation in prices in the construction industry are holding things, or not holding things back, slowing things down. And it’s something that we have to balance.
But the beauty of working in the impact space… We have a sort of an internal process where each of us, so sustainability, first peoples, the social procurement, affordable housing, we’ll go: Here’s our priorities, here’s what we’d like to see on this site. And it’s almost like an internal opportunities, matrixing and ladder where we go, ‘Okay, we might not get that on this site, but let’s go with the first people’s priorities for this site.’ And for me, this is the bit I love, that they mesh magnificently with any of the natural outcomes for nature, and improving and enhancing nature.
Colin: (25:26)
Could you give us a breakdown on the projects that you’re doing? What percentage, for example, would be housing and what percentage would be business and what percentage would be council?
Sam: (25:39)
That’s an interesting question. We have about 80 projects in our portfolio that are a range of them, and they’re all at different stages. So some of them are in business case stage, so they’re not even a thing yet. We’re fleshing them out. Some are at feasibility and then we’ve got in design and development and construction. I don’t think I could give you off the top of my head what percentage that is. But our pipeline of work is definitely swinging across to delivery of the half statement work. So we had a lot of civics projects and now it’s definitely swinging around to getting land to then releases for the housing crisis.
Colin: (26:28)
Have I got it right that the state government will point you towards a piece of land that it has and it’s not quite sure what to do with and you will look for sustainable development for it?
Sam:
We can look at options, yeah. We can look at options. And usually there is guidance for, like, you know, for example, Melbourne Water might own some land and they’re like, ‘Well, what can we do with this land?’ Or the state, other places in the state might say, ‘Yes, we’ve got this bit of land, what could we do with it? Is it good for housing? Is it good for industrial? Is it good for commercial?’ So that’s, I suppose, part of what we unpick in the business case phase.
Tony: (27:09)
Sam, has there been a project that’s particularly excited you to be part of? That you are able to talk about?
Sam: (27:19)
Oh yeah! Yeah look I suppose the 12 Apostles Project is extraordinary and an organisation I’m affiliated with, Living Futures Oceania, we had set that project up to be a living building challenge project, and of course, you know, it always that trade-off between budget and you know on time on budget and aspirations.
So unfortunately it didn’t end up getting a “Living Building Challenge” certification, or going down that pathway. But through that process there was a beautiful piece of work done with Eastern Marr where they developed up a set of design principles to make country good and deadly again and all of that work is embedded in that project. And that was… It just felt like a really healthy restorative both culturally and for the landscape down there and the embedding of stories of country into that project, so that was an exciting one.
And another one that was really fascinating was one that hasn’t eventuated at all because of the challenges on the site, but it was a fascinating process where there was a piece of land allocated that had been ex-gold mining country. So it was highly contaminated, heaps of mines, or mine shafts, on it. And the process of going through that and looking at it with a regenerative lens, how do we heal country? How do we decontaminate? How do we give back and restore this really decimated piece of country?
And unfortunately that was a… that one’s been put on the back burner, but it was a fascinating process because again we worked really closely with the traditional owners to see what we could embed, and what they wanted for this site.
So that’s the bit of work that really excites me is when we get to work with traditional owners and you know, the state’s in treaty and we take that very seriously. It’s a constant reminder we’re always in someone else’s country, and that aligns beautifully with the work that the Living Futures Oceania – they used to be called Living Futures Australia. Recently they’ve relaunched.
And it’s about regenerative design, not just making things less bad. And if we think of sustainability as like sort of balancing the scales, how do we make sure that we give back in projects more than we take away? And obviously the easy give-backs to me are to nature, building resilience for the communities that will occupy these buildings and also the social sustainability. I don’t think we talk about social sustainability enough. And the thing I’ve been focusing on a lot lately is that any crises of the future, or what might be coming at us, it is actually gonna be those strong communities that do the best.
Mik: (30:21)
When you say ‘social sustainability’, you mean a community that is sustainable in the long term, that it is resilient and holds together? Or how do you understand it?
Sam: (30:33)
Yeah, the concept of resilience being able to bounce back after shocks and stresses. So those communities that are self-organising, feel connected, and I mean, that starts from even from the design process where you make sure that you understand your demographic, which is culturally different than it was 50 years ago, but it is safe for everybody, particularly women and children, and allows for, I suppose… Instead of going in and going, ‘We’re going to give you this’, actually understanding the needs of the community. enabling the community to co-design solutions with us rather than coming in going, ‘This is what you’re getting, be grateful!’
So yeah, the social sustainability stuff. I mean, from my past work with Geelong Sustainability Group, even working with Barwon Heads, building the community garden there. All of those things, the heart of it was relational, not transactional. It was building relationships so that people felt that they were sovereign in their own decision making. And I think in a climate resilient future, we really need to build on that social sustainability. It’s something that Geelong Sustainability Group do really well.
Mik: (31:55)
Sam, do we need to build some places, some spaces where this can take place? Because if I look at my own neighbourhood here, where would I go and meet people unless I coincidentally meet them coming out of their cars?
Sam: (32:08)
Yeah, well – and it’s a funny that you say that about the cars, because I kind of feel we’re still stuck on building places for cars instead of building places for people, and it’s something… there’s a big project I’m working on at the moment where it’s actually, I won’t mention the name of it, but it’s the largest undeveloped piece of land in Metro Melbourne. And one, there’s a high level statement that basically says we’re going to design this community of the future for the needs of the people, firstly, that is climate resilient and has a nature-positive outcome, or “Cares for Country”, actually, I think is the term.
One of the things we’re talking a lot about is integrated transport to start with. And the other thing that is fascinating, and it’s first time I’ve had an opportunity to actually, I suppose, walk the talk as in: what we talk about doing in terms of climate resilience, actually seeing it be master planned, where it does have an ephemeral waterway through the belly of it, that when you apply the climate risks to it becomes a flood risk.
And so the original planning scheme wanted to have it in a more high dense, I suppose, high density ratio and more commercial. And the studies that we have done, it’s like, well, if we give that waterway land to move and flex as floods do, it gives us that opportunity to build better public realm, which gives us opportunity to build in better outcomes for nature and biodiversity, which gives people at Urban Heat Island respite in the future. And that’s been really wonderful to unpack because when you give those communities public realm, you allow for integrated transport options, which aren’t necessarily car-aligned. So people can get from home to work by public transport, by walking, by bike. So those sorts of really quite practical things come in just by allowing that little bit of space instead of building to with an inch of its life – for you.
Colin: (34:27)
Hey Sam, can I ask you to go back again to your rehabilitation of gold mining areas. I’m sad that it had to finish, because you couldn’t actually do the thing. I’m aware that just about everywhere where gold mining has taken place, no rehabilitation actually occurs because you’ve just got land which is like a Swiss cheese.
Sam:
Correct.
Colin:
…and it’s almost impossible to even come up with a concept of how to reuse it.
Sam: (35:00)
Yeah, correct. And that’s what we got to. We did the underground mapping. And it had, you know, a crazy… it was like a Swiss cheese thing. The fear was if you ever took a digger in to do any terra-scaping, or any work to actually rehabilitate the original landscape had a chain of ponds on it. And then when you… It became a sluice way for gold wash runoff. They used lots of arsenic to separate the gold out from the dirt. Arsenic occurs naturally in sites, but the levels that it was used and just kind of got… There was the big, I think they called mullet heaps where stuff just got dumped.
We did look and we started with what are the risks here? Yeah. We got to the point where there was nothing that was cost effective that we could possibly do in a safe manner that both were hidden away to the site. So, I mean, to me it’s like you can make it safe, it becomes public realm or parks, parkland for community, but it’s still highly contaminated. So, that one’s, that one will come back, but it’s just where we got to with it. We didn’t have the ability to…
Colin: (36:18)
The too hard basket, another one which appeared to be in the too hard basket was rehabilitating Alcoa’s site in Anglesea. Were you involved in that?
Sam: (36:28)
No, no, I don’t know who was involved with that. Before my time there. I’ve only been there four years now, so that might have been an older project. But the one thing we did look at, which was really fascinating and excited me greatly, was the use of bioremediation. So using plants, and there’s some universities working on gold mining sites at the moment where they’re playing with plants and plant species that bioaccumulate arsenic and heavy metals out of the soil, which is a long, slow process, but again, it gives that opportunity for rehabilitating nature. And using nature… Nature is very clever. And I think, you know, we underestimate what can be done in things like that using plants and plant species and fungi.
. . .
SONG: (37:14)
‘Let the Plants Move In‘
Verse 1:
I came to the driest land
Where no rivers would flow
Trees were dead, soil cracked wide
But between the hills, the sun still glowed
I saw the story written there,
In the roots and in the sand
If we just give water back
The plants will heal the land
Chorus:
Guide the water, let the plants move in
Let them weave their green through hollows and wind
The earth remembers, it holds it all in hand
Welcome to our solar-powered, drive-itself land
Verse 2:
There were melon holes and crab hole scars
Where the salt had come to stay
But a little pond, a contour line
Was enough to generate a different way
This is not a war, and it’s not a fight
No chemicals to command
Just help the water find its path
Allow the plants to expand
Chorus:
Guide the water, let the plants move in
Let them weave their green through hollows and wind
The earth remembers, it holds it all in hand
Welcome to our solar-powered, drive-itself land
Bridge:
Every little blade of grass
Knows its place, knows its past
When we listen to the land
We can make it whole, at last
Chorus:
Guide the water, let the plants move in
Let them weave their green through hollows and wind
The earth remembers, it holds it all in hand
Welcome to our solar-powered, drive-itself land
Outro:
Walk out to where the gum trees grow
Feel the grass beneath your feet
The quiet work of root and leaf
Where sky and plants and soil meet
Guide the water, and let the plants take over
Our plants are solar-powered
so let the land drive itself
. . .
Mik: (40:33)
Sam, can I take you back to the end of 2014? That’s 16 years ago almost, where I remember we had you in the studio and you were as always, you know, shining and full of optimism and so on. And we were talking about New Year and looking into 2015. We were talking about transition and even revolution, clean energy, safer climate, everything. So if I take you back to that time, where do you think we are today, having that 10 year perspective? Do you think we have achieved what we hoped back then?
Sam: (41:13)
Wow, I actually have thought about that and I felt like that was, you know, when I started at Future Proofing Geelong we had Julia Gillard as Prime Minister, we had a price on carbon.
And that program was set up to hopefully put Geelong in a position where we’d lost a lot of industry, but we were going to be in a position where we knew where our emissions were coming from and we wanted to be on the front foot for that clean energy transition. And I’ve got to say the enthusiasm was amazing and we had our low carbon growth plan for Geelong.
And then obviously there was the flip-flop of governments and I feel like that held that momentum back for a really long time. Even with what’s going on now in the Middle East, I kind of think, my gosh, I’ve been in this space a really long time, but you know, they’ve just raised the city of Gaza. So the embodied carbon in that alone and in each one of those big bombs that is dropped, the emissions into the atmosphere. I’m, I, I’ve always tried to remain hopeful, but I don’t think we’re as far forward as we should be. I feel like there’s always been that little two steps forward, one step back. And I am reminded that that is still one step forward, but I certainly don’t think given that optimism that we had back in 2015… 2026, I don’t feel we’re only 4 years off 2030 and we thought that was going to be a whole new world well before then.
So yeah, I do have days where I question how we could have done it differently. Yeah. Not as positive as I would like to say at this point.
Mik: (43:05)
Could it be we made a mistake as a movement, know, the sustainability climate movement made the mistake of thinking, ‘We just have to pressure our politicians and then they will listen and do as we say?’ Was the mistake maybe that we should have 10 years ago thought, if we want to change things, we need to get in parliament, we need to get in council and make these changes because nobody’s going to do it for us. We need to be there ourselves. Could that be the mistake we made?
Sam: (43:34)
I certainly think we need stronger representation. Certainly in local government and all levels of government. I really do think we expect the leaders to change, but they’re the same leaders that are part of the problem. I think the grassroots movement, I mean, we’ve always said it before, we need stronger legislation, we need stronger leadership for things to change. We, yeah, are they there? Do they exist or does politics attract a certain type of person rather than the people that we think really could shift the dial? Yeah, it’s an interesting one, about leadership because I felt like we did have strong leaders. But the nature of politics really, you know, parts of politics are in bed with fossil fuel industries.
Colin: (44:31)
It’s the nature of the world. We’ve gone from a very progressive Julia Gillard government to making the decisions to the second Trump turn.
Tony:
Yes, Sam, I think we all have our days like the ones you referred to before. One thing’s for sure from this chat with you, we’ve got a lot of future guests to chase up and paint that picture of exactly what’s possible, the world that I think all of us in our heart of hearts, that’s where we want to go. So we’ll keep doing it. And thank you for your contributions today.
Sam:
And I feel that’s, I think that’s the other thing. Like it’s really easy to get a bit, I suppose, down about the situation. I mean, I’ve been reflecting lot lately about my entire career. I’ve pretty much been in this space. And if I had some sort of tally book of how many emissions I might’ve saved through my work or through capacity building other people or events, whatever, you know, one bomb probably right, right that off. So it is easy to feel negative, but I suppose the thing that keeps me passionate is that I know there’s a lot of good people out there doing good work and living futures that I’m involved with.
We have a biofilter design initiative and that really is about reconditioning or finding that lost language that as humans we innately need to be connected to nature and it’s a serious design process. It’s like a, almost like a caring for country ethos for people who are non-indigenous and it’s a language that we all as humanity have, but we’ve forgotten it and that’s I suppose what gives me hope is that I think if we can use these principles and wake people up to the fact that we are actually, we are nature. We are nature. We are part of this system and they then feel the need to connect and care for country, then if they care, they’re more likely to look after it. And I really hope that that is the change going forward.
And that’s why I love the work that the LFO do. And I was up at the Green Building Council conference a few weeks ago, and I’m on their nature expert reference panel. And I was reminded again about the need not to give up now when everything is doom and gloom. And you said something about before, like, “be the change”. And to me, what I would like to sort of say to people is be brave, like, don’t give up now. The harder it looks, the kind of more we have to rally and look after each other. And again, this comes back to social sustainability and remembering the humanity and that we are just one species on this planet.
Colin: (47:26)
Yeah, be brave, look after each other. I will go with that any day, Sam.
Sam: (47:35)
The rules of kindergarten, you know: be kind, share your toys, hold hands when you cross the road.
Mik: (47:44)
Be kind and be connected.
Sam: (47:47)
Yeah. And let’s start building communities for people, not cars. Because right now we’re dropping bombs for cars. For oil.
Colin: (47:55)
Yep. I think, look, that’s, it’s just my belief, but I believe that we are doing that right now. We’re in the fast lane of switching over to electrics and we’ve been arguing for it for the last, well, how long have we been doing the sustainable hour? I’ve personally been arguing for it for 20 odd years since electric cars really came in in the first place.
But what’s doing it now, of all things, is a shortage of oil. It’s the third shortage of oil that I can remember that have hit the world in my lifetime. It’s the first one where we’ve actually got a solution where we can move away from oil. And it’s a brilliant thing because we’re doing it now. All the people who are selling their petrol driven cars and diesel driven cars and buying electric are not going to move back again when the oil price drops. So we’re going to wind up with a cleaner planet out of stupid folly by Donald Trump. You know, it’s a sort of win situation out of nowhere.
Sam: (49:12)
And that is funny because that’s actually one of the things that we have talked about internally with our team is how this might actually be, whereas there wasn’t leadership, there wasn’t political motivation, that this crisis may actually be the tipping point that we needed to get to that cleaner future.
. . .
SONG: (49:30)
‘Reshape Our World’
Verse 1:
She walks the site before the plans
Reads the ground, checks the scans
Food and fuel, fragile chains
Pull one thread, the whole thing shakes
Reshape our world – by being kind
Chorus:
Reshape our world – share what you can
Reshape our world – choosing care
Reshape our world – and positive action
We shape our world
Verse 2:
Design for people, not for cars
Leave space where people can meet and breathe
Where a stranger turns to a friend
Where the broken starts to mend
Bridge:
Balancing the books and the land
Building more but with less in hand
Not every one can hold the strain
There’s give and take, there’s loss and gain
We’ve forgotten the ways we once knew
Our soil is dying, the waters rise
Every day matters, the pressure climbs
It takes many more of us to change this path
Chorus:
I reshape my world – connecting with nature – by respecting the land
She reshapes her world – in service to life
He reshapes his world – with trust in the good
We reshape our world!
Verse 3:
We’re moving now
Thread by thread
House by house
This is who we are
Finding joy, finding pride
Discovering how
we shape our world
Reshape our world
We shape our world
[Sam Smith: We are actually, we are nature]
Chorus:
I reshape my world – connecting with nature – by respecting the land
She reshapes her world – in service to life
He reshapes his world – with trust in the good
We reshape our world!
[Sam Smith (52:37): What I would like to say to sort of say to people is: be brave! Like, don’t give up now. The harder it looks, the more we have to rally and look after each other.]
Reshape our world
We shape our world
Reshape our world
Reshape our world
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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