Nicole is the National Head of Advocacy and Public Affairs at the Planning Institute of Australia (PIA), where she champions planning as a force for public good. With over 15 years’ experience as a qualified and registered planner, she has worked across the private sector, local government, developer, and non-profits in Queensland, bringing deep expertise in housing, precinct planning, and the integration of transport and land use.

At PIA, Australia’s trusted voice on planning, Nicole leads national advocacy to elevate the profession’s role in creating thriving, liveable and resilient communities. She is driven by collaboration, bringing people together to solve complex challenges. Nicole believes planning is central to addressing issues like housing, climate resilience and equity, and is committed to inspiring greater understanding and support for the profession.

Queensland is facing unprecedented population growth, extreme climate challenges and an Olympic Games to get underway.

In Cairns, it’s about tropical architecture and cyclone-proof buildings. In South-East Queensland, which is facing a huge population growth surge, development plans are under review. So too in areas such as Moreton Bay, Ipswich and Logan where the big pressure is on how to accommodate housing and climate challenges, while managing community expectations.
Nicole will also discuss what might be a unique planning system for Australia – an outcomes focused approach that prohibits very little. So an area might be zoned for a 10 storey height limit but if a developer can demonstrate good case for going higher then the likelihood is it will be approved.

As elsewhere infrastructure sequencing is key as well as the engagement between local government and all stakeholders to understand who pays for the needs of a new expanded community.
And then there’s the YIMBY-NIMBY tensions. In inner city West End for instance locals are keen to preserve the suburb’s unique character, while developers see the proximity to infrastructure and the city.
Nicole says the opportunities for local councils are to refocus around the dividends of growth rather than be swamped under negative arguments.

The Brisbane Olympics are a prime example, she says, a chance to unify key infrastructure sites with shaded green pathways for example, “creating great places for people…how we stitch the city together.”

John helps councils cut emissions, waste, and costs with reliable, NCC compliant, battery-free photoluminescent exit sign.

John works with facility teams on safer egress, lower maintenance, and circular outcomes across buildings and community assets. His focus is practical upgrades with long service life, including signs proven to last 16+ years.

He partners with procurement and sustainability staff to plan change, specify compliant products, and report results. John brings decades in construction materials and infrastructure, giving Councils and other asset owners a calm, results first approach.

Paul is an experienced company director, entrepreneur and clean energy advocate. 

Paul is founder and Managing Director of Ironbark Sustainability and experienced non-executive director. Paul has over 20 years of experience in helping organisations reduce the impacts of climate change. 

Since the mid-1990s Paul has been a part of establishing sustainability organisations including the Sustainable Living Festival, the Australian Wind Energy Association (now the Clean Energy Council) and the Australian Student Environment Network. 

Paul is an experienced company director, entrepreneur and clean energy advocate. 

Paul is founder and Managing Director of Ironbark Sustainability and experienced non-executive director. Paul has over 20 years of experience in helping organisations reduce the impacts of climate change. 

Since the mid-1990s Paul has been a part of establishing sustainability organisations including the Sustainable Living Festival, the Australian Wind Energy Association (now the Clean Energy Council) and the Australian Student Environment Network. 
Read Paul’s interview with The Fifth Estate

A scientist and planner by training, Paul blends sustainability, resilience and environmental planning into his role as an Associate with the Better Business Team.

Paul has worked extensively both domestically and internationally across a range of sectors for nearly 20 years. His unique global perspective, coupled with the Australian context, provides a practical, yet ambitious lens on sustainability.

Through engaging in industry committees and expert reference panels, Paul is able to influence programmatic and systemic change, while grounding ambition with practical solutions to deliver outcomes. 

Paul firmly believes that aligning with international frameworks and benchmarks helps provide a clear direction for organisations. Metrics and targets resulting from this alignment can further push performance and draw linkages, in particular, across climate, nature and human rights.

Read Paul’s interview with The Fifth Estate

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Rod?Kington is the Technical Services Manager at City of Sydney Council, overseeing renewal and compliance of 200+ buildings with a A$100M+ capital plan, and previously led a A$20M Net Zero electrification initiative. With two decades in sustainability at Grosvenor and Energetics, he holds BEng (Hons), MBA, CEM, ISCA, Green?Star and NABERS credentials.

Gordon is a Research Director with the Institute for Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) focusing on sustainable finance and business practice. Gordon has worked across financial systems in a variety of capacities over a thirty-year career including in frontline roles in banking, superannuation, investment management, employee relations and policy / research.

Gordon was one of the first employees of the United Nations backed Principles for Responsible Investment, founded what is now the Principles for Responsible Investment Academy and in 2020 co-authored the Australian Sustainable Finance Roadmap released by the Australian Sustainable Finance Initiative.

His work includes chapters in the Cambridge Handbook of Institutional Investment and Fiduciary Duty (2014), Palgrave Studies in Sustainable Business’ Sustainable Real Estate (2019) and the Palgrave Handbook of Climate Resilient Societies (2021), Gordon holds a Bachelor of Economics from Australian National University (ANU), Graduate Diploma of Applied Finance and Investment and Graduate Diploma in Industrial and Employee Relations.

For nearly 20 years Kristen has worked on climate change, environmental and social justice campaigns.

A strategist, communications and mobilisation specialist, Kristen is passionate about empowering individuals and communities to bring about positive change.

She is one of the founding members of Electrify 2515, helping to bring about Australia’s first community-led electrification pilot and works with Rewiring Australia to develop other strategic programs that endeavour to advance electrification for everyone.

 It must be more than a little confronting when community groups trying to stop a wind farm or a transmission line use pretty much the same arguments and tactics as you did when you were an eco campaigner with Greenpeace.

The message you really want to get across that the “big existential threat is not a wind turbine but climate change,” says Kristen, who’s also got a background in Healthy Futures and local government to inform her work with Rewiring Australia now.

Her advice is you need to be judicious and build on your strengths.

At Rewiring Australia, Kristen’s working with 75 community groups and a lot of councils that want to progress the electrification agenda. You always need “trusted actors” on the ground to support people and to earn trust.

Sometimes that requires kick starting a campaign in different ways. depending on the context of the community, she says. You might focus on a bulk buy or home advisory service. Or there might be call for lobbying to get a policy for large scale solar and batteries in place or help with funding grants.

Dr Ben Slee is an architect and lead on sustainability for Blacktown City Council Transformational Design directorate. As the largest metropolitan council in NSW, soon to be larger than both the ACT and Tasmania by population. The Council is currently delivering about $600 million worth of new civic projects.

Ben led the development of Blacktown’s ten Sustainable Building Design Objectives, a holistic sustainability matrix that is embedded in the brief of all the transformational projects and aims to enable the delivery of leading sustainable buildings within the constrained budgets of local government.

Ben has decades of experience delivering and researching sustainable design in Australia, the UK and Uganda.

When Blacktown City Council embarked on a range of “transformation” projects it also developed 10 Sustainable Building Design Objectives.

These objectives did a number of things. They ensured its new buildings and major refurbishment programs could meet its climate change policy objectives and do so at significantly lower costs than through other building ratings systems the council looked at, including Green Star.

Keeping to council project budgets was key. The Sustainable Building Design Objectives are underpinned by three key principles:

integrated – sustainability is an integrated part of the project from the beginning to the end, not an add on

within budget – design teams are challenged to achieve exemplary sustainable outcomes within the constrained project budgets

design led – the sustainable strategies must be developed by the design team to achieve the best outcome for the project

Dr Michael Spencer is an Adjunct Senior Research Fellow in Green Lab, where he is leading multidisciplinary projects on climate change adaptation policy and governance. Michael has a PhD in comparative environmental governance. He spent 15 years in leadership positions with international multi-stakeholder standardisation and labelling organisations and has held responsibility for leading CSR and stakeholder relations functions at major Australian companies BHP, NAB and BlueScope Steel. He spent more than five years as a senior staff member in the Office of the Premier of Victoria and has worked as consultant on public policy at the National Institute for Economic and Industry Research.

Michael Spencer has penned an article as an insight into his address at TFE’s Local Government, Net Zero and Resilient Communities summit. Read it now

Jaime is the Country Manager for Smappee in Australia & New Zealand, with 20 years of experience introducing and implementing new energy technologies into the Australian market. With a background in electrical engineering and expertise in business and economics, Jaime combines technical knowledge with commercial insight to deliver practical, real-world solutions. He has extensive experience in EV charging, energy storage, solar, and smart energy management, helping households, businesses, and communities optimise energy use and reduce emissions. Passionate about an inclusive energy transition, Jaime works to ensure that everyone benefits from smarter, cleaner, and more resilient energy systems, supporting Australians on their journey to net zero.

Nick is a hands-on executive engineering leader who works with large, market-dominating organisations to deliver leading edge performance outcomes. He has over twelve years of experience leading complex and industry renowned engineering, sustainability and advisory projects across public and private sectors, with over five years in a directorship capacity providing commercial, technical and sustainability advisory to some of Victoria’s largest organisations.

Prior to joining Bridgeford Group Pty Ltd, Nick started his career in building controls and energy efficiency at Siemens, working for some of the largest energy performance contracts in Australia. In 2013, Nick co-founded FG Advisory and, as Principal Engineer and Director, led a team of 8 engineers on some of FGA’s largest and most complex projects. In addition, he was awarded Engineers Australia’s Prestigious Victorian Young Engineer of the Year in 2017, while in 2018 and 2019 he was a judge for the Engineers Australia Engineer of the Year and Australian Engineering Excellence Awards.

David’s world revolves around cities and what makes them tick – the way people live and move in them and the quality of their buildings and public spaces.

For him, great urban design has inclusion and resilience at its heart.
He has experience on many large-scale urban design and master planning projects across Asia, Australia and the US, with recent local projects including the Pyrmont Peninsula Place Strategy, Macquarie Street East Master Plan and housing strategies for the Inner West.

David thrives on building those connections, bringing together different perspectives and celebrating the contributions of everyone involved in a project – large or small.

If you want to know more about Sydney’s Inner West Council’s housing plan for Marrickville and surrounding suburbs don’t miss David Tickle, principal and sector leader for urban design at Hassell.

David was a key designer of the plan, which has been well received by planning professionals, who say it’s achieved many needed fine-grained outcomes that enhance state government targets with strong specific and localised community needs. For instance, instead of laser focusing on transport oriented development (TODs) it recognised the value of higher density around commercial high streets and other places that the community can benefit from.

David will align his presentation around placemaking – with a view on global best practice, the Inner West plan and Sydney’s Pyrmont Peninsula, which achieved its highly regarded outcomes by careful and nuanced alignment of all the actors involved, from the City of Sydney – the NSW state government, a bevy of other government agencies and private sector interests.

Anthony Weinberg is the 3-Council Regional Environment Program Manager, overseeing community sustainability initiatives across Randwick, Waverley, and Woollahra Councils. With 20 years of experience in both the public and private sectors. He has developed extensive expertise in designing and implementing sustainability projects, including the award winning Solar my School project, Compost Revolution, Charging the East and others.

Anthony specializes in developing and implementing strategies that deliver tangible, impactful outcomes. During his time at local government, he wrote and delivered the Eastern Suburb Low Carbon Future Plan and Public Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Strategy. 

Pat Whitford is the Net Zero Program Manager at the Illawarra Shoalhaven Joint Organisation. His position is funded by NSW DCCEEW through their Sustainable Councils Program to deliver the Joint Organisation Net Zero Acceleration (JONZA) program, a capacity building program designed to support local governments in regional NSW save energy, reduce emissions, and set a path to net zero.

Pat works closely with the four member councils within the Joint Organisation to deliver sustainability initiatives focused on reducing council operational emissions and developing strategies to help councils influence emissions reduction within the community such as the recently launched ISJO Community Renewables Program.

Pat brings a wealth of experience from his previous role as Sustainability and Resilience Officer at Campbelltown City Council, where he focused on net zero planning, EV fleet transition and energy efficiency initiatives. He also has a strong background in the not-for-profit sector, having worked with food rescue charity OzHarvest in corporate engagement and education.

Stella has over 30 years of international experience in climate change (physical climate risk, decarbonisation and climate transition), climate finance, environmental policy, sustainability, and environmental planning (Europe, Australia, US and Asia). Stella is an infrastructure sustainability, climate finance, sustainable finance, climate risk/adaptation, climate disclosure and ESG specialist. She has held executive management, business development and consulting sustainability roles Australia, UK, Denmark.