Home » Archives for The Fifth Estate – Our View
News from the front desk: We’re totally thrilled to bring you our latest ebook today, Building Circularity, based on our symposium late last year and our usual deep dives we do at event times, into related innovations and interviews with the amazing people who co-create the content with us. Always they are the people at […]
News from the front desk: Lendlease has attracted some heat over the last few months for a new residential development near Campbelltown in NSW that could threaten the area’s vulnerable koala population.
If there was any doubt that the pandemic is a major opportunity for Australia and its major cities, it was dispelled at an event last Monday held by the Committee for Sydney.
News from the front issue 513: The world has put creative and collaborative responses to Covid and climate on fast forward. There are even signs of more humanitarian and politically intelligent frameworks stirring. In the US the new Biden administration is focusing its Covid and climate action on outcomes that tackle economic and racially-based disadvantage. And cleverly it looks like these will utilise a whole of government approach, something quite novel in our part of the world.
The big trends to shape our year are already underway. We need a huge collective roar to make the head of steam translate to the speed of action we now need.
News from the front desk: It’s hard not to feel a warm glow after waking up to newly sworn-in US president Joe Biden honouring his promise to re-join the Paris Agreement.
News from the front desk, issue 510: If you’re a greenwash spin-cycle merchant of high order and you think 2020 was hard on the bones, get set for an even tougher year ahead. From what we can tell from the tea leaves shaping up at the end of the year from hell (for most of […]
News from the front desk, Issue 508: You just know when a piece of news is going to have a big impact. Last week it was that two global giants of the architectural world had resigned from Architects Declare in the UK. The reason? That both, Foster + Partners and Zaha Hadid Architects, work on […]
News from the front desk, Issue 507: So, Australia is on an economic tear so that means there is nothing stopping sustainability, right? Out of our recent Building Circularity came some gems of insights into the urgent tasks to hand to reduce the carbon in our structures. And the immense ambition and possibilities opening up to […]
News from the front desk: After a full day of robust discussion about redirecting the built environment along a less wasteful and carbon intensive path, on Wednesday morning The Fifth Estate woke up to NSW Treasurer Dominic Perrottet’s jovial hit list of Sydney buildings he’d love to demolish.
News from the front desk: The NSW government wants to do with land tax and stamp duty what it’s signalled it’s doing with energy and climate policy: something radical, innovative and what advocates have urged for decades.
Some thoughts on Matt Kean and the PM, from
Simon Corbell, and the brave new front of the climate challenge that will appear (streamed live from a television studio) at our Building Circularity symposium.
News from the front desk, Issue 503: Was there ever such vicarious interest in another country’s election as in that of the US election this week?
On the face of it the handling of the pandemic and who might be best to lead the Sunshine State out of the doom and gloom it’s caused is dominating the mainstream coverage of the Queensland election this weekend. But on closer inspection, environmental issues are front and centre in some of the seats that […]
News from the front desk: We know, we know…our massive 127-page ebook Flick the Switch based on our event on net zero and all electric buildings and cities, is barely off the virtual printing presses and here we are announcing a new event, with ebook to come.
News from the front desk: We called someone in NZ this week to canvass a new project on embodied carbon we’re running. Even though we’ve barely started to digest the massive 127 ebook we just published on net zero and operational energy.
UPDATED: News from the front desk Issue 500: The federal government is like the shy kid who wants to join the A list. It’s poking around the edges. Sticking a toe in here, a bit of nosey peek there. It can see the crowd closing tight and paradoxically growing bigger. More and more of the […]
If you caught the ABC’s Four Corners episode on Monday night about the dire state of our economy, you’d have seen the eerie shots of near-empty streets that were once the busiest in the country. It’s no surprise that Melbourne’s CBD is still deserted but new data from the Property Council of Australia shows that […]
News from the Front Desk, Issue 498: John Hewson former Liberal leader is starting to change his tune on climate change: he’s becoming more optimistic. Christiana Figueres, the global climate powerhouse of negotiation, agrees. And so does business. South Pole, a global company that offsets carbon for corporates and consults on sustainability and climate to […]
News from the Front Desk, Issue 497: The release of Australia’s “gas-fired recovery” plans this week – topped off with new rules to allow government clean energy finance to flow towards carbon capture and storage –should hardly come as a surprise.
News from the Front Desk, Issue 496:When the NSW planning minister periodically taps an agency chief on the shoulder to share what the new priorities for their work should be, it’s something to be responded to, with alacrity. For Greater Sydney Commission boss Geoffrey Roberts, that tap came recently in the wake of the Coronavirus […]
The World Health Organisation has advised that ventilation is indeed “an important factor” in preventing COVID-19 from spreading indoors.
The danse macabre of our Parliament took another sinister turn this week, with the Espionage and Foreign Interference Bill 2017 and Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme Bill 2017 hitting the debating floor.
