Wednesday 29 June 2022 – 13:30 – 15:00 AEST
MC: Professor Hugh Possingham
Moderator: Prof Greg Marston
Panellists: Professor Felicity Deane, Dr Lynette Molyneaux, Professor Neville Plint, Maxine Newlands
The Queensland Decarbonisation Forum 2022 will bring together experts from academia, governments, and industries to accelerate Queensland’s efforts to achieve its renewable energy and emission reduction targets and establish Queensland as the national leader in low-carbon industries, technologies, policies, programs, and practices. The aim is to leverage the scientific, technological, organisational, and convening capabilities of Queensland universities in support of accelerated action to transition Queensland to a prosperous zero-net emissions economy.
Biographies:
Professor Greg Marston – Deputy Executive Dean, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, UQ
Professor Greg Marston has undertaken social research in a range of fields drawing on a variety of social science disciplines, including social policy, sociology, political economy, social work and policy studies. He has expertise in qualitative approaches to social inquiry and has used different methods to explore a range of contemporary issues, including: poverty and debt; refugee resettlement; housing and homelessness; income support; unemployment; the changing mixed economy of welfare; and the role of social policy and urban planning in addressing the climate change challenge. Professor Marston has led a number of Australian Research Council (ARC) projects over the past decade. He is currently involved with three projects. He is leading two ARC Linkage projects, one concerned with pathways to employment for people with disabilities and another looking at the role of social networks and social capital in surviving unemployment and finding employment. He is also leading an ARC Discovery Project focusing on the role of deliberative policy-making and social policy in transitioning countries to a low-carbon future. Professor Marston is a member of the Australian Research Council College of Experts and is also the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) representative in Australia. Professor Marston has held visiting appointments at Lund University, Melbourne University and The University of Chicago. Prior to entering academia Greg worked with non-government organisations undertaking social policy and research at the state and national level. Professor Marston is passionate about social justice issues and the role of education and research in contributing to social change, particularly the role of the social sciences and humanities in fostering the conditions for human flourishing, critical thinking, and well-functioning social and political institutions. As Head of School, he seeks to promote effective governance, transformative teaching and multidisciplinary research in collaboration with his academic and professional colleagues in the school. He is also keen to ensure high levels of external engagement with various publics related to the school’s teaching and research strengths.
Dr Maxine Newlands – Senior Lecturer – Political Science College of Arts, Society & Education, JCU
Dr Maxine Newlands is a political scientist with a PhD in environmental politics, policy and governance (London, 2013). Her research focuses on the complexities of how and why environmental politics and networks of communication transform policymaking. As a government (state and federal) advisor, Max advises governments and various industries on world-leading projects. Maxine is the chief investigator on numerous government reports and journal articles, including the QueenslandGovernments’ 2023 Scientific Consensus Statement (social science). A co-lead (w/UQ) on the Reef Restoration and Adaptation (RRAP) Regulatory subprogram and consultant on the Engagement sub-program(2017-present). An Office of the Great Barrier Reef (Qld government) project on the media ecosystem around Reef water quality. A Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, stewardship and network-mapping project. The Journalism Educators and Researchers Association of Australia annual prize for research (2018) won and co-author on the International Coral Reef Initiative (ICRI) with the United Nations Environment Program. Leadership roles include an executive on the Australian Political Studies Association (APSA), Environmental Politics and Policy (EPP) Standing Research Group. The co-convenor for the Blue Humanities Lab- interdisciplinary, multi-institutional research(JCU/UQ/ANU) centre focusing on human interconnectivity and the blue (water). The co-founder of the Women of the Reef Network, a collaborative assemblage working to remove the barriers that perpetuate gender inequity in marine industries. Maxine is the lead author of three books and several journal articles. Books include Environmental Politics of the Great Barrier Reef (Routledge, 2023); Environmental activism and the media: The politics of protest (Peter Lang, 2018), and co-author of an edited collection: Australian Entanglements: Critical Approaches to the Blue Humanities (Routledge, 2023).
Professor Neville Plint – Director of the Sustainable Minerals Institute (SMI), The University of Queensland (UQ).
Professor Plint has a global reputation in the mining sector and has demonstrated experience in the mining and resource industry. His focus is on delivering improved operational performance on mining sites by developing and implementing new technologies, whilst establishing a global network of research professionals in academic institutes, mining companies and research organisations. Professor Plint holds a PhD, MBA from the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, and brings extensive leadership experience and a deep understanding of the mining sector having worked for 20 years with Anglo American in South Africa.
Associate Professor Felicity Deane – Associate Professor, Queensland University of Technology.
Felicity has published extensively in areas where economics and the law intersect. She has been researching and teaching the law of the World Trade Organization for over a decade and has extensive knowledge of international trade law and practice. Her first book, Emissions Trading and WTO Law: A Global Analysis, examined the impact of trade rules on climate change market based instruments. Over the past 10 years she has collaborated with industry partners on projects that focus on land use practices in Australia, export markets and impacts on natural resources. In 2016 she led a multidisciplinary project to evaluate different regulatory strategies in the Great Barrier Reef Catchment. In 2019, she was commissioned by the National Farmers Federation to explore farmer’s perceptions of the Commonwealth legislation, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (Cth). In 2020 she was again asked to led projects by the National Farmer’s Federation, and her work was extensively quoted in their submission to the Independent Review of the EPBC Act. Since 2018 she has been a Chief Investigator on the Beefledger Project funded through the Food Agility CRC and most recently Future Food Systems CRC. A/Prof Deane completed a Bachelor of Law and a Bachelor of Commerce at the University of Queensland in 1999. Immediately following graduation Felicity commenced work and study in the United States in the disciplines of accounting and law.
Dr Lynette Molyneaux – UQ Amplify Research Fellow, Centre for Policy Futures, The University of Queensland (UQ).
Dr Lynette Molyneaux is a researcher in policy at the Centre for Policy Futures at the University of Queensland. Her research interests include climate, energy and industrial policy frameworks to facilitate adaptation to and resilience in a fast-changing world. Lynette is currently working with multiple departments within the Queensland Government, industry proponents and researchers to establish an Advanced Materials and Battery Council (AMBC). The AMBC will facilitate collaboration between and within government, industry and research institutions to build, support and promote an Australian battery supply chain to export to global markets. Previously, an Advance Queensland Research Fellow, Lynette considered the Queensland economy’s resilience to a global energy transition. As part of the Fellowship she created a Queensland Energy Database and a report on plans to adapt to a global energy transition. Lynette was a researcher with the Global Change Institute for several years including as the researcher for a suite of reports on how to deliver a competitive Australian power system by 2030. Prior to her academic pursuits, Lynette spent more than 20 years in the IT industry managing Internet and Business Intelligence start-ups in New Zealand, as a business manager with Tradelink in Hong Kong, as a brand and relationship manager with IBM UK and a financial analyst with IBM SA.