Full Transcript for Regenerating Melbourne

environment, a sustainable social baseline that brings everyone up to the right level, et cetera. And Regen is a really nice way of capturing a holistic view of place. Rather than thinking about it as just an environmental project or just a social project, it captures both lovely and charity. 11 00:06:45.000 --> 00:06:57.000 If you could just give us a bit of a picture of the structure of Regen Melbourne at the moment. So there's two key, as I understand it, there's two key functions. There's the Earthshots and the Systems Lab, Is that right? 12 00:06:57.000 --> 00:07:35.000 Yes. So what Kai has just described, like our ambitious collaboration and I think, ground, we do a lot of the work, Regent Melbourne's work, through what we call the Earthshots. We've got three Earthshots and I lead one of them, the Small Bureau, which is about how do you work collectively with a broad group of actors to actually clean up the river, make it healthy, thriving and swim wool where appropriate, and all in service to, again, a healthy, thriving community and place. Right. 13 00:07:35.000 --> 00:07:38.000 And we'll dive deeper into that in a little moment. 14 00:07:38.000 --> 00:09:07.000 And then we have nourishing neighborhood and which is about how do you have resilient and nourishing food systems at a very local place? Like, what does that look like? And then 300 streets, which is 300,000. 300,000 streets. I forgot the K. The thousand. 300,000 streets, which is like the. It's about the number of streets we have in Greater Melbourne. It's about how do you use the street as a unit for agency for participatory democracy? How do you get community really engaged and fired up and actually have a regenerative street, like Take back the Streets for the people in place. But we also have what we call the Systems Lab, where this is where we, like if the Earthshot is where the work is Implemented through or the vehicle for doing the work we do. The Systems Lab actually is an enabler for that work. So we test things like what a systemic invest, how does systemic investment enable like 300 streets? Like what do those interventions look like? How does story and narrative actually enable, you know, power up the work that is required. What are the other ones that I'm forgetting? 15 00:09:07.000 --> 00:09:48.000 Yeah, I mean there's a suite of enablers and I think that the kind of the summary is that we've always felt like there's a dance between knowledge and action, or wisdom and action when we're thinking about place based work. And so the Earthshots really act as these tangible pathways towards our vision. And the Systems Lab and the enablers that sit within the Systems Lab, that's about how do we think about organizing knowledge in service of place. And so, you know, we're looking at governance, about capital, about narrative, about measurement systems, all the things that sit below the soil line. You know, you've got the activities that sit above the soil, the beautiful ecosystems that we're thriving and striving towards and then you've got the soil conditions themselves. 16 00:09:48.000 --> 00:09:49.000 Yeah. 17 00:09:48.000 --> 00:09:58.000 And we always talk about in systemic change or regenerative work, how do we shift the conditions in a place? Yeah, so the Systems Lab is really about actively seeking to shift the conditions of places. 18 00:09:58.000 --> 00:10:22.000 And all of this is integrated. I just want to make sure that all of this is integrated. All of this has to work together. Like we actually have to demonstrate the things that we are seeking external to the organizations are the things that we need to be practicing. So the weaving together, the cross sectoral avoiding silos, we are consistently practicing that. 19 00:10:22.000 --> 00:10:48.000 So let's take the swimmable bearer in this, the river that some outside of Melbourne might know as the Yarra. Yes, the Yarra river, which we can, I might ask you to say a word about that in just a moment, but take us into that Earth shot and where it came from, what you're doing at the moment, like make it real for us. Like what does it mean that you guys have adopted the swimmable Birang as an Earthshot? 20 00:10:48.000 --> 00:11:42.000 Yeah. So I think the story of the swimmable Beerung Earthshot probably starts. Not probably. It starts during a really dark time I guess for Melbourne when we were COVID lockdown and the black summer fires. And so it was a time where there was no movement. We were all terrified, lack of hope. And during that time I think Kai and a few collaborators in Melbourne got together and said we can't accept this. As you know the future of our city. Like, we know that they're going to be quite drastic. We know that we're going to have these types of events happening more regularly. So how do we take back hope? How do we give back hope to a place? And how do we change the story for place? 21 00:11:42.000 --> 00:11:48.000 So the beginning of the swimmable burying is actually the beginning of Regen Melbourne, because that's the point where you started, right? 22 00:11:48.000 --> 00:14:27.000 Yeah. So as charity's describing, pretty disruptive time, and the world has seen lots of disruptive times, but Melbourne had a pretty unique experience of 2020. And so in that context, there were a bunch of organizations that got together to ask this question of how do we serve place better? And we kicked off free Gen Melbourne by using Donut economics as an organizing framework, and we downscaled the donut. So we did a big visioning process with 500 people. I think 50 organizations were involved to set a new vision for Melbourne. And that was published in April of 2021 in a big report that was kind of like this piece of research, community research, that happened during lockdown. When that report landed and people got a bit excited about this new hope that was being described, this ability to create agency in place, and organizations had this

kind of re understanding or relearning that they had a really significant role to play in service of place. There was a bunch of energy released. Lots of people like, okay, what do we do next? How do we actually organize in service of this vision that we've just created? And so we started doing some pretty experimental convening. We started with things like silent discos and picnics and boardroom lunches. And we did a huge array of, yeah, really sort of experimental convening. And the whole purpose of that was to just lean into what is the place asking for? What are they asking for in terms of the themes that they're most interested in? And one of the themes that kept coming up again and again and again was the role of water in this place. And in particular, the role of the Birrarung, the Yarra river, as a life force of this city. And the fact that people felt like it had been neglected for a long time and that there was a sense that this was a kind of iconic symbol of what sort of a rebirth or a generation for the city might look like if we scented the waterway. And so this Wimble Birang project became the sort of epicenter in the early days of this is kind of what we mean by systemic change, by transformational change. And so over the course of 12 months, we did some beautiful and quite considered convening with actors that were already in service of the river. So first nations groups, the city council, the group called the Yarra Riverkeeper Association, a whole bunch of organizations that were kind of already set up to serve the river. And we brought them together and sort of asked, how can we do this better together? And by the end of that year of convening, it became clear that this idea of swimmability for humans and for all life was a kind of orientation that we could all align around. And that's when we organized a big design forum where we invited a whole bunch of other actors in. And that was when you were joining the team Charity. 23 00:14:27.000 --> 00:14:28.000 That's where I come in. 24 00:14:28.000 --> 00:14:37.000 Because from that design forum, there was a real sort of momentum created that went beyond just the existing cohort of organizations that were passionate about the river. 25 00:14:37.000 --> 00:14:38.000 Yeah. 26 00:14:38.000 --> 00:15:03.000 And I think at that design forum, it became really clear, like, the understanding of what the challenges and barriers were towards having a healthy, thriving river that is swimming. Right. Because you had policymakers in the room. Like, you had technical experts in the room, first nations representative, like water authorities, people in the water sectors. Right. So we could just things. 27 00:15:03.000 --> 00:15:06.000 And you were working in this system at the time. 28 00:15:06.000 --> 00:15:09.000 So I was still in the private sector. Like I. As I. 29 00:15:09.000 --> 00:15:10.000 Like I. 30 00:15:10.000 --> 00:15:47.000 So I've got a. I was working at one of the engineering consultancies at the time, so you could say I was a technical expert at the time. And so I got to be in this room, and it was an interesting room because I think a lot of those people, again, had not been in a room in a space like that where they were talking about something that was common to all of them, that actually brought them towards a very collective vision where, like, I think it cut through the noise of, oh, no, but I work for this state government department, or I work for this. 31 00:15:47.000 --> 00:16:16.000 I'm just going to pause you there because it's very interesting to hear this as a Londoner and thinking about the politics of London. Londoner. The Mayor of London City Khan has declared an ambition to make the Thames swimmable. But that doesn't feel to me like it belongs to anyone. Much more than the Greater London Authority, at most. And maybe I read at one point a report on the mayor's environment strategy that said, had the sentence, the mayor will plant 300,000 trees. 32 00:16:16.000 --> 00:16:18.000 The mayor will plant. 33 00:16:18.000 --> 00:16:36.000 And so I'm just reflecting in the context of this podcast and the question of how to save democracy and this idea that actually this is the Way that this arose was as a. Was out of a collective desire. And your role, charity, isn't to do this for the city? 34 00:16:36.000 --> 00:18:10.000 No, no. So my role is to bring this broad, diverse group of actors and stakeholders, they're people who've been doing work to clean up the river for decades. Well, before me, like, that's the reason why there's, like, you know, very important law like the Birrarung act, which is a legal instrument that is all about how you protect the river and how river has a living entity. Like, you may have heard about how more natural entities are getting personhood status and stuff like that. Well, the Yarra river, the Birrarung, is like the first river in Australia to get living entity status. So my role is to bring this policy, these strategies and all these incredible humans, whether it's in the public, in institutions, in business, in technology, to bring them together and say, what are the partnerships that we need to actually collectively move to this vision? It's about collaboration, it's about collective impact, it's about creating the space. So we tend to say, like, my role is to work in the middle or in the cracks of these silos and actually say, hey, come together. There's an opportunity here. And to actually translate that. This work, all these different strategic objectives, policies and plans, everybody is actually saying the same thing but in different words. So language becomes a really powerful thing here to say. You're all saying you want this collective vision. And so, yes. 35 00:18:10.000 --> 00:18:19.000 Can you give me, like, an example, like something that you've done to make this real for people, like. Or something that has happened to make it real. 36 00:18:19.000 -->

00:18:21.000 What? Make what real? 37 00:18:21.000 --> 00:18:29.000 This role and this work of the swimming. Like, is there an event, is there a moment in time when you felt this is. This is what we're here for? 38 00:18:29.000 --> 00:20:54.000 I think there's been several things, but I would say that one of the things. I'll tell you this too. I'll try to be short. Like, I think one of the things is actually creating a space for people to have an immersive experience. Right. Like, so we talk about a sumo Birrang as saying, in the city reaches, the city reaches of the river is very critical because it's the end of the line and you can't do anything in the end of the line without doing everything upstream and across the catchment. And I remember last year during the Birang Festival, which is the biggest festival community driven across the catchment, we actually had a swimming event in the river near where you're currently staying, and there were like, over 30, 40 people from different parts of Greater Melbourne and they did not know they could swim in this location. They did not know that the river was actually swimmable. And so all of a sudden you're having these people have a really real experience of immersing themselves in the water and then they're asking why can't I do this right there by Flinders Street Station? And I think the more we start having these really immersive, tangible experiences where people, it's no longer about just the imagination, it's a tangible experience. People then can start asking the question and getting behind the vision. But another one is we held something, we held an event called Tomorrow's river where we curated a group of policymakers, water technical experts and academia and brought 40 people together by the river and said imagine a future where this river is thriving, it's healthy and it's swimmable. What does that look like? You had technocrats talking about beautiful visions of like a river in the heart of the city, being a joyful place where like non human and human and coexistence swimming. And it was, it was real for those people because they had that immersive experience. And so I think playing a role where we invite people into these spaces to see what's possible and to be part of the journey to getting towards the swimmable barang is really important. So that's, that's part of the role in the many juggling act that we're doing. That's one of the things I'm going 39 00:20:54.000 --> 00:21:34.000 to pause us there because I'm going to come back to you Charity and your background and how you embody this because I think in a way you're a very interesting kind of expression of what region Melbourne is all about, personally I think. But I'm just turn to you briefly, Kai, and this because swimmable bearing is one of the three Earthshots and this way of working, you were saying like this emerged early as an expression of how you wanted, what you all wanted regen Melbourne to be. Can you just reflect a bit more widely on that role of the Earthshot and how Swimble Biring expresses that? 40 00:21:34.000 --> 00:25:21.000 Yeah, I think the. When we released the vision and it was this relatively, not relatively, it was incredibly ambitious, like it was stating something that came from a deep love of place and it was on the one hand just a whole bunch of nice words on the page and on the other hand carried a lot of weight for people. There was a lot of energy, time, love put into this process and I think we all felt those of us who were involved in facilitating, curating that process, quite a heavy weight of responsibility around the fact that this had been created in the first place. And I guess that partly comes From I've spent 15 years prior to that working in various aspects of the social and environmental impact sector. And I've seen lots of processes like this where energy is poured in, visions are created, and then not a lot happens. And that's not the fault of anybody in particular. It's just a very different set of expertise to create agency behind ambitious collective visions. And what has sadly happened in many places is that there's been a loss of energy, a loss of trust, a loss of agency, when the intent was precisely the opposite. But I do think that's contributed to a kind of, when you come to that question of our future democracy, what's our role in strengthening and reforming and evolving democracy? I think some of these efforts actually have taken us backwards. And so I think we felt a heavy weight of responsibility around backing up this vision. So when we were doing this sort of experimental convening that I talked about earlier, it was with a deep sense of intent. We were doing that to surface the themes that we could then organize behind. And so Water and the Birrarung was such an incredible enabler of us to test organizing methodology that could back up the vision. And about the same time, we started talking about the food system as another one of those layers, and we talked about the role of the story street and this particular question on agency and participation as another cluster. And over time, those sort of thematic areas sharpened up to become Earthshots. And so the Tsumor Burrung, 300,000 streets and nourished neighborhoods over time become a really sharp expression of a goal that in turn would take us tangibly towards the vision that we created. And so in a way, this is the recovering engineer in me. I see the earth shots as the scaffold, as the tangible pathways that people can follow to back up this visioning process that we did, which was why we're all here to create transformational change. And so all of the work the charity's describing, the kind of below ground soil work, the organizing, the, you know, our friend Indy Joao talks about it as the dark matter. And all that stuff that you don't see that we need to do in order to achieve this transformational change, it's all nested within this idea that we're not mucking

around with the vision. The vision is like an ambitious expression of what we need here. But we're not Just settling the vision. We're here to enact change towards the vision. And so there's something about that kind of. There's a beautiful collective, relational aesthetic to what we do, but we're not hit amok around. This is a deeply serious, quite ambitious, but very serious attempt to shift systems in a place. And so I'm saying that kind of flippantly in a way, but it's also really important because. Because I think a lot of the work that we see and that we get inspired by around the world, it's often perceived as nice. And nice is great, but necessary is better. And what we're trying to do here is to shift systems in a way that frames our work as necessary for the messy transition that we're all in, to scaffold our existing systems so they can become what they need to become in service of all of us. 41 00:25:21.000 --> 00:25:31.000 And just to bring back that contrast with the way that a very similar Earthshot has been described in London, you're very much saying this needs everyone. 42 00:25:31.000 --> 00:25:33.000 Yeah. 43 00:25:33.000 --> 00:26:36.000 Yes. And the. The interesting example of that, I think, is that we have always had a sense that our legitimacy, our civic mandate, comes from the place. You know, we're a non profit, we're independent, literally. Our constitution says Regen Melbourne is in service of the regeneration of this place. That's our mission. That's very clear. It's why we're all here. And what that means is that we get our mandate from the place. And so all of our work, whether it's making the river swimmable or creating a network of local food economies, we have an open posture to everyone, including the current state forces of today, the political forces, the capital forces, big business. We have an open posture. We want everybody to be part of this, but we're not waiting for permission. And that balance of openness and momentum is what I think has carried us to this point and also is the enticing bit. It's like the bit that people can find inspiration and joy around while doing deeply serious work and feels like it's 44 00:26:36.000 --> 00:26:46.000 quite a good summary of the personality of a certain human being sat oppositely but charity. And I don't mean to make you feel like you're carrying the weight of 45 00:26:46.000 --> 00:26:48.000 this, but I am not. It's collective effort, John. 46 00:26:48.000 --> 00:27:19.000 There we go, my dear. But you do have a pretty powerful combination of the rational and the intuitive, or the rational and the spiritual in the way you're doing this work. So just tell me a bit more about your personal connection to the issue of water, perhaps, and, and you're professional and how that means you can show up in some of these rooms. 47 00:27:19.000 --> 00:32:16.000 Yeah. So I grew up in Botswana and it's a semi arid country, It's a lovely country, lovely country, but we don't have

water. And so I think I grew up at the very cold front of how crucial water is to our very existence as a Botswana. And, and my grandfather was actually a farmer, so he was really reliant on those rains and rivers flowing. And I share stories about how I remember playing in rivers as a little five year old, feet and puddles and stuff like that. But all of this to say I grew up really valuing water because I knew what could happen. I could see the impact on livestock, on the orchard, on the farm, in my family's life, in communities, lives. And Botswana, like, you know, pula is the name of our currency, the Botswana Pula, if you've ever been there. But pula also means rain and it's about abundance, it's about the harvest, it's about, you know, the earth being nourished and drinking and all of that. But I think all of that led me to Australia to study. I have a civil and environmental engineering background, but focusing on water. So I've spent like the last 20 years working in the water sector, whether it was the planning, designing, managing, constructing various water infrastructure, stormwater pipelines. Part of the reason why you're opening your tap is because somebody like me back in the day had designed a pipeline with valves and pump stations and dams to make sure that you never have to think about it, but just open the tap and drink and flush your toilet and have a shower. But that was a very technical side of it. I almost feel like it was a very rational side. You know, you know the equations, you know the formula, you know the standards, you know the policies, the regulations. And I think in the last three years that body of work has led me to a place where I'm now realizing that infrastructure has always been in relation, whether I knew it or not, has always been in relation to the environment. So those stormwater pipelines that I designed will always lead water to a water body. So stormwater is the biggest pollutant of the Yarra river, for instance. I've designed them and I don't even think I thought about how what I was designing would end up being a pollutant into a river. And so I think Australia is very, I think it's unique in that, in how indigenous culture and wisdom values country and how they've been such incredible stewards of country. And country is place. It's the water, the sky, the land. And I feel like not. I feel like country has always been seen as one with us. It's our ancestors. We care for it, we nurture it. Right. We live in reciprocity with it. We never take more than we need because we understand if it's healthy and thriving, we're healthy and thriving. And I think the last three years I have been on that journey without even realizing I'm on that journey, right? Like, of. Of learning, getting to know the river, getting to understand her. And I still don't understand her because there's so much. It's so expansive. Right. And I think I've been on this journey of what does reciprocity mean? What does being in relation to a river, a living river mean? How do I treat you different? Do I just run next to you and not acknowledge that you exist? Do I open the tap and drink water and not acknowledge that a river has sacrificed that water for me? It's given that water. So I am alive. Like, do I. Am I actually consciously aware of how the river is like, running, flowing through every single aspect of my life? Let's not forget all great cities. All great cities, this is like post colonial, secular type stuff have been created because of rivers, right? Because they were. You could navigate through them. Like you could, you know, like I say, great cities around the coast, you could get on a boat, you had access to fresh water, you had food and stuff like that. Melbourne is not any different. We exist because, you know, you are 48 00:32:16.000 --> 00:32:24.000 an embodiment in a way of this, of this beautiful, like, combination of the prose and the passion, the technical understanding. 49 00:32:24.000 --> 00:32:25.000 Yeah. 50 00:32:25.000 --> 00:33:24.000 And you begin talking of the birrorung as her and speaking to her. And that for me has felt like it's a big part of what Regen Melbourne is, the bringing together of these understandings in a way that feels like it's of this moment in time. And I wonder if you turn into Kai again, you can. Just looking at where we are right now and this moment for Regen Melbourne and for Australia and for broader, like this idea that we are. We need to think of these challenges differently is that I'm reading, I meet Charity and I meet this human who makes me go, oh, God, we've got all of this. Like, this is all here. Is that. Am I picking up the right things? 51 00:33:24.000 --> 00:35:40.000 Yeah, I think so. I think there's something about. We were talking about this earlier around this. There's a kind of integration question, I think that is at the heart of regenerative work and systems work and holistic practice, which is around kind of reintegrating a compartmentalized way of being. And I mean that at a kind of individual level in the way that you describe Charity's background. I think about it in the way that, you know, I. I've always struggled with the fact that I'm a civil engineer by training, but I really love history. And what does that do to the two sides of the brain? Even in our team at Region Melbourne, we have systems engineers and we have anthropologists and we have dietitians, and there's many backgrounds that kind of make up our. Our little crew. And then in the work that we do, it's trying to integrate the strengths of legal traditions and engineers and activists and arts organizations and government. So it's worth trying to integrate across many disciplines. And I do think it's a response to the fact that, you know, Western education traditions has taken a really problem solving approach to the world. And the best way to solve problems as recovering engineers is to reduce them, simplify them, and

externalize as much as you possibly can, and what's left is solvable. But of course, what you've done in that process is you've created a whole bunch of externalities, which I think for a while there we were able to maintain at a kind of civilizational level. But I think now when we talk about words like metachrisis or polycrisis or, or collapse or all these terms, they relate to this idea that the externalities that we've all created are now amplifying to such an extent that they can't be managed. And so the response to that, I think, has to be a revisiting of some of these fundamentals of how we think about the world, primarily of which is this idea of reductionist problem solving. And so, yes, I think what you're describing in a human is actually a manifestation of some of the major problems that we're trying to. Or challenges that we're trying to explore together. 52 00:35:40.000 --> 00:35:51.000 And this is sort of why something like a Regen Melbourne is needed, right? Because that's difficult for our existing institutions and systems to do. 53 00:35:51.000 --> 00:37:33.000 And I think that's where, you know, one of the early responses to our work and what we're trying to do in those early days, someone said to me, it feels like what you're doing is creating a space where we have permission to talk about what we actually want to be doing in the world to fulfill our greatest ambitions as organizations. And so I think to some extent, what we've done is created sort of the conditions in a relatively artificial way. Like, let's get together and talk about how we make a river swimmable, which sounded absurd three years ago. It sounded like an absolute pipe dream. And yet by creating the conditions to ask bigger questions and to sometimes create the very practical conditions. So what funding might be required? What access to networks might be required? What type of convening do we need? By creating those conditions over time, you move the needle from impossible to plausible and then perhaps to inevitable. Where, you know, last year the city of Melbourne came out in active support of a swimmable birorang. And three years ago, that was completely. Would have been completely unheard of. And I think that is an example of creating permission spaces that over time allow legacy institutions to move to where they need to be in response to the times that we're in. And that's a sort of both a deeply deliberate process. And I think we have lots of ways of organizing that deeply considered and strategic. But it is ultimately also creating the conditions for a type of emergence, that which is very foreign to the way of thinking about change. And we are actively considering how we shift the conditions so that the place can express itself in a way that's in alignment with the vision that we 54 00:37:33.000 --> 00:37:57.000 have, so that the place can express itself and the people of the place. Right. It's coming back to the concept of democracy. And this is essentially. And the question of how to save democracy. Coming back to the concept of democracy, you are saying this is a democratic institution, in a sense. 55 00:37:57.000 --> 00:41:00.000 Yeah, I think what we're saying, and I love this framing of putting democracy at the center because it encourages a conversation around what is democracy. I think there is a. When I say we're trying to create the conditions for the place to express itself, I think it's saying place in the most holistic sense. So people are place, place are people. But in the same way, we have to listen to the beyond human voices of a place. And we try and do that in many ways. Structurally, we have nature on our board, which provides a governance mechanism where we can go beyond human voices. As Charity was talking about the Birurrung expressing itself as a living entity in what we do, but also the way it's formally governed in this state. You know, it's declared as a living entity. So we try and do it structurally, but then we also do it culturally in the way that we talk about our work, not just being about people, but also being about place. So your question around what does that mean for democracy, I think, speaks to who's democracy. And there is a need, I think, in this conversation to also scaffold it around the current state of what is democracy, the long term vision for what it could be, but most importantly, what are the stepping stones from here to there. And so I think maybe the way that we're thinking about that, and this is where we go from the kind of vision for democracy and the role that we play as a. We talk about it as transitionary infrastructure. You know, if our systems are doing everything they need to do, if they were fit for purpose, then we wouldn't exist. But they're not for lots of reasons that we could spend three hours diagnosing, but they're patently not serving their purpose in the way that they need to. Therefore, we need transitionary institutions like Reged Melbourne until our systems become fit for context. And that might be 10 years, it might be 30 years, it might be 50 years if we take a macroeconomic view and then we biodegrade and we don't have to exist anymore as an organization. And maybe one more thing I'd say, which is perhaps a little bit more challenging, is that I think by taking a long term view of how democracy evolves and how our work evolves, we also have to acknowledge that there are stepping stones between our current state and the future vision that we have for Regenerative Melbourne. And those stepping stones include conversations around security, how are we managing risk and security, how are we thinking about adaptation, how are we thinking about resilience in the face of volatility, as well as what the ultimate vision for regeneration might look like. And I think too often I see movements for change take a very significant leap of faith from where we are today to the idea of regeneration or the total expression of a

vision, and don't also take responsibility for some of those other domains. And my great fear is that we then leave vacant these domains for other forces who can capitalize on a lack of security or a lack of resilience or a lack of adaptability. And I think all of us who are working towards the sort of vision that we are at Regen Melbourne need to be actively in a conversation around what does a secure place look like, what does a resilient place look like, as well as what does a regenerative place look like. 56 00:41:00.000 --> 00:41:16.000 Lovely. I'm going to come to you, Charity, because you said something wonderful when we were speaking earlier. You said. And you talked about the end game. Yeah, tell me about the end game. 57 00:41:16.000 --> 00:43:57.000 I think the end Game sounds like a Marvel movie in the context. I guess the work that we're doing, like the Earth show, like the Swami will be rung for me, is this is. So ability is a very powerful lever that opens up a whole array of opportunities to bring a lot of people on the journey to achieve this collective vision. But one of the central opportunities is to bring people back to nature, right? Is to bring people back to being conscious of place, that they are in coexistence with human and non human. The beautiful platypus. Our health is the platypus health. The platypus health is our health. So there's a really strong interconnection between those two. But ultimately it's about care, right? It's about care and reciprocity. If we are caring for the river, the river is caring for us. If we are not being extractive, if we're actually saying if the river is benefiting, like ecologically thriving, like culturally, we're recognizing indigenous stories. We're where we're respecting and getting to know those valuable cultural locations along the river and honoring that, right? Because it's part of our story as well. Knowing that from a social community perspective, society, community is thriving because now they can come together. There's places to commune, there's places to talk, to have these conversations. Kai was talking about there's joy. We are. Our feet are there dangling over a little big stone. A big stone, A little big stone in the cool, refreshing waters. We're hearing the sounds of children laughing and giggling and splashing. We are bringing joy back to places where joy has not been around for a very long time, or we've been unconscious of it, I think then we can start seeing this thriving Greater Melbourne. When we are caring for the river, so caring for ourself and place, and we are in a very reciprocal relationship with place, with people and non humans. That's the end game. 58 00:43:57.000 --> 00:44:07.000 I love it. That is not the average conversation that people will have with two civil engineers. Karl Oughgren, Charity. Marcen Yantwani, thank you very much. 59 00:44:07.000 --> 00:44:13.000 Please. 60 00:44:13.000 --> 00:44:22.000 This was how to Save Democracy, the podcast for people who love democracy but know we've got serious work to do to save it. 61 00:44:22.000 --> 00:44:43.000 How to Save Democracy is produced in partnership with the Conduit and wouldn't be possible without the kind support of Open Society foundations and you, our listeners. We've got big plans, so if you can chip in to help us make them happen, we'd love to have you on board.