Amanda McKenzie

"At school I was very passionate about music, drama and sport. We had a big kayaking focus at our school, and I was kayaking captain. I was also music captain and played the clarinet. In fact, I almost applied to do music at university. I was debating between music and science and then I had this moment when I was at schoolies in Byron Bay."

"“I took myself off one morning and sat on the beach, and I remember thinking to myself, ‘What do I want to do with my life?’ It seems very naïve now, but I wrote down, ‘I want to save the world from environmental pollution.’”"

"My parents both have a very strong ethos around social justice and were very passionate about helping in the community. It was never something they talked about, but my parents, both in their work and in the way that they showed up in the world, contributed to the community."

"“You are always striving. That’s something I’ve found in my life; I’m always trying to push for something to be different, for things to change in the world. Sometimes I think it would be nice to just not try and change anything, to just sit with it, but that’s not in my personality. I’m always interested in how things can be better.”"

"“The ideas around circular economy and so forth are a major philosophical change in that previously we have thought there is an outside to the environment that we live in, that there is always ‘somewhere else’ that we can put our waste. The truth is that there is only one environment, and we all have to live here. So anything that is ‘waste’ must be an input to some other process that is useful.”"

"The world has learned just how problematic the disruption that the Covid-19 pandemic has been, but the mother of all disruptions remains climate change"

"Clean energy is the cheapest source of new power and in the Australian context, electricity prices have been rising because our electricity system is aging. It's inefficient. It's polluting. So, replacing that energy system with clean technology, with renewables, with storage, is absolutely a critical part of the recovery puzzle."