About Us
The Global Protection Agency was founded by its director Mat Morris as a result of a perceived need to assist the music events industry to achieve better environmental outcomes.
Having attended many gigs, tours and festivals across Australia over the past 25 years Mat noted that while the industry was extremely experienced at running successful events, in the majority of instances, the environmental impacts of an event were either poorly managed or not at all on management’s radar.
With the pressing issues of climate change, water scarcity and the increasing cost of resources, Mat saw an opportunity to partner with the music events industry to integrate environmental issues into the day to day decision making processes and significantly reduce impacts on the environment.
The GPA was the first environmental consultancy firm to offer the music events industry innovative environmental solutions such as carbon neutralisation tickets for audience members. It was also the first environmental consultancy firm to offer events an effective recycling system using a deposit arrangement to incentivise audience members to do the right thing.
Mat has over 15 years experience in environmental management across a range of industry types. Mat holds a Bachelor Degree of Science majoring in Environmental Economics and Environmental Planning.
His previous experience includes a role as an environmental regulator under the Queensland Environmental Protection Authority, with responsibilities for environmental compliance audits across 26 industry sectors.
Mat has significant experience in the development and implementation of Environmental Management Systems (EMS) in a number of large organisations. He developed and implemented the EMS for Brisbane City Council covering 9,000 employees and some 15 business units from parks and gardens to waste and sewage treatment and disposal.
He was also responsible for developing an electronic based EMS at State Rail, again covering approximately 11,000 employees and activities such as passenger fleet maintenance and contaminated land remediation activities.
Mat was the Corporate Environment Manager for Integral Energy, responsible for managing environmental risks and reporting progress against strategies and improvement plans to the Executive Environment Committee.
More recently Mat was the Manager/Corporate Environment with TransGrid, the NSW Transmission Network. Mat focussed his attention on the refinement of the organisation’s certified EMS, risk identification systems, contaminated land management and hazardous waste and environmental training issues. Mat was ultimately responsible for assisting TransGrid to comply with its environmental legislative responsibilities and to meet its commitments under the organisation’s Environment Policy.