Lend Lease's UK HQ in London's Hanover Square is a 1970s office building. Lend Lease has managed to refit it to get an Excellent rating under the Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM) for environmental performance assessment.

In the UK, Westfield is known as the biggest retail-led regeneration developer. But back home in Australia, Westfield is a platinum member of the Green Building Council and helped develop the Green Star Shopping Centre Design tool. It is now applying this to a new development in Sydney City where it is building the retail and commercial areas to achieve a Five Green Star rating.

What is it about the Australian property development industry that seems to put it so far ahead of the UK's indigenous developers in the sustainability race? What can the UK learn from the wizards of Oz? That was the question. The answers were not quite what was expected.

"I don't agree. In Australia the government was very slow to react on climate change and is basically now playing catch-up with the rest of the world." You might expect that from the head of sustainability at the UK's Hammerson. But before Paul Edwards was appointed just over a year ago, he had spent 12 years in Australia where he led sustainability at Bovis Lend Lease and worked closely with the Green Building Council.

"When I arrived back in England it was obvious to me that the public sector in Australia was miles behind on sustainability and the private sector was ploughing ahead. But in the UK, the public sector was far ahead and the private sector was playing catch-up.

"There's one thing about Australia," he adds. "The private sector is a much smaller market, so where they might be doing two projects, in England we are doing 20. So I don't think Australia is storming ahead. They have done a couple of well-promoted, innovative, iconic projects like The Bond, and that's the difference. But how many shopping centres have they created that are sustainable? None. They have a couple heading that way, but nothing more than we're doing here.

"There's a big retail centre outside Sydney called Rouse Hill, funded and operated by the General Property Trust, which is doing something innovative, pushing the boundaries. But there are a lot of developers in the UK who are pushing the same sort of boundaries."

Duncan Young is head of sustainability at Lend Lease Retail UK and formerly worked for Lend Lease in Australia. He, too, doesn't believe Australia is necessarily leading the way in sustainability. "We have all got a lot to learn and a lot of what the property developers are doing here in the UK is as good as the stuff that's being done Australia.

"But in Australia there is now a value attached to a sustainable building and we've started to see that coming through in higher valuations. At The Gauge, for example, tenants could have gone down the road and paid less rent. But they saw the alignment between their corporate responsibility and our ability to deliver them a green workplace.

"We believe there's no option for us not to build green and sustainable structures. In future, we won't be able to operate unless we build good, fit-for-purpose and sustainable buildings."

However, the one thing Australia has, and which is missing in the UK, says Edwards at Hammerson, is good environmental benchmarking tools. "They have the Australian Building Greenhouse Rating scheme (ABGR). It's only for offices at the moment, but they're looking to create a retail one. It enables the market to benchmark itself so that people can say they are a five-star or four-star building. And the government has said that it will only move into a building that is four star."

And then there is Green Star, says Edwards. This is a combination of BREEAM and the US Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design rating system (LEED). "I worked on the group that put Green Star together. Basically, we selected the good parts of BREEAM and LEED. But it's smart because it incorporates the AGBR. That makes things simpler. And when it becomes simple, the market understands it and uses it."

And in a further step towards simplification, the Property Council of Australia has linked those two tools into its own guidelines on rating buildings, which all agents and valuers use.

"So now they don't have to ask questions about BREEAM or ABGR, they just tick boxes. That makes it simple for everyone. And once you make it simple, it gets taken up. The UK doesn't have that simplicity yet."

And that, perhaps, is the real lesson to be learned from Oz.

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