Gai Brodtmann (Canberra, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this legislation, because Labor believes in helping job seekers enter the workforce. We believe in providing young people with the appropriate training, skills and work experience they need to help them enter employment—especially as they make that difficult transition from school to work. We believe that environmentally based work and training programs can be an effective pathway for job seekers, and also provide some real environmental benefits.

We support the Green Army, just as we supported its previous incarnations; the National Green Jobs Corps; the Green Corps program; and the original incarnation, Paul Keating's 1992 Landcare and Environment Action Program. However, although we support the principles of the program, we remain significantly concerned at the lack of detail that is being provided by the Abbott government about how this program will actually work, and about the exemptions from the workplace health and safety laws, compensation laws, and industrial relations laws that the government is seeking to put in place.

As they always do, the wonderful staff of the Parliamentary Library have prepared a comprehensive Bills Digest on this legislation. It is very much worth a read, and I recommend it. It was published last week on 18 March. The reason I mention it now is that in the very first section of this digest, on the first page out of nine pages of text, the library has provided a caveat. It says:

It is worth noting that, beyond the basics, there is not a great deal of publicly available information about the programme.

This program is meant to begin on 1 July this year. That is just over three months away, and we are still without any significant detail about how it will run. I note that the Green Army has been a policy of the Liberal Party since the 2010 election, so it is quite surprising that they have not worked out the detail yet. But this is just further evidence that the Prime Minister is a Prime Minister of slogans and not of substance.

Some of the details that we are missing include what, if any, training will be provided to participants. It is by no means clear that training for participants is to be guaranteed or that any training that is provided is to be accredited training. The explanatory memorandum merely states that Green Army participants will have the opportunity to undertake training. Who will provide this training? Will it be accredited training? What level of training will be provided? What qualifications will participants have at the end of this training? Will they have a certificate I? Will they have a certificate II? Will they have a certificate III? Will they have a certificate IV?

Similarly, we do not know what, if any, processes are going to be put in place to support participants to transition into the workforce after they have completed the program. We also do not have any great detail about the environmental objectives of the program. Any environmental outcomes the program might provide would be greatly enhanced if the program were more clearly focused on strategically targeted long-term projects that met a clear set of environmental objectives. Unfortunately, this is not the case.

We also do not know what, if any, safeguards are being put in place to ensure the program does not lead to the displacement or reduction of employment opportunities for existing workers. The Abbott government must assure those hardworking Australians in local government and other organisations and authorities that employers will not be able to displace them and rely upon Green Army participants to do their work. There is simply no justification for a program like the Green Army that can provide employment pathways if the participants then go on to displace existing workers. This potential displacement needs to be addressed by the Abbott government in its design of the program. We currently have no detail to give us any confidence that this will not occur.

Of greater concern to Labor than what we do not know about this policy is what we do know—that there will be exemptions from work health and safety, compensation and industrial relations laws for participants. Labor is gravely concerned that this bill does not provide adequate protections for participants in the Green Army scheme, namely in the areas of occupational health and safety, workers compensation and rehabilitation. Proposed section 38J of this legislation provides that a participant in the Green Army Program is not a worker for the Commonwealth and is not an employee of the Commonwealth for the purposes of the Work Health and Safety Act 2011, nor an employee within the meaning of section 5 of the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 1988 and is not an employee for the purposes of the Fair Work Act 2009. Because they are not an employee, they are not entitled to the benefits that an employee would be entitled to, including workers compensation.

In defence of this, the Minister for the Environment says that the arrangements would be similar to the Howard government's Green Corps program. That is all very well, but the workplace relations environment has changed since the days of the Green Corps. Under previous schemes, participants could have been covered by state and territory employment laws, but this will no longer be the case, since most states and territories referred their industrial relations powers to the Commonwealth in 2010.

Nothing in the bill addresses the issue of the extent to which Green Army service providers will be required to provide suitable insurance. However, even when suitable insurance is in place, it differs from workers compensation cover in that an injured participant is likely to have to demonstrate negligence. There have been successful claims of this sort, but they can take many years to settle, and young volunteers may not have the resources to pursue such claims.

What we have here is a program where young and inexperienced workers will be undertaking physical work in outdoor, unpredictable environments but will be offered a lower standard of workplace protection. Labor finds this entirely unacceptable. If the Abbott government were at all committed to workplace safety and entitlements or at all concerned about the wellbeing of the Green Army participants, it would ensure that participants are deemed employees so that they are covered by a range of Commonwealth laws, including the Fair Work Act, the Work Health and Safety Act and the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Act.

So far I have outlined a range of concerns with the detail of this program, but perhaps the biggest problem with the policy, the thing that causes me the most concern, is that those opposite think that the Green Army is a solution to climate change. The Green Army section of the Liberal's policy document says the Green Army will 'make a real difference to improving the environment in our own backyard and addressing climate change'. Of course, those opposite intend for the Green Army to complement the Abbott government's biggest policy disaster, which is Direct Action. But, no matter how many young Australians join the Green Army, no matter how much the Abbott government is prepared to pay to big polluters, these policies will not be as effective as a market based solution to cap carbon pollution. That is why Labor is united in support for an emissions trading scheme.

We have known for some time that our sea levels are rising as a result of human induced global warming. The advice from climate scientists is clear on this. Most recently, the fifth report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, released last year, told us that warming of the climate system is unequivocal and that the sea level has risen. We know, too, that extreme weather events are increasing in intensity and frequency as a result of climate change. In Australia, we do not need to be reminded about the devastation that extreme weather events can cause. It is something we all know. It is something we all fear. It is something, therefore, that we should be united in tackling. I heard on the radio just this morning that Oxfam was warning about the fact that potentially 100 million people in the next 50 years could be facing starvation if there is not appropriate action taken on climate change in the near future.

Those opposite agree on the need to reduce carbon pollution. What we disagree on is how we should go about that. Labor will support the repeal of the fixed carbon price in order to replace it with an emissions trading scheme. What we will not support is the removal of the fixed price on carbon if it is not going to be replaced by a carbon pricing scheme that puts a cap on carbon pollution, that guarantees a reduction in carbon pollution.

The fact is that economies all over the world are putting a price on carbon right now or they have already done so. There are over one billion people currently living in carbon constrained economies. They live in a country, a state, a province or a union that has initiated some form of carbon pricing, such as a carbon tax or an emissions trading scheme.

The European Union, of course, has had an ETS since 2005. The EU ETS is now the largest carbon market in the world, operating in 30 countries, including the 27 EU member states plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. The EU is Australia's second largest trading bloc, which is why linking Australia's ETS with the EU's ETS was a long-term goal of the Labor government. When in August last year the then Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency announced that when the Australian carbon price moved to a floating price ETS it would be linked with the European Union ETS, it was applauded as the best possible outcome for Australia.

However, the EU is not alone—far from it. California, which is the ninth largest economy in the world in its own right, has introduced an emissions trading scheme around the $20 mark. In China alone, 200 million people are living in provinces where there is an ETS either in place or in development. Most significantly, there are plans for a nationwide emissions trading scheme in China later this decade. Closer to home, our friend and neighbour New Zealand has had an ETS in place since 2009 with bipartisan support.

I mention the bipartisan support because, in the debate on carbon pricing over the last few years since I had the honour of being elected the member for Canberra, in the discussions that I have had with the community and also the diplomatic community here in Canberra one thing that has particularly staggered the European members of the diplomatic corps is the fact that this has become such a partisan issue. In the UK and throughout Europe, action on climate change has been seen as a bipartisan issue, requiring, therefore, bipartisan support. I have to say that the European diplomatic corps, particularly, have been absolutely astonished about the level of partisanship that has embraced this issue in Australia, given the fact that it has enjoyed such strong bipartisan support in the EU and in each of those countries throughout the EU for such a long time. It is quite breathtaking when our neighbour and friend New Zealand have had this ETS in place since 2009 with bipartisan support.

By 2016, over three billion people will be living in countries where there are emissions trading schemes or carbon taxes. That is three billion people. But, if the Abbott government has its way, Australians will not be among those three billion. The fact is that the Abbott government's so-called Direct Action Plan will take very little action at all. Direct Action does not put a cap on carbon pollution and it does not provide the price signal—the market based imperative that is required to move away from carbon intensive actions. Direct Action is a system of taxpayer funded subsidies to polluters. It asks ordinary, working, taxpaying Australians to subsidise big polluters. It is a policy that is rejected by climate scientists and economists alike. Direct Action does not guarantee a reduction in carbon pollution. The simple truth is that without a cap on carbon there cannot be any such guarantee. It is an expensive system that pays taxpayer funded subsidies to polluters with no guarantee of success.

I know that there are members opposite who agree that an ETS is the most efficient and effective way to reduce carbon pollution. The fact is that in 2007 there was bipartisan support for an ETS. It was the policy that both parties took to the 2007 election and was supported beyond the 2007 election.

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