Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Social Security Legislation Amendment (Green Army Programme) Bill 2014, but I think the Member for Lindsay and I must be talking about two different bills, because this is not an environmental bill—this is an employment bill. This will have no direct action of any kind in improving our environment or reducing our exposure to mitigate climate change. I feel we have been reading two different bills, or we are talking about two different programs. Whilst there is some benefit in ensuring that people get out there and do everything to maintain and protect our environment, this bill is not going to have the lasting impact in any way, shape, size or form that the member for Lindsay is hoping for.

The government's Green Army policy: even the words—I am bemused that everything is now an army; everything is now a war. We are deploying people. How about protecting, employing? Why all this terminology? I think it actually has fairly draconian and very bad connotations. But if we want to go with 'Green Army', then so be it. The government's Green Army policy has scant detail and was released with more than a three-word slogan—which has defined the coalition's attitude to many things and I think will get many platitudes tonight during the budget as well. Regarding policy towards protecting the environment and mitigating climate change, whilst more details have trickled out since the introduction of this legislation, I think that is a very poor way to introduce legislation. They tabled it in the House with very little information, and over the break we have had more drip feeds. That is no way to implement a rather large change to many programs and to the employment of young people.

The tragedy is that we have come to expect this from this government: you are given one thing, but there is no detail in it, and it slowly filters down. This government was elected on 'no excuses or surprises', but every five minutes there is another excuse or surprise. We have had a little bit more information, but not a great deal. This government has no credibility on the environment whatsoever. After only six months in office this government has proven that its only interest in the environment is in removing any meaningful protection of it. They have disallowed the endangered communities listing of the River Murray from the Darling to the sea and have had the world's largest marine reserve system reproclaimed to undo the management plans that give them effect. And in my home state of Victoria the minister for the environment has rubber-stamped a ludicrous, faux-scientific trial of cattle grazing in the Alpine National Park—a scheme that will, in fact, assist a mere three or four families. In government, Labor was all that stood between the prestige piece of heritage wilderness and a reckless Liberal state government. This environment minister—who is supposedly protecting the environment—has sold out the Alpine National Park to the mountain cattlemen, who now get to graze their cattle in our national park for free.

For a government that is opposed to using taxpayers' industry assistance resources, this seems a rather hypocritical decision. Perhaps the government has plans for the soon-to-be environmentally destroyed area to become a restoration project for their undertrained and underpaid Green Army. So we are going to let the cattle in and destroy this pristine area—oh, and there's a project for the Green Army to reproclaim! If we did not let the cows in in the first place, we would not have this devastation. I will add it to the very long list of unknown qualities of this sketchy and highly dubious policy.

This is no LEAP—the Landcare and Environment Action Program of the Keating government. As with most policies from the current government, it is a sham. When LEAP was introduced, the program was a 26-week environmental work experience and training program that left participants with training qualifications. Participants undertook work experience and skills development on environment heritage programs with 130 hours of training, leading to a nationally recognised qualification. There is no such standard in this program. And the National Green Jobs Corps program was similar to the original Green Corps program introduced by Labor, which actually gave young people training, skills and a wage. This program does not mirror those in any way.

Members opposite talk of the need for practical action to reduce the effects of climate change and to protect our environment. If we simply observe the face value of these statements, they are right. But practical action to halt climate change actually means reducing carbon emissions. Anybody who has looked at the Sydney newspapers today and has read the alarming statements about the degradation of the sea ice and the sea float would know that this is real—this is happening. Releasing a bunch of young unskilled individuals into our environment is not going to mitigate climate change and reduce carbon emissions. It requires pollution levels to levels to be reduced—significantly reduced. Creating a system that takes people off social security benefits and employs them into an 'army' of very low-paid workers without any workplace safety, proper training or protection measures and getting them to plant some trees or do some weeding is not practical action in terms of emissions reduction. Australia needs environmental solutions. We do not need to tan-bark the country. The best solution to emission reduction remains a price on carbon. But this bill also fails on the grounds of human resources. Green Army volunteers will be paid the minimum wage for 30 hours a week. They will no longer be eligible for Centrelink payments, and they will also lose any entitlements or rent assistance, health care card and pharmaceutical allowances, leaving them no better off than if they did not volunteer.

As I said at the outset, do not be deceived. This is not an environmental program; it is a work program. This is an employment program, and as such it needs to be discussed as an employment program, along with the implications for the young people who participate in this program. Labor believes that environmentally based work and training programs can be effective. A fantastic scheme that was run in my electorate under the last government was the Ashwood College Permaculture Food Garden. It was run by a magnificent woman, Mariette Tuohey, who took on board a group of individuals whom she trained up meticulously. She also invited in the community to be part of the permaculture garden, producing permaculture food. The community have now built their own wood-fired pizza oven and they are making pizzas. They have a market garden. The students who were involved in this program left with a certificate, with jobs to go to. They were not just mucking around and planting trees and hoping above hope that they would somehow be better off and the environment would be better off. They were trained; they were educated; they left with a purpose. They were also within a school environment, and several of them actually returned to school, which was a fantastic outcome all round. But this program, so scant on information, does not give me any confidence that it will lead to the outcomes that I saw at Ashwood College.

Participants in the Green Army scheme will also not be Commonwealth employees and will therefore be denied access to protection provided by the Work Health and Safety Act, the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Act and the Fair Work Act. Whilst we have been given assurances that they may have access to state based legislation, we are not sure how this will actually work, and there is still great concern. You can be injured while you are volunteering. This is work in the field, with untrained individuals being given things like chainsaws. I would be concerned about how they are going about things and what protections are in place. Exclusion from these acts means that, if any participant in this scheme is injured at work, they will receive no compensation or support. They will not be covered by the workplace standards that every other employee in Australia takes for granted. This government says that the Green Army participants will be similar to the thousands of other young Australians who are in vocational training or education. But, unlike other trainees or apprentices, participants in the Green Army will be under the supervision of the Commonwealth and denied the status of Commonwealth employees. They will be left in no-man's-land, unprotected by the act that protects other trainees and apprentices.

Can we even be guaranteed that Green Army participants will receive decent training and education? Again, there is scant information to say what they will come out with. In the program that I referred to previously, at Ashwood College, even though it was under the Green Corps program the students left with a certificate. They walked out with a certificate in horticulture. I have no idea what these individuals will be leaving with. The Labor Party has always supported training and learning opportunities for young people, to help them find secure and meaningful employment. This program again fails by offering no guarantee that participants will actually receive useful and accredited training to help them secure future employment. In fact, to borrow the words of Ged Kearney, they are more likely to be used as low-paid and unprotected workers in place of well-paid and well-protected workers. Indeed, we have seen that the scheme will allow, say, a council to sack actual staff and employ people under the Green Army scheme. This is another system of getting in cheap labour.

If the government were serious about opening up training opportunities, then it would be facilitating programs in growing areas of the green economy such as auditing and reporting; installing and maintenance of energy-efficient appliances to meet revised building standards; assessment of new and existing buildings against rating systems; and monitoring data output from energy management systems and 'tuning' buildings for peak performance. This is a growth area that businesses are looking at to refigure their buildings so that they are more energy efficient. This is an area where you could employ, train and enhance young people. The government could also be facilitating programs in marketing new and existing buildings, in both the commercial and residential sectors, and drawing up 'green leases'. In the green and energy-efficient skills sector, we have the opportunity to ensure that Australians have the skills to contribute to our response to the challenges of environmental sustainability. There is a fantastic program run at Monash University, through the sustainability centre, that focuses on all these things. It takes university students, who do a traineeship. They are being skilled up in these areas. We could do that for young people—but, no, we are going to go and tanbark the country.

This bill fails young people in need of new skills and future work. There is no guarantee that work will be coming after this. More importantly, though, it fails our environment. This is nothing more than a smokescreen for the government. There is no plan to tackle climate change and no plan to help create jobs for the future. In the same week that the CSIRO produced its State of the climate 2014report, Mr Abbott went to a dinner in the Great Hall and said, 'Let's cut down more trees.' At the time we were being warned that temperatures across Australia were on average almost one degree warmer than they were a century ago, instead of talking about preserving the environment in the best way we can—by preserving old-growth forest, by preserving trees—the Prime Minister was suggesting we chop them down. I did not hear the Minister for the Environment talk once about the CSIRO's report—not once—or its quoting of Rob Vertessy, Bureau of Meteorology chief executive, who said:

Seven of the ten warmest years on record in Australia have occurred since 1998. When we compare the past 15 years to the period 1951 to 1980, we find that the frequency of very warm months has increased five-fold and the frequency of very cold months has decreased by around a third.

The duration, frequency and intensity of heatwaves has increased across large parts of Australia since 1950.

  …   …   …

We have also seen a general trend of declining autumn and winter rainfall, particularly in southwestern and southeastern Australia, while heavy rainfall events are projected to increase. Australian average annual rainfall has increased slightly, largely due to increases in spring and summer rainfall, most markedly in northwestern Australia.

So, while we have seen this marked change in our climate, we are not being given any action on, any way of mitigating, this disaster that is coming.

The member for Lindsay said that this bill was going to protect our environment, protect our future generations. It will do no such thing. We need actual action on climate change. We need to heed the work of the IPCC, instead of condemning and rebuking them. The IPCC report that scientists are 95 to 100 per cent certain that humans have caused the majority of climate change since the 1950s. We also know that, since the 1950s, both the atmosphere and the ocean have warmed. Precipitation patterns are starting to change, and land-based and sea ice are in decline. We have seen this. The information is out there. It is screaming to us to be doing more for our planet, more for our future generations. The Green Army is not going to achieve those outcomes.

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