George Christensen (Dawson, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to follow on from the member for Wannon to speak on this Social Security Legislation Amendment (Green Army Programme) Bill 2014. The bill is yet another example of the Liberal-National government fulfilling the promises and the commitments it made to the Australian people in the last election. We promised we would raise a green army and this bill enables us to do exactly that. I am also proud to say that this bill will enable the government to meet the commitments it made in my electorate of Dawson under this program. These are important commitments because, along with hundreds of other commitments, they will deliver three important things: valuable training to the young, a sense of worth and achievement to participants in the program and real, tangible outcomes for the environment—that is, outcomes the participants can be proud of, as alluded to by the previous speaker, the member for Wannon.

The specific purpose of this bill is to enable variations to the Social Security Act 1991, so as to allow the payment of participants in the Green Army Program. The bill defines the Green Army Program. It inserts a provision for a Green Army payment and defines how recipients of such a payment are to be treated under the nation's social security arrangements. The Liberal-National government has a strong history of delivering for the environment. By that I mean delivering real outcomes for the environment. Making token gestures which do nothing more than attack industries and jobs does not deliver real outcomes for the environment. The Green Army is designed to deliver those real outcomes.

It will build upon the highly successful Green Corps program that was established under the Howard Liberal-National government in 1996. Over the life of the Green Corps program, we saw the propagation and planting of more than 14 million trees, the building of more than 8,000 kilometres of fencing, the clearing of more than 50,000 weeds and the construction or maintenance of more than 5,000 kilometres of walking tracks and boardwalks. Unfortunately under the previous Labor administration, the Rudd-Gillard government, we saw the successful Green Corps program done away with. The Labor government did what they could to break this program. In typical Labor fashion, they saw a solution and created a problem. They tore that program apart. They rebadged it and turned it into something that provided no real or significant benefit. Eventually the program was killed off in 2012.

Unlike the carbon tax, which the Labor Party claimed to have terminated before voting once again in this new parliament to keep, they really did terminate the Green Corps program and the young people no longer had the opportunity to gain valuable skills while helping the environment. Labor took a different approach. They decided to hit families, businesses and the economy with the world's biggest carbon tax, but the carbon tax was a pointless attack on the entire economy. Despite a $7.6 billion tax, which is what the carbon tax collected, emissions for the first 12 months barely changed—by 0.1 per cent. The Green Army will actually return real outcomes to the environment while giving young people dignity, skills and a sense of achievement. There are three components to this Green Army Program. The first component is the service provider. Service providers will be contracted by the government to engage Green Army teams, to deliver training, wages and payments, and to manage the activities of the Green Army teams. They will provide regular progress reports and ensure that projects are completed.

The second component is project sponsors. Project sponsors will be the organisations—such as local councils, community groups and natural resource management groups—that are able to develop suitable projects for the Green Army to undertake. Sponsors can submit their proposals through an application process in which they will be assessed and potentially recommended for action.

The third component, most importantly, is the participants of the Green Army itself—the soldiers, so to speak. The Green Army Program will be targeting young people between the ages of 17 and 24. These young people may be unemployed, they may be school leavers seeking a gap year or they may be graduates. The Green Army Program will provide funding to those individuals who make up the Green Army teams undertaking key environmental project activities.

Project sponsors will be the ones that supply the equipment, the materials and the expertise that will be needed to deliver on the project. One of the most important outcomes for the Green Army Program is training and skill development for young people who may not otherwise have such an opportunity to gain those skills and that training.

In addition to the experience and on-the-job training, another key element of the Green Army Program is the provision of vocational and accredited training. Such training will be delivered by a registered training organisation under the frameworks of the Australian Qualifications Framework. The wide range of projects undertaken through this Green Army Program will link in with a wide range of training opportunities. I can list some of them: land management, conservation, heritage conservation, work readiness, leadership, project and human resource management, and trade skills such as heritage trade skills.

Although many—in fact, most—of these Green Army projects will be hands-on outdoor jobs, they will not be exclusively outdoor projects. Training undertaken in conjunction with Green Army projects does satisfy requirements under the Australian Qualifications Framework and service providers will be responsible for making sure that happens. They can tailor training opportunities to best suit the needs of participants and a training plan can be negotiated on an individual basis. First aid training and workplace health and safety training must be completed by all participants before they start work on Green Army projects.

The workplace health and safety of Green Army participants is particularly important to the Liberal-National government. For this reason, the Department of the Environment will work with service providers to agree on a risk management framework for the delivery of Green Army projects. The service providers will be required to work with sponsors on risk plans for each individual project. Risk plans will be one component of the regular reporting requirement.

So claims made about Green Army participants not having safety protections are just wrong. The health and safety of participants engaged in the program will remain governed by the relevant statutes, by the regulations and by the by-laws and requirements of state and territory laws in regard to workplace health and safety. The Commonwealth will also implement a work health and safety audit scheme for the Green Army Program, involving independent work health and safety audits of service providers and projects. That is very much due diligence and I can only wish that had happened with the pink batts scheme.

The Liberal-National government will provide $525 billion over the next four years to establish that Green Army. Our policy that we took to the election, and which we are acting on here, will raise this Green Army of 15,000 foot soldiers; the largest standing environmental workforce in the nation and in the nation's history. Our army will provide a real and practical solution to cleaning up riverbanks and creek beds, to revegetating sand dunes, to revegetating mangrove habitats and to a range of other environmental conservation remediation work.

In my electorate of Dawson in North Queensland, we have already identified and committed to two Green Army projects. I am very pleased that both of those projects had funding committed to them in last night's budget and they will go ahead. The first project is supporting an organisation called Eco Barge Clean Seas and the program that they operate within the stunning Whitsunday region. Everyone knows about the beautiful Whitsunday: the islands, the beaches and the white sand beach at Whitehaven. What this program does is work on the natural beauty of the island by cleaning up the debris that we find in the water and around those islands.

Since July 2009, through a volunteer effort, this organisation has removed 110,000 kilograms worth of debris from the environment. That was just waste and rubbish that has come out of drains and come off ships—that sort of thing. I happen to have gone out a couple of times with the Eco Barge Clean Seas group—at one stage, with the Prime Minister—to one of the islands to help pick up marine debris that was around the island. We also went out with the Minister for the Environment at one stage to see some of the work they were doing in sorting out all of this rubbish.

They are a group that is doing something very concrete and positive for the environment. They are making a real difference. In fact, in conjunction with Fauna Rescue Whitsundays, the Eco Barge Clean Seas group has just recently launched the Whitsunday Marine Turtle Rescue Centre at their headquarters to ensure that any sick or injured marine turtle is provided with the care that it needs.

The Green Army working with Eco Barge Clean Seas will mean that more work can be done, skills and experience can be learned and there will be better outcomes for the local environment all around. I have made a joke that in this instance, because a lot of the work will be done on the water, it will be the 'green navy' component of the program.

The second project is working with the Don River Improvement Trust in the town of Bowen to fix some of the problems that we have with the Don River. The Don River has a catchment of about 1,200 square kilometres. It goes from the Clarke Range through to Bowen on the coast. It falls 250 metres in about 60 kilometres—a very steep gradient for a river—and it is one of the fastest-flowing rivers in the nation and the fastest-flowing in the tropics. When it rains, this river really runs. We have a flood warning time of about six to nine hours. We have had major floods through the Don in 1970, 1979, 1980, 1988, 1991 and 2008. That is not the result of carbon emissions; it has been going on for a long time before that, throughout the 19th century and into the early 20th. The record flood on this river was 9.7 metres in 1946—believe it or not. Floods have always happened there, but in recent years we have seen a build-up of sand in the river mouth and all along the river. It has been held together through non-native grasses and weeds that are choking the riverbed. Water in its natural course has failed to flush the sand out because of this vegetation. What would normally be a minor flood is now causing a flow of break-outs in certain areas. We had one recently that did millions of dollars' worth of damage to tomato farms. The impact was on the farmers, but it could also fall on residents. There is a potential that the Don River could break out and head towards the Queens Beach district with its sizeable residential community. That would pose a risk to life and property.

The Whitsunday Regional Council is doing a report at the moment on how to mitigate flooding on the Don River. That is several months away but, without a doubt, if we can get a Green Army team in there to do some remedial work by removing the noxious weeds in the river and repairing the riverbank, it will assist in a minor way. We have just had Cyclone Ida, the aftermath of which has been devastating and which I do not want to see again. I am committed to this project but I am also looking for further funding to do more serious work on the Don River. These are just two projects in my electorate that the Green Army will undertake. It is most welcomed by the people of Dawson and by myself. I do commend the government on the Green Army Program. It is delivering on an election commitment and it will result in real outcomes for the environment.

See this speech in context