Andrew Southcott (Boothby, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment Participation, Training and Sport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Social Security Amendment (National Green Jobs Corps Supplement) Bill 2009 seeks to introduce a training supplement of $41.60 a fortnight to eligible participants in the Green Jobs Corps. Before speaking on the second reading motion, it is important to go back to the announcement of the Green Jobs Corps. This was the big set piece announcement at the Labor Party’s national conference in 2009. The Prime Minister stood up there and he announced to the applause of the delegates that his government would be funding 50,000 new green jobs and training places. You can just see how this announcement came about from the hollowmen in the Prime Minister’s office saying, ‘Look, you’ve got a problem with youth unemployment and you’ve got a problem with sections of the labour movement on the emissions trading scheme.’ So what he came up with was 50,000 new green jobs and training places.

The important thing with this government is to always read the fine print because actually there were not 50,000 new green jobs. There were not 16,000 new green jobs, as the Minister for Employment Participation seemed to believe. There were not 10,000 new green jobs, as the Minister for Finance and Deregulation seemed to believe. Only 6,000 of the 50,000 places were jobs. These were funded from the local jobs stream of the Jobs Fund, a fund which had been negotiated through the Senate with the Greens and Senator Fielding and which had been announced by the Prime Minister on 5 April, four months before this set-piece announcement. Recapping, there were four elements of the 50,000 jobs: 10,000 were National Green Jobs Corps, or work experience places—it was very straightforward, these were not jobs but work experience places in a work experience program; 30,000 places were for the greening of training courses of existing apprentices; 4,000 places were pre-vocational training; and only 6,000 were jobs and they were not new.

As I said, 10,000 of those 50,000 places were for young jobseekers to go into the Green Jobs Corps. Green Jobs Corps will commence on 1 January 2010 and places will be available until December 2011. Green Jobs Corps is a six-month work experience program for 18- to 24-year-olds who have been unemployed more than 12 months. They will continue to receive Newstart, youth allowance or a parenting payment. Work experience, whilst not a job, is a move in the right direction. Work experience programs such as Work for the Dole, one of the signature programs of the Howard government, Green Corps and Green Jobs Corps are all designed to increase the employability of the unemployed. They are a pathway to a job. They help jobseekers to become job ready but they are not a job.

Some people may be a bit confused because there have been all sorts of names for different programs. Just to recap, there was a program called Green Corps for the life of the Howard government. It was a youth development program. This is a very important point. It was available for people who were unemployed but, more importantly, it was also available for people who were taking a gap year before university or before their TAFE studies and wanted to do something different or something where they would earn a bit of money. You would often find people in the Green Corps who were volunteers. That finished on 30 June.

On 1 July, with Job Services Australia and the new employment services system, there was something called Green Corps. Green Corps was no longer a youth development program. It was no longer particularly targeted towards youth. It was essentially a work experience program which was available to jobseekers of all ages. There was no difference, really, between Green Corps and Work for the Dole with an environment focus. Green Corps, as it was a youth volunteer, youth development and environmental training program, gave young people the opportunity to preserve the environment and Australia’s cultural heritage. More than 18,000 young Australians participated in the program from 1997 to 2009. They planted more than 14 million trees, erected more than 8,000 kilometres of fencing and undertook in excess of 5,000 surveys of native flora and fauna.

Green Jobs Corps, the third one, appears very similar to Green Corps. At the time that Labor announced their new employment services system, the opposition did highlight one of the problems. We thought it was a mistake to move away from Green Corps, which had a specific youth focus, to a new Green Corps. That has really been borne out by some questions on the Notice Paper. In answer to a question, the Minister for Education and Employment, Workplace Relations and Social Inclusion did say that Green Corps, under Job Services Australia, has been improved and expanded, which will limit its comparison to the previous program under Job Services Australia, and it goes on. But what it says is that to 12 August 2009 there were 36 jobseekers in Green Corps activities under Job Services Australia. Green Corps, the new program which has been running since 1 July, has been a massive failure. The reason for this is that the amount of money that is available for employment service providers is very small compared to what they got under the previous system. So Green Jobs Corps is very similar to the old pre-30 June Green Corps. The only difference is in the age of participants, which has been extended to 24 years, and participants are in receipt of income support payments now instead of the Green Corps allowance. Labor have added the word ‘jobs’ to the name yet have failed to define a pathway between this training and an actual paid job.

The third area I would like to touch on in the second reading speech is what I call the silent tragedy of youth unemployment. Youth unemployment is not receiving anywhere near the amount of attention it deserves. All the figures we have seen over the last 12-18 months show how devastating the impact of job losses and rising unemployment has been, particularly on young Australians. Green Jobs Corps is Labor’s response to that. It is their effort to reduce youth unemployment. But there is no real employment measure here; nor is there a pathway to a job from this program.

The opposition will be moving a second reading amendment to this bill which highlights our concerns about youth unemployment. Over the last 12 months, more than 100,000 full-time jobs have been lost amongst young Australians. Since the election of the Rudd government, 71½ thousand Australians have lost their jobs. Commencements among traditional trade apprentices have fallen by 21.2 per cent in the 12 months to March 2009. The proportion of teenage Australians not in full-time education or full-time employment has risen under this government. The rate of unemployment for teenagers who are not in full-time education has risen to 18½ per cent in 2009, up from 12.2 per cent in 2008. There are about 176,000 people aged 18 to 24 who are not in the labour force and not in full-time education. There are about 120,000 people aged 18 to 24 who are unemployed and not in full-time education. So there are around 295,000 young Australians who are not in full-time education, are not in the labour force or are unemployed. This is around 14 per cent of the 18- to 24-year-old population of Australia.

What we do know is that those people who do not make a good transition from school, who spend periods outside the labour force, not in full-time education and unemployed, will have a very intermittent work history throughout life. So youth unemployment is an area that needs a lot more attention from the Rudd government. All of those young Australians who voted for Kevin07 two years ago would never have dreamed how much their opportunities would dry up under this government. We see that the Rudd Labor government has no strategy to create actual jobs for young Australians.

When we look at the amount that is available in Green Jobs Corps compared to Work for the Dole or Green Corps, we see that under this program there is $8,250 available per placement for Green Jobs Corps, compared to $500 that is available for a participant in Work for the Dole or Green Corps. What that means is that the government have seriously underfunded their work experience programs. We also all know that the Rudd government, the Labor Party, hated Work for the Dole. They hated it, and this is their way of strangling Work for the Dole, of ensuring that Work for the Dole withers on the vine.

Lastly, it is my belief that work experience is a very important part of enhancing employability. It is with that in mind that we support work experience programs. We think they are a very good pathway to learning a lot of those intangible skills like being part of a team, being part of a workplace, learning a lot of those skills that enhance a person’s employability. One criticism I will make of the Rudd government—amongst many—is that they have focused so much on the training side and not enough on the work experience side. A lot of their training is training for training’s sake. Job seekers are on a training treadmill. We see that the employment outcomes for a number of the government’s training programs are very poor. The opposition will certainly be looking at what the employment outcomes are for the Green Jobs Corps. As I said earlier, we had a very similar program, the Green Corps, which had a youth focus as well. This is part of a late recognition by the government that in their huge revamp of employment services they threw the baby out with the bathwater. They did not have anything specifically focused on young Australians. This is the group that is feeling the rising unemployment and the lack of job opportunities the hardest. I move:

That all words after “That” be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

“whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading , the House:

(1)    is concerned that 71,500 young Australians have lost their jobs since the election of the Rudd Government;

(2)    expresses its concern that 108,300 full-time jobs have been lost amongst young Australians over the last twelve months;

(3)    notes that commencements among traditional trade apprentices have fallen by 21.2% in the 12 months to March 2009;

(4)    notes that the proportion of young Australians not in full-time education or full-time employment has risen under this Government;

(5)    condemns the Government for abolishing Green Corps as a youth development programme;

(6)    is concerned that the Minister for Employment Participation believes that six month work experience placements are a substitute for a job;

(7)    calls on the Government to outline how many new green jobs were in the Prime Minister’s announcement to the ALP National Conference on 30 July;

(8)    calls on the Government to outline how many green jobs will be created in this term of Parliament; and

(9)    calls on the Government to outline its strategy to create jobs for young Australians”.

Judi Moylan (Pearce, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the amendment seconded?

Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Justice and Customs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the amendment.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The original question was that this bill be now read a second time. To this the honourable member for Boothby has moved as an amendment that all words after ‘That’ be omitted with a view to substituting other words. The question now is that the words proposed to be omitted stand part of the question.

James Bidgood (Dawson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in favour of the Social Security Amendment (National Green Jobs Corps Supplement) Bill 2009. We will be moving in favour of the original motion. I have travelled the length and breadth of my very rural seat of Dawson, from Mackay all the way through to Townsville, and you are looking at 450 kilometres of some of the best agricultural land and some of the best coastline in the world. It includes the Great Barrier Reef and the rainforest. One thing that our students have consistently said is how much they enjoy the Green Corps and the things that we have done there to keep that going.

I have had the pleasure of being at many awards ceremonies for Green Corps, and it is so fantastic to see young people involved who perhaps would have been at a loss for something to do without Green Corps. It has enabled these young people to have a purpose in the community and to bind together with other young people in a common cause—clearing up creeks, riverbanks and land, and helping to grow crops in areas in which it is perhaps not normally easy to grow them. They have done those things with assistance from professionals at different levels of government—federal as well as state and local. I have been to a number of different award ceremonies in Mackay, and every single time I talk to the young people they say: ‘This is the best thing that’s happened. This is such a good thing.’

What we are proposing here is a bill for an act to amend the law relating to social security and for related purposes. That is what this bill entails. It is the right thing for this government to do because it invests in young people being active, helping the community and helping to rebuild natural pastures, river ways and shorelines.

My fellow MP Kirsten Livermore and I have been with the Minister for Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, Tony Burke, to visit an area near Sarina, just on the border of Dawson and Capricornia, to see what had been done to help stop beach erosion through various plantings. In Mackay itself, some fantastic work has been done in and around the botanic gardens. I was also privileged to visit a project further north, up in Townsville. There were quite a number of young people there, in the region of 15 to 20, who had done a major project. We drove in a four-wheel-drive to get there, because the land was pretty rough. It is by a sort of river or creek system. Floods had washed away a lot of the area, and the young people in the Green Corps has set about rebuilding the banks of this river by planting native species.

So Green Corps is a learning process and it is hands-on. As members would be aware, there are many styles of learning. Some people learn by hearing and some learn by seeing. But a lot of people, particularly young people, learn by activity—a kinaesthetic learning approach of doing and being involved, with tactile and hands-on experiences. They learn by being in the environment, with their hands in the earth and in the water. And they are helping to look after our natural resources. So it really is with great pleasure that I rise to speak in favour of this bill, without amendment.

I do not have too much more to say other than that I have seen the social benefits of the Green Corps scheme, the benefits to the community and to young people. I have seen the way that it created a work ethic in people who otherwise would have been unemployed and underutilised. It is a tragedy to see young, enthusiastic people with nothing to do. But this program, the Green Corps program, has enabled them to do great work.

Looking at the specifics of the bill, the explanatory memorandum states:

This bill will amend the social security law to provide for a temporary National Green Jobs Corps supplement for recipients of youth allowance (other), newstart allowance and parenting payment who participate in the National Green Jobs Corps.

The National Green Jobs Corps is a 26 week environmental work experience and training program which is targeted at low skilled 17-24 year olds.

I have seen first-hand how those young people can be mobilised and motivated, and engaged with the community and with each other, working as a team. It continues:

Additional financial assistance will be provided to these participants in the form of a supplement of $41.60 per fortnight while they are participating in the National Green Jobs Corps. This payment will be on top of their existing youth allowance (other), newstart allowance or parenting payment.

The supplement will be payable to those who commence in the National Green Jobs Corps between 1 January 2010 and 31 December 2011.

That really is a substantial amount, and the financial impact works out in the following way: in the financial year 2009-10, we are looking at 0.9 per cent; in 2010-11, 1.7 per cent; and, in 2011-12, 0.9 per cent—a total 3.4 per cent increase. Obviously, the payments will be arranged through Centrelink.

I look forward to seeing the National Green Jobs Corps program implemented in full and giving lots of young people, not just in the seat of Dawson but across the nation, hope, purpose and motivation, making them feel useful and mobilising them to help their communities.

It is good to witness so many different projects where young people have often said to me, ‘We wish it had never ended; we wish we just could have kept on,’ because they enjoyed the work, the sense of fulfilment in seeing something happen as a team and being involved. Often the people who are involved in these programs are very lonely and sometimes socially isolated for various reasons. They come together as a team with a common cause, and I can truly say, having seen that on many occasions, that this is a good thing to back—this is a good thing to do. I would just like to say once again that I fully support the original proposal and would like to see that come into action as soon as possible. I look forward to that participation carrying through to 2012. Without further ado, I wholeheartedly commend and support the original motion.

Kay Hull (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise in the House this evening to speak on the Social Security Amendment (National Green Jobs Corps Supplement) Bill 2009. In 1997 the previous government put in place the Green Corps and I would like to talk about that program. It was a national voluntary youth development and environmental training program for young people aged between 17 and 20 years. The involvement of the young people was to look after the environment through management and conservation and education. It was very important to the previous government to ensure that there was an improvement in biodiversity in the environment in those years and future years. The program was a positive step forward in ensuring a healthy environment was maintained and, in particular, it was very good in the Riverina region. I always felt it was so important for us to be looking after our environment in the local area so that it could be preserved for future generations.

In the coalition’s Green Corps program the volunteers would be doing things like removing weeds, replanting with local native species, providing extra nesting sites with the use of nesting boxes and developing demonstration sites. This was done on one particular site in the city of Wagga Wagga itself. I believe the whole community benefited from the project under the Green Corps which aimed to provide an attractive setting for activities like orienteering, mountain bike riding, walking and bird watching out at Borambola, just out of Wagga Wagga. It provided an improved amenity for recreation and improved understanding of Aboriginal culture, incorporating the team members into the community, conserving local flora and fauna and improving accessibility of the features of the Murrumbidgee River, which through the heart of the city and is a lifeblood of the Riverina region.

The projects also gave the teams that were involved in the Green Corps a broad range of experience in different areas of conservation. The participants were all involved in vegetation analysis, collection of seeds, researching and sourcing useful plants for medicinal purposes and bush tucker on our Wiradjuri land, and surveying and bush regeneration skills. It was a fantastic program for the team members to gain additional skills in teamwork, leadership, skills development and training processes, to establish connections with community and environmental groups and to improve their career and employment prospects. They gained real hands-on experience and really did explore the important environmental issues of our area.

The group that was involved at Borambola also did exercises during that program such as trust exercises, with high ropes courses, canoeing, archery and rock climbing, as well as management activities. At Lake Albert the team were involved in trail construction, site preparation, planning of vegetation, including trees, and minor construction work for the proposed walkway. They installed signage and some environmental fencing. I think that program went for six months and in that time they were able to complete the planting of 1,600 trees and shrubs, they put in place 20 nesting boxes, they constructed and installed 2,500 plants that were propagated, they developed five interpretive signs and two practice sites, they put in 1,500 metres of fencing and they constructed a granite board walkway and rock edging. They worked with a diverse range of groups, including the local Wiradjuri people, Landcare groups, Wagga Wagga City Council and clients from New South Wales Sport and Recreation.

Does this sound vaguely familiar? Am I speaking about what is currently in place? No, I am not. I am speaking about what was put in place in 1997. But if you listened to speakers generally here you could decide that what is being delivered to the House is a brand-new, innovative concept that has never been thought of before and that is entirely of the making of this current government. That just staggers me when I look at the issues that were covered and that I witnessed when launching projects under the previous coalition government program and then at the graduation of many of those fabulous young people involved. That program was designed in particular for people between 17 and 20. It was a very innovative program for its time and it was enormously successful. The project teams did things like removing woody weeds and exotic species like privet and willow, and they planted, guarded and watered native seedlings. They propagated hundreds of native seeds and, as I said, built enormous amounts of fencing, garden beds and paths. They put in irrigation areas and constructed picket fencing as well as doing many other tasks. All this was to ensure that there could be a healthy environment.

It was a training program for young people—a voluntary youth development and environmental training program. There were young people in that age range who had difficulty communicating with each other. Afterwards, after their graduation, you would be absolutely astounded at the amazing growth of these young people. They also received a senior first aid certificate and an OH&S green card. The first part of the course under the coalition’s Green Corps program was that every single member had to obtain a senior first aid certificate and an OH&S green card.

Another group in the six-month program built fencing enclosures, installed metres and metres of drip irrigation for water efficiency and planted thousands of trees and photographed their monitoring points. They established very valuable life and social skills. At every graduation there was almost a full contingent, and if there were one or two away it was because they had secured employment as a result of their involvement with the coalition’s Green Corps program.

I raise these issues to show exactly what our program was put in place to do, how very successful it was and how far from being innovative is the National Green Jobs Corps. The Rudd Labor government merged our Green Corps program, our youth development program, into mainstream employment services in July 2009. This meant that Green Corps ceased to be a youth development program and became more like Work for the Dole with an environmental focus. Obviously, the government has seen the error of its ways and has determined that there is a need for this youth program. I suspect that this is for a number of reasons: over 108,000 full-time jobs have been lost among young Australians over the last 12 months; over 71,000 young Australians have lost their job since the election of the Rudd government; commencements among traditional trade apprentices fell by 21.2 per cent in the 12 months to March 2009; the proportion of teenage Australians not in full-time education or full-time employment has risen under this government; the rate of unemployment for teenagers who are not in full-time education rose to 18.5 per cent in 2009, up from just 12.2 per cent in early 2008; about 176,000 people aged 18 to 24, around eight per cent of the civilian population, are not in the labour force or full-time education; and about 120,000 people aged 18 to 24 are unemployed and not in full-time education. There are about 295,000 people aged 18 to 24 who are not in full-time education, and who are not in the labour force or unemployed—this equates to around 14 per cent of the 18- to 24-year-old civilian population. I suspect that there is a need for a strategy to be created to try to look at how young people aged 17 to 24 will become engaged under this program. The only thing that is much different in this is that the age has been extended to 24 rather than 20 as it was in the last program.

It is very important to note that having our young people gainfully employed in environmental programs is not an innovative, newly designed or descriptive response by this government. The difference is that instead of having Green Corps money young people will now have income support payments on top of their normal Green Corps allowance. It is good that the government has seen that the coalition’s program was a valuable program. They obviously did not think it a good idea when they rolled it over and lost the focus of it. The reintroduction of this program, only changing the upper age to 24 and providing a supplement on top of an income allowance rather than the general Green Corps allowance, is something that I am sure will be welcomed.

Let us not be deluded and think that this is a you-beaut, innovative new program. This is the program that was put in place by the former coalition government, a program that was working and a program that led to some very good outcomes for young people, particularly in my electorate. Rather than be critical of the program, I am critical of the fact that it was lost in the first place by short-sighted thinking in July 2009, when this program was rolled into a general mainstream program, and that the recognition of the value of this program was not considered strong enough at the time. It was a very short-sighted decision and I am pleased to see that has been rectified and that the valuable lead that the former coalition government played in this role is now recognised. It is the right and proper thing for opportunities to be made available in the environment but there needs to be a sure-fire plan as to how these will actually turn into jobs and solve the significant issues of unemployment among 17- to 24-year-olds.

Rather than disagree with this program, I make the point that the program that was in place was a well thought out, very beneficial and very successful program and it should not have been subsumed into a mainstream program. It is good to see that the Labor Party recognises the value and worth of some coalition programs and is putting them back in place.

Damian Hale (Solomon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to offer my strong support for the Social Security Amendment (National Green Jobs Corps Supplement) Bill 2009. I note the contribution from the member for the Riverina and I draw a lot of comparisons between the electorate I represent in remote Australia and the electorate that she represents in the Riverina in regional and remote New South Wales. It is very important that these types of programs are put in place to aid our young people in being able to get some skills and disciplines with regard to turning up to work. Very often the people that we target here are young people that have not decided what they want to do yet. I have a 19-year-old son who has got a lot of talent in a lot of different areas. You talk to him about where he wants to see his career going and he has a lot of options, yet really he does not know what he wants to do yet. Too often we are in a situation where we thrust careers onto young people and say: ‘You need to do this. You need to go to university,’ or ‘You need to get an apprenticeship,’ and often young kids might have three or four different careers throughout their working lives. I think that these types of programs often fill that void when a young person leaves school—or when they may even leave school before the end of year 12. These types of programs enable them to gain some skills that will lead them on to jobs in the future and to get some discipline with regard to turning up to work and working in a team environment.

This bill will amend the Social Security Act 1991 to provide the National Green Job Corps supplement of $41.60 per fortnight for eligible recipients who participate in the National Green Job Corps. This supplement will be payable to those people who participate in the National Green Job Corps between 1 January next year and the end of 2011. The National Green Job Corps supplement has been introduced to encourage and support those low-skilled job seekers who are on the income support and aged between 17 and 24.

This government is serious about tackling climate change. Tackling climate change will transform and save many existing jobs. Tackling climate change will create new jobs and increase the average income for people in our community. As the Deputy Prime Minister, the Hon. Julia Gillard, said in her address to the Green Skills Forum in Melbourne last month:

We’ve talked about these issues for some time. Now it’s time to bring the work that has been done to a point so we can get on with the reforms needed by industry and by the training sector.

She went on to say:

We’re gearing up for a major change in our economy. If we do this in the right way we will create new economic opportunities for Australia.

This amendment is part of a range of measures that ensure that as a society we are ready for the changes in our economy. This amendment ensures that the most needy are provided with the opportunity, and are empowered to gain the necessary skills, to be active participants in the transition and not be left behind. The National Green Jobs Corps is a two-year environmental work experience and training program which will give young unemployed Australians the opportunity to contribute to the community and build skills. Ten thousand places will be provided through the life of the program and these will be targeted at 17- to 24-year-olds, without year 12 qualifications, who struggle to engage with the education and training system. The program will provide structured work experience and accredited training. The majority of participants, when they complete the program, will leave with a certificate II level qualification, which is of course consistent with the compact with young Australians where job seekers aged under 20 without year 12 are encouraged to attain a year 12 equivalent qualification.

The National Green Jobs Corps is a 26-week environmental training program that over two years will enable 10,000 18- to 24-year-olds gain job-ready skills. It will provide 10,000 out-of-work young Australians with the opportunity to gain work experience in green skills for future jobs. There are currently 10,000 young Australians between school leaving age and 24 who have been out of work for more than 12 months. These young Australians will be able to join the National Green Jobs Corps to meet their participation obligations for youth allowance and Newstart.

The National Green Jobs Corps projects are located mainly in regional and remote areas of Australia and focus on areas where environmental and heritage restoration, protection and conservation are a high priority. We have seen recently the impact of people movements on our coastal areas, and the effect of climate change and the warming of the planet is impacting on our coastal areas by way of erosion. Certainly we have seen the movement of people around our coast. As Australians, we are attracted to the water and attracted to the beaches. I had the pleasure of being with the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts, Peter Garrett, in Darwin recently, where we had a restoration of the Mindil Beach foreshore and Mindil Beach dunes. This was a project that was taken on by the Larrakia people, working in the Green Corps environment where they restored the dunes of Mindil Beach. It is probably the most used beach in Darwin and is famous for the Mindil Beach Markets on Thursday and Sunday nights. There is a lot of movement of people across those dunes, and a restoration program was put in place where native grasses were used.

These are very important programs and they are happening all around Australia. All around Australia people are being drawn to the coast and there is a massive challenge for us. I did a PM’s country taskforce down in the Torquay-Apollo Bay area where the population generally is about 25,000 to 30,000 people who live there for the entire year. But the population can expand to up to 200,000 people during the summer months when people are drawn out of the cities, Melbourne and Geelong. People from New South Wales will migrate to the beaches on the coast and it makes a massive impact. So these types of programs enable us to restore and revegetate and make sure we look after these pristine areas of our fabulous Australian coastline. And we know that the programs along the Great Barrier Reef area, along the beaches of Queensland, are just as important.

These projects, as I said, are mainly located in regional and remote areas of Australia and focus on areas where environmental and heritage restoration, protection and conservation are of the highest priority. Often these programs also work hand in glove with our Indigenous community, usually with the traditional owners. It gives our traditional owners an opportunity for their young people, who are often not able to immediately come into the workforce, not only to do a valuable job for their areas in regard to restoration and looking after our habitat but also to become job ready. It builds capacity within that person to go into mainstream employment after they have completed their Green Corps certificate.

The objects of this program are to give young people experience in projects that focus on areas where environmental conservation work and heritage restoration are required, and to promote environmental conservation and natural heritage outcomes that will benefit the community and the environment. Participants benefit from personal development, including teamwork and leadership skills; from building capacity, skills development and training through activities that are structured and actually have learning outcomes that can be measured, outcomes that can be put into different environments as they move forward; from connections with community and environment by strengthening relationships, participation and contribution to the community and environment; and, career and employment prospects through accredited training and on-the-job training. The National Green Jobs Corps supplement is designed to support young low-skilled participants undertaking National Green Jobs Corps work in recognition of the costs that they may have incurred participating in the program, for example travelling to activities and so on.

I note tonight that the former Minister for Employment Participation is in the House and now doing a fantastic job as Minister for Home Affairs. During his time in Employment Participation I went and represented him on many occasions with the Green Corps, and I want to hark back to the Rapid Creek team involved in a stage of refurbishing Rapid Creek. Rapid Creek runs through suburban Darwin, through the northern suburbs. I grew up in that area, Rothdale Road. The creek starts up near the airport at a place called Yankee Pool. You can float down Rapid Creek, and I floated down there many a time during the heavy rains. You come down through the clay pots, underneath Kimmorley Bridge, over the top of the V-shape and then down to where the mouth of Rapid Creek runs into the harbour. We have a program there where we were restoring along the edges of Rapid Creek. Because of the rain that we have, often there is a lot of erosion and there needs to be restoration made around Rapid Creek. It is an iconic spot for young people in my community. We all grew up having a swim in Rapid Creek. I will read from the media release that was put out by the then Minister for Employment Participation. This was an important project.

The Minister, Brendan O’Connor, has sent his congratulations to the Darwin-based Green Corps team who today graduated from the Rapid Creek Reforestation and Protection project.

These are hands-on projects. These are projects that are making an impact within the community. They are not faraway pie-in-the-sky stuff.

Over the last 26 weeks the team of young people and their project supervisors have been busily undertaking revegetation of degraded areas of the waterway.

Their tasks included planting trees, assessing and recording the environmental data of the area, dealing with the invasive weeds, and collecting and propagating seeds of particular plant species for future use.

The Rapid Creek Reforestation and Protection project was coordinated by the Conservation Volunteers Australia (CVA) in conjunction with other local organisations, including the Darwin City Council and the Rapid Creek Catchment Advisory Council.

“Their hard work has provided the community with a protected natural waterway and rainforest corridor,” said Minister O’Connor.

Green Corps is a federally funded employment and training program.

Teams of young people aged between 17 and 20 gain work experience and accredited training in environment-related fields while working on projects to restore and conserve Australia’s environment and heritage sites.

That is just one example, and I went to many others where we were doing work out there with young people and giving them skills. I commend the minister in his former portfolio and acknowledge that his current portfolio is probably a little bit tougher than what he was doing in his past portfolio. I also commend him on the effort he is making in that area as well.

It was a fantastic commitment from the Australian government towards helping young people gain skills. With the potential of our whole economy changing direction dramatically in the next 10 years with regard to the way we go about things, and certainly in the way that we look after our environment, these skills that people are getting now through these programs are going to hold them in very good stead in the future. I can see that these will go from being maybe bridging type programs for skill development or capacity building into career type programs where we will have people coming through this area being very interested in conservation and there being further opportunities down the track to not only take a positive role in what we do in our environment but certainly take a career focus moving forward so that they can make a career out of this type of work.

One of the other things that we have done through this program in the Northern Territory is the Zero Toad Strategy through FrogWatch. Let us face it, there is only one decent sort of cane toad, and they play in the State of Origin, for Queensland, three times a year! They are the only cane toads we support. They are the only cane toads that bring any sort of productivity. I can see the honourable member for Lindsay shaking his head. He is obviously a distraught supporter of the cockroaches. There are no good cockroaches. There are no cockroaches that bring anything to the table. There are cane toads that bring something to the table, but there is only one type, and that is the Queensland Rugby League cane toad. The others, we want to get rid off. We do not want to see them coming to the Northern Territory, but they are. We do not want to see them in Kakadu, but they are there. We do not want to see them in the Kimberley, but they are getting there.

With this strategy up in our area, it was very important that we provided some money to continue our work not only in controlling cane toads but in implementing further trials on fencing. Using fences around waterholes as we head into the dry season is a very effective way of curtailing the activities of cane toads. An issue very dear to the heart of Territorians is: how do we combat cane toads coming right across into the Northern Territory and WA? They are very hard to fight off. There has been a lot of research done. A lot of the work with cane toads is labour-intensive, on-the-ground activity—night patrols, setting up traps and putting fences around waterholes. The cane toads will sit there trying to get to the water. They are very much in need of water at all times. By rolling out these programs in the Northern Territory we give young people an opportunity to make a valuable contribution to the community while they try to eradicate cane toads, and they get work skills at the same time.

As a former apprentice greenkeeper by trade and a former golf course superintendent, I know the value of training. I give the same credit to a trade certificate—whether it be a plumber or an electrician—as I give to a degree as a doctor or a lawyer. We need to have that balance as a society. Sure, we are going to put at lot of money into our universities in the future, and we need to do that, but we certainly do not want to downgrade the value of an apprenticeship. If you ever have the opportunity to live in Darwin during a mining boom, you will find that it is very difficult to find a plumber or electrician. We need to continue to upskill our young people. We need to continually let our young people know that if they are not suited to be a doctor or a lawyer, or if they are not going to go into some other form of professional life with a university degree, they can grab an apprenticeship. You can get an apprenticeship or a traineeship, start learning skills and find out where you fit—because we all fit somewhere. These types of programs are paramount in giving kids skills and self-esteem and improving their self-worth so that they know they can make a contribution. There is no shame in being a 17-year-old and not knowing what you really want to do. Through these programs, we are able to incorporate capacity building and building the self-esteem of young people by giving them some financial assistance so they can have a career moving forward.

Finally, there is only one person in the gallery watching me speak tonight—my 10-year-old son, Dominic. Dom, thanks for your support, mate. It was a really good speech, I thought. Thanks a lot for listening—and I see that those opposite are listening. Welcome to dad’s workplace. I will enjoy having you here until Friday, as long as you behave yourself and pack up all of your wrestlers at the end of each day.

I commend the bill to the House.

Nola Marino (Forrest, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to speak on the Social Security Amendment (National Green Jobs Corps Supplement) Bill 2009. The bill will introduce a training supplement of $41.60 a fortnight for eligible participants in the Green Jobs Corps. The Green Jobs Corps is a six-month work-experience program for people aged between 18 and 24 who have been unemployed for more than 12 months. As we are all aware, the Green Jobs Corps was announced at the 2009 ALP conference, where the Prime Minister promised to deliver 50,000 new green jobs. However, I would like to point out that, in reality, only 6,000 of the 50,000 jobs are actually real jobs. Furthermore, only 10,000 of the 50,000 green jobs are for young jobseekers in the Green Jobs Corps. The Green Jobs Corps will start on 1 January 2010, with places available until December 2011.

Whilst the coalition recognises that the Green Jobs Corps is not actually a job, we believe work experience is a start in the right direction. Work-experience programs such as Work for the Dole, the Green Corps and the Green Jobs Corps are designed to improve the employability of those who are unemployed, providing pathways to a job and helping job seekers to become job ready. As the previous speaker said, it also gives young people the opportunity to find out not only what they do want to do but perhaps what they do not want to do. It assists them in making their career decisions.

The Green Jobs Corps, which was an initiative of the former coalition government, was established as a volunteer youth development and environmental training program, giving young people the opportunity to help preserve the environment and Australia’s cultural heritage. It was a very valuable program. More than 18,000 young Australians participated in the Green Jobs Corps program, planting more than 14 million trees, erecting more than 8,000 kilometres of fencing and undertaking in excess of 5,000 surveys into native flora and fauna. In my electorate of Forrest, three Green Corps projects were granted. They were aimed at restoring healthier ecosystems as well as educating young people on revegetation management practices—and they did it very well. Two of the projects were provided through Mission Australia in Bunbury. The purpose of the first project was to help restore a healthier ecosystem, which in turn assisted with more serious problems—

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 34. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting. The member will have leave to continue speaking when the debate is resumed.