Andrew Nikolic (Bass, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

At the time that I was stopped by the adjournment debate, I was commenting on some mendacious claims that have been made about payments to Green Army participants and I would like to put the facts on the record in relation to those payments. The Green Army allowance is higher than Labor's Green Jobs Corps and Green Corps program, and the Newstart allowance and the youth allowance. For example, under the Green Army program, a 21-year-old participant will receive a fortnightly allowance of between $885.60 and $987. The Green Army participants will also receive up to 10 days personal leave during their placement. The hourly rate of the Green Army allowance is commensurate with minimum trainee hourly wage rates. Participants will only be engaged for up to 30 hours a week. Frankly, comparisons with the minimum wage and weekly incomes are highly misleading.

On the evening of 24 March, we heard the member for Scullin's contribution on the Social Security Legislation Amendment (Green Army Programme) Bill 2014. He was transfixed by UN conventions and to the right to social security. He wanted more detail about how Green Army project participants could lodge complaints about their supervisors and complained that the minister had only mentioned the words 'climate change' once. The member for Parramatta made the quite extraordinary claim about the risks to participants who are 'unskilled, unfit and involved in a job they haven't done before'. You do not need to be Einstein to understand that the way you overcome a lack of skills, fitness and job unfamiliarity is by actually doing a job. That is exactly what we will do: deliver skills, knowledge and positive work attitudes to young people.

The comments that I have just articulated tell you everything you need to know about the Labor Party. We seek to provide an opportunity for young people to work and develop new skills. Members opposite want to provide avenues for them to complain and explore their UN-mandated rights to social security. It is little wonder that the once proud Labor Party drifts further every day from its connection to the Australian people.

I would also like to talk about transition to and from income support. Arrangements will also be put in place to ensure that the transition to and from income support is seamless. Upon timely notification by the participant, the arrangements ensure that they receive their allowance as soon as they exit the Green Army program. Participants will have a minimum of four weeks and up to 10 weeks upon completion of their Green Army placement to reconnect with their income support arrangements without a new claim being triggered. This is a unique arrangement implemented for Green Army participants. Service providers contracted for the program will be required to develop and agree a training plan with each participant, taking into account their skill level, project activities, training desires and career goals. These training plans will ideally assist participants in moving on from their Green Army placement.

It is in the area of health and safety that claims by Labor are most mendacious, particularly that Green Army participants will have inadequate safety protections. This is, of course, the axiomatic response of those with a union background—throw up safety concerns as a cover for naked self-interest. Consider the irony—OH&S concerns from a Labor Party that presided over the ill-considered pink batts scheme. What extraordinary hypocrisy. How sad that some people might be dissuaded from participation in the Green Army program because of these false claims. The truth is that the health and safety of participants engaged in the program remains governed by relevant statutes, regulations, by-laws and the requirements of the state and territory regulations in respect of workplace health and safety laws. The Commonwealth will also implement a WHS audit scheme for the program, involving independent WHS audits of service providers and the projects that they deliver. Insurances will also be held by all required parties, and the Commonwealth will take out personal accident and public and, or, products liability insurance for Green Army participants. This is consistent with practice for the previous National Green Jobs Corps.

In summary, the Green Army is a wonderful initiative. In Bass, it will make a real difference to the environment and local communities through projects such as restoring and protecting habitat, weeding and planting, cleaning up creeks and rivers and restoring cultural heritage places. In addition, participants will be paid an allowance and gain valuable skills in conservation management, teamwork and discipline. Waking up each morning with a purpose, with something to think about for the next day or the next week or the next month, will give them that spark that they need to move on to bigger and better things in their future.

In my electorate of Bass, the $3 million Tamar River Recovery Plan, the $6 million that I have secured for the North Bank investment and the initial $340,000 contribution to the Green Army projects that I have mentioned together demonstrate that this government will get things done. I am proud to be a member of a coalition government that has restored sustainable development to an integrated approach that demonstrates the real linkages between social, economic and environmental issues. This integrated approach will support significant social and economic opportunities at a regional level, well beyond the initial environmental challenge identified in the Tamar Estuary—long neglected by state and federal Labor.

Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Green Army has been repeatedly touted—including in the speech introducing this bill—as Australia's largest environmental workforce ever. One would think that when you are calling something a workforce the people in it would be workers. But it should come as no surprise that somehow Prime Minister Tony Abbott has managed to create a workforce where the workers are not legally workers and have no workplace rights. But that is exactly what this bill represents. In fact, most of this bill is dedicated to saying that the people who participate in the program, in the workforce, are not workers. It goes through and removes the protections that they otherwise might have. The bill makes it clear that these are not people who are workers that might get the protection of the Fair Work Act. The minimum standards that might come with that: the right to recourse if you want to make complaints; the basic ability to have information about your minimum rights and conditions—the people in this Tony Abbott workforce are entitled to none of those things.

It also makes clear that they are not entitled to the protections against discrimination that other workers might have. In other words, if you stick your hand up for this scheme, when you are participating in it do not expect to have the same kinds of protections against discrimination on the basis of race, for example, that another employee might have—because you just do not. One of the few things the legislation does is strip away from you, as a worker, those rights.

It also makes it crystal clear that, when it comes to safety, the people who are participating in this program do not have the same rights as ordinary employees. This is critical because what we hear is that this so-called workforce, where the workers are not legally workers, is going to be spending a lot of its time doing things that involve significant physical activity. We see, according to the second reading speech and other media, that these workers are going to be spending time doing things like building lookouts. What kind of scheme would provide that someone who can be engaged in manual physical labour using tools and working in potentially dangerous situations is not going to be covered by national workers compensation and health and safety laws? But that is what is being set up here.

You know that that is clearly the intent because not only is there a section saying, 'If you just happen to be someone who has stuck up your hand to participate in this process you have no safety rights,' but there is an exception. There is an exception that says the supervisors in this scheme, or certain classes of employees, have the same rights as other employees in Australia. So, under this scheme, someone who sticks their hand up to participate in the program can be working side by side with their supervisor—perhaps building a lookout, as it has been suggested, or perhaps wielding a pick, or perhaps doing other work—and, if they both get injured, only the supervisor is covered by workers health and safety and compensation laws. And the other worker? Well, you are on your own to look after yourself. You do not have the same rights as the person working next to you because this government has said you are not legally a worker.

All of this comes with the establishment of a scheme that just will not work. It will not do any of the things that it has been said it is going to do and will not achieve them at scale. We are told that one of the things that the Green Army can do is plant trees and that that is somehow going to contribute to this country dealing with climate change. That is a claim that the government has repeatedly made, including in the introduction of this bill.

It has been made clear by Monash University that to achieve the pledged return of an annual 85 million tonnes of CO2 captured would require the equivalent of a plantation with a minimum size more than twice the size of Melbourne and an increase in wood production of an additional 300 per cent. On even the most incredible of projections, this is not something that this Green Army is going to be able to deliver.

As Murdoch University has made clear, if it is really just a weeding-and-tree-planting scheme, similar to the sorts of things that were done under the former Howard government's programs, a lot of that work, particularly in periods of savage drought, was simply undone because there was no long-term follow-up. This comes at a time when we have in existence a $1 billion Biodiversity Fund, which was set up in the last parliament. It is funded by this country's biggest polluters, so it not does not come out of general taxation. This Biodiversity Fund is aiming in a systematic way to encourage people on the land and those who want to help support the land to ensure that trees and ecosystems stay there for the benefit of all of us. And it is working. The government come in here and say, 'We're going to rip down that scheme,' and they come up with something that, even on the best outcome, is only ever going to do a fraction of its work. Then they have the gall to say that this has got some kind of environmental credentials behind it.

This is not about the environment. This is not about protecting the land. If that were the case, then the Biodiversity Fund would stay and it would not be facing the chop, as this government wants. No, this is not about the environment at all. It is a cynical exercise in institutional greenwashing. It is about this government being seen to be doing something about the environment, because it knows it has been caught short. As we know from earlier on today, the Minister for the Environment has come into this place and, of his own volition, raised the question of climate change and its impacts on Australia on a grand total of four occasions since becoming minister. That speaks volumes about this government's priorities.

If we are really serious about protecting the Australian environment and its people from the impacts of global warming—which are going to include more bushfires through the places in which, presumably, the trees under this program are going to be planted, and more droughts and biodiversity loss in the areas where these people are apparently going to be working—we would understand what the scientists are telling us, and that is that we have a very short period of time within which to address global warming or the effects on this country are going to be disastrous. They are going to be disastrous on our productivity. They are going to be disastrous for the Murray-Darling Basin. They are going to be disastrous for our environment.

I do not want to have to worry, every time it gets to the Christmas holidays, about which area of Australia is going to burn in a bushfire. I do not want to have to worry, when we decide to go camping, whether my family and I are at threat because there is an increased risk of heatwave or bushfire. I do not want to have to worry, every time it comes to the end of the year, whether people living in Housing Commission flats in Melbourne are going to be facing 50-degree temperatures because of heatwaves, which we know kill more people in this country than the bushfires that sometimes accompany them, as happened during Black Saturday.

All of that should be the top-order concern of this government. This government should have as its No. 1 duty the protection of the Australian people and the environment, but it is abdicating that. When it comes to climate change, we in this country need a climate change Churchill, but we have got a climate change Chamberlain in this Prime Minister. The government is turning its back on the protection of the Australian people and the Australian way of life which should be the first duty of any government. So this bill cannot be supported. It cannot be supported because it has Tony Abbott's fingerprints all over it: the creation of a workforce where the workers are not even legally workers and have no legal protections at work. If that is the government's idea of creating the workforce of the future, then everyone else in this country ought to be very, very worried, because you are next.

Matt Williams (Hindmarsh, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the Social Security Legislation Amendment (Green Army Programme) Bill 2014. I do not want to speak for long, but I feel it is important because this piece of legislation resonates in my electorate of Hindmarsh. I was most interested in the comments made by the member for Melbourne. Somewhat disappointingly, although he is for the environment, he was not at all constructive in what he had to say. This is a great program for young people and for the environment, so I expected more from the member for Melbourne, given that he supposedly represents a constituency that looks for positive environmental programs such as this.

This amendment will allow the Green Army to build on the Howard government's successful Green Corps program, established back in 1996. The Labor government rebadged this program and then proceeded to terminate it. This has left young people without the opportunity to gain practical skills and improve our local environment. Under the Weatherill state government and under the last federal Labor government, we have seen the youth unemployment rate rise rapidly, to around 18 per cent. This is one of the reasons why this bill will be so important—to help these young people gain great experience in a worthwhile work program. Just as these young people who are missing out on jobs, training and experience have been disadvantaged, so has our environment. The introduction of the Green Army will deliver tangible benefits for the environment and skills for thousands of young Australians.

In my electorate of Hindmarsh, we have a beautiful coastline, beaches, parks and gardens. In the House today, I am happy to reaffirm my commitment, as part of a coalition government, to deliver projects in my electorate along the River Torrens. The Torrens has an iconic place in the electorate, running from the city to the sea. The projects may involve restoration and maintenance of the coastal environment of the River Torrens mouth, including dune revegetation, habitat enhancement and the repair of the river and banks, including weed removal and native plantings at suburbs like Kidman Park, Lockleys, Underdale, West Hindmarsh, Torrensville and Flinders Park.

Over the last year I have been talking with local councils and community groups on how we can work together utilising the physical resources of the Green Army. The Tennyson Dunes Group is one of the dedicated volunteer conservation groups whose prime objective is to provide a safe sanctuary for all the flora and fauna, and to improve and share the 22 hectares of coastal dunes with the community.

Trees for Life is another not-for-profit organisation which is looking at restoring our natural environment through revegetation and conservation, establishing and helping to protect wildlife habitat and working to re-establish biodiverse plantings on private land. It was pleasing to see Trees for Life members attend an environment forum with Greg Hunt when he was shadow minister for environment, climate change and water. I look forward to working with Trees for Life, who have also expressed an interest in the Green Army program. Earlier this year I met with GetUp! in Hindmarsh. Some of their members indicated an interest in being involved in the Green Army program. As you can see, there are many different community groups who want to be involved in this program because they see that it will benefit their membership and the environment.

Other initiatives I have been involved in recently include Clean Up Australia Day and Planet Ark's National Tree Day. Such initiatives may provide other avenues for the Green Army to make a contribution. By committing to work on a day-to-day basis and working in a team, participants will gain valuable life skills and work experience. They will be making a contribution to the environment and to their local community.

The Green Army will foster volunteerism, teamwork, local ownership and community spirit in the young people who participate. But it is just not for the young people; it is also for retirees, many in my electorate, who have shown a keen interest in maintaining the environment in their local areas. The Green Army will become Australia's largest-ever environmental workforce, building to 15,000 participants, capable of delivering 1,500 on-the-ground environmental projects. We care about the environment, about our youth and about meaningful work. This is another example of where the coalition is working towards a better environment.

The coalition is focused on meeting our emissions target. We will not do this through tax, destroying jobs, such as the carbon tax, but through direct action—a unique approach to climate change. As you can see, we are committed to working on great environmental programs to achieve outcomes. I look forward supporting this bill and working with the local community to achieve results.

Brendan O'Connor (Gorton, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to make a contribution to the debate on the Social Security Legislation Amendment (Green Army Programme) Bill 2014—an important debate, because it goes to whether the government is legitimate in relation to assisting with the reduction of carbon and whether the government is legitimate and sincere when it talks about fulfilling its aspirations for the environment.

While the opposition do not, in any way, want to impede the capacity for young people to participate in environmental action and have applauded schemes which enable young people to acquire skills and to have accredited training, we are concerned that many questions arise out of the bill's construction. Firstly, we would say—and it is reflected in the amendment moved by the member for Port Adelaide—we are concerned about the interpretation of the so-called 'participants'. Clearly there is an issue about the relationship between the participants and the sponsors or the sponsoring organisations, given that the participants are in workplaces. We are concerned, for example, that workers compensation and occupational health and safety issues may be adversely affected as a result of the participants not being deemed to be employees.

The government has sought to assure the opposition that the legislation—which is primarily state legislation—will deem participants to be employees for the purposes of workers compensation and OH&S if compensation is sought as a consequence of a participant being injured. The opposition want to be assured that the occupational health and safety standards and rehabilitation and workers compensation laws that apply to employees across the nation would apply to these participants. These matters are yet to be sufficiently clarified and there are public liability concerns for new workers who might be confronted by challenges of rough terrain or potentially dangerous work in the rehabilitation of rivers. The amendment moved by the opposition asks the government to clarify with some certainty that the protections which they assert exist for participants of this program indeed do exist, so that we can be assured that the participants are deemed to be employees.

Another concern with this proposed legislation is the extent of the training afforded to participants in this program. We think the purpose of the government in relation to this matter is to fulfil two functions—one is an environmental function and another is to provide opportunities for young people to become job-ready and to acquire skills that might be in demand when they are looking for other work. We would hope if there is training provided to the participants of this program that the training is worth something, is accredited and is of a standard that prospective employers would value so that their chances of being employed, dare I say it, in a real job would be more likely and the prospective employers would say that they have the right skills to fill existing or future vacancies.

That seems to me to be left wanting in the proposed legislation. There does not seem to be sufficient explanation of the nature of the training. The opposition cannot be assured at this point that the training will be formal and have accreditation that the participants can present to future employers. We think it is critical that the young participants are able to acquire skills. I argue that this program needs to fulfil that obligation to them. I do not argue against the notion, particularly for young people who may not have had much work or any formal work, that they will definitely get job experience as a result of engaging in these activities. Working in teams and working under direction are real life skills needed for the workforce. I think it is only reasonable in this day and age for those participants to be given proper training and for that training to mean something, and for the skills that are acquired under such training to be in demand so that they are more valuable to employers.

Whilst we can see some benefits with the initiatives that are contained within the legislation, we have some serious questions that need to be answered before we can support the proposed legislation. If I can just repeat the concerns we have. We have concerns about whether these participants will be endangered because they will not be fully covered by federal or state legislation with respect to workers compensation rehabilitation and occupational health and safety, and whether the training afforded to them during these weeks will be proper and accredited. I also think there has to be a question—and I have not touched on this yet—about whether the design and construction of this program could lead to the displacement of existing workers.

I am someone who understands the importance of labour market programs and environmental activities programs that have worked in the past and I can see the benefits, particularly for entry-level employees, but what we do not want to see happen—and I am not suggesting for a moment that the government wants this to happen, but I want to be assured that this will not be a consequence of this legislation—is participants of this program undertake work that is currently undertaken by existing workers. Instead of increasing the capacity for people to be employed, you could, if you are not careful, end up having people on very low allowances, not wages—and these people are not even deemed to be employees for the purposes of their remuneration—performing the tasks of people who are paid full wages. That should not be entertained by the government. This is about getting people into work, getting them the work experience and proper training, and fulfilling some environmental goals, however limited those goals might be. We do not want to see, for example, council workers being displaced by participants in those programs who receive allowances that are far lower than the payments that were being made to those full-time workers. We would not want to see that form of displacement.

Whilst we are not going to be prescriptive about 'additionally'—and by that I mean making sure that the participants add to the people performing work, not displace existing workers—we would say that the government should have regard to the design and implementation of the program so it does not endanger the jobs of other workers. That can cause conflict, particularly in small communities. A form of resentment can build when something undertaken by a full-time worker is then undertaken by people who are not even deemed to be employees. The last thing we want to have is any enmity aimed at young people who just want to participate in a program, become job ready and acquire accredited skills for prospective employers.

There are a number of caveats manifest in the amendment moved by the opposition. It asks the government to clarify those matters. We ask the government to make sure that those questions are answered fully and guarantee, without qualification, the health and safety of participants and the potential workers compensation rehabilitation that may arise—and we hope it does not—if any of the participants are injured in a workplace. Finally, we hope some thought goes in to ensuring that we do not see the program's participants displace existing workers who are performing functions on full-time wages. We do not think that would be in the best interests of the participants or the organisations involved in the programs—and certainly not existing workers' interests, who may feel they have been displaced. They are the things we need answered before we can support the bill in toto. We ask the government to focus on that and, indeed, the Minister for the Environment to respond in due course to those matters.

Michael Sukkar (Deakin, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It gives me great pleasure to speak on the Social Security Legislation Amendment (Green Army Programme) Bill 2014. The member for Gorton is right: this Green Army Program has two fundamental objectives and both are complementary. Firstly, it is to provide an opportunity to young people for training in an area that they would seldom have the opportunity of receiving without this policy. It is also to provide practical environmental benefits to our regions and local suburban areas, such as my own.

Looking firstly at the training opportunities: targeting this at 17 to 24 year olds is recognition by this government that young people often find it difficult to find that first opportunity—that first breakthrough. There are many young people who are considering, or potentially interested in, a career involved in horticulture or other related areas, and this sort of program will give them fantastic exposure and mentoring to determine whether they have an aptitude for it and whether they enjoy it. And it will obviously give them the practical benefits of teaching them the relevant skills.

Obviously, there are also other benefits that sit outside that, even for people who are not necessarily interested in pursuing a career in horticulture. For lots of young people, some of the barriers to employment are things as simple as working in a team, being able to take instructions, learning to cooperate and work with other people in a team environment and having the discipline to show up at a certain time every day for work. I suppose these are 'soft' skills but they are crucially important to anybody seeking to make a start in any field of employment. The opportunities that will be given to 17 to 24 year olds from the Green Army Program will greatly benefit people who have a desire to start a career in complementary areas like horticulture, land management, working with local government in land management and other areas like that, and also people who just need that first start—that first opportunity in their career that can give them some of the skills that they will then have on their CV and be able to take forward into other careers, other professions and other jobs.

Looking at the second aspect of the Green Army Program—putting aside the training aspect for young people—the practical environmental benefits are something that I think we will look back on with great pride. If I look at my electorate of Deakin, we have some fantastic natural areas—remnant forests in the area, parks and creeks—that local governments find very, very difficult to maintain within their own budgets. Indeed, most of those areas have big teams of volunteers—people who get out on Saturday and Sunday to do the weeding and to clean up the creeks. These are people who do it on a week-by-week basis. I have spent time with people at the Blackburn Lake Sanctuary and the Heatherdale Creek in my electorate, and the volunteer base just cannot keep up with the demands of that kind of work. So they have applauded us as a government—and they were certainly very excited when we announced the policy when we were in opposition—for the opportunity to work with a team of young people for six months who would come in, under supervision, to do a lot of the work that they had so diligently been trying to do themselves.

The Green Army project will enable those young people to work hand in glove with those who have responsibility for the land management of the relevant project. In my electorate of Deakin that will primarily involve Maroondah City Council and Whitehall City Council. For each of the three projects that I have in my electorate, which are the Blackburn Lake Sanctuary, the Heatherdale Creek Rejuvenation Project and Eastville Park in Croydon, our Green Army teams will work extraordinarily closely with the relevant local government.

It is an opportunity to ensure that the volunteers get the help they need and that the young people get the training and the first start—the opportunity that is so important to them. In recent weeks there has been a clamouring of excitement in my electorate with people putting themselves forward as potential participants and as volunteers on the relevant advisory committees of the projects, who are keen to get an understanding of the time frames of the projects that will be in place. There has also been excitement at the local government level that they are going to be able to have some assistance in these land management projects.

To address one of the concerns of the member for Gorton—responsibly raised—I do not think that in any of the projects in the Deakin electorate you will see Green Army projects substituting for work that is otherwise being done. I think it will be work that, quite frankly, is unable to be done within current resources and that our volunteers are unable to do themselves. It will be important to ensure that they complement each other. I am confident that they will, and speaking from the Deakin electorate perspective—and I am sure all electorates around the country would be similar—there is a commitment on this side of the House to ensure that the Green Army projects work with local communities, complement what they are already doing on the ground and try to obtain those two crucial benefits: firstly, the training and opportunities given to young people and secondly, the practical environment benefits as well.