Lee Rhiannon (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The Australian Greens are strongly committed to ensuring that workers' jobs are secure and industry moves onto a greener footing. The Steel Transformation Plan Bill we have before us tonight is far from perfect. The Greens have looked at it closely. We have weighed up the legislation and it certainly deserves our support. I and my colleagues Senator Bob Brown, Senator Christine Milne and Mr Adam Bandt have paid a great deal of attention to this issue. My own opinion on the need for this legislation has been informed by my many visits to the Illawarra area. In the Illawarra, unemployment is often double the national average. We have seen the downturn in the manufacturing industry impact on this area particularly heavily. Across the nation, 30,000 jobs have gone in the last three months, and the Illawarra is where many of those jobs have disappeared from. The essence of this bill is about a package of $300 million going to the steel industry. One hundred and eighty million dollars of that money will go to BlueScope Steel in the Illawarra. I know that this package will make a difference in terms of the confidence and security that many workers and their families and local businesses will feel and receive.

The Greens will be moving a second reading amendment to this piece of legislation. That amendment would add, at the end of the motion:

and that the Government, in allocating funds under the Steel Transformation Plan, pay particular demand to the Green Jobs Illawarra Action Plan and any other similar plans in other affected regions.

This plan is something that I strongly recommend that members acquaint themselves with. It provides a model that could be used in many other regional areas. At the request of the South Coast Labour Council, Senator Bob Brown and I visited and talked with a number of people on the South Coast about this plan in the context of this legislation. This plan has been developed by the South Coast Labour Council, the University of Wollongong, Illawarra TAFE, the Illawarra Business Chamber and the Australian Industry Group. It is a plan that impressed Senator Brown and me so much that we believed that this second reading amendment needed to be moved. The plan sets out in a great deal of detail the jobs that can come with a shift to a greener economy and greener communities. I very much congratulate all those who participated in devising the Green Jobs Illawarra Action Plan.

A discussion of this plan really has to make reference to the role that the coalition have played since it was first reported that there was consideration that this package needed to be brought forward. You would have to describe their tactics as extreme scaremongering in the steel towns, particularly in the Illawarra and Whyalla, with that extraordinary statement where the Leader of the Opposition tried to make out that he was a friend of the workers while at the same time saying that the opposition would not support this package. Clearly these people from the coalition have no intention of helping workers—no interest in that—while at the same time they are trying to use crude tactics through the media to make out that they are workers' friends.

I was very interested to see how this played out in the Illawarra at a 'no carbon tax' rally, where obviously there was hope by the coalition that they would be able to grandstand in front of the locals. Well, the locals of the Illawarra saw them coming and are well experienced with coalition people who try and con their way into pretending that they have interest in the working people of this area. In this case, it was Senator Barnaby Joyce and Senator Concetta Fierra—Fierravant—