Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Environment, Climate Change and Water) Share this | Hansard source

This afternoon I rise to speak on the Social Security Legislation Amendment (Green Army Programme) Bill 2014. From the outset, I would like to say that the legislation that we have before us this afternoon is only a small part of this program, providing the legislative change to give effect to the payment of an allowance for program participants, while the detail lies in the program guidelines and tender documents. I will keep my remarks to the broad breadth of the program this afternoon, not just the payment matters before us.

Labor does not oppose this bill, but in the very broad context we hold very significant concerns about the policy effectiveness of what the government is putting forward. We know, for example, that programs of this type have a long pedigree under governments on both sides of this chamber. The budget has given a significant amount of funding to establish the Green Army, but Labor thinks that this has been at the expense of more effective environment and conservation programs as well as the broader skills and training programs that have been cut elsewhere in the budget. This is on top of the $2.55 billion that the government is committing to its Emissions Reduction Fund, which in Labor's view is just a slush fund to pay polluters. Indeed, experts in our nation widely agree that this slush fund will deliver no meaningful emissions reductions programs for our nation.

Labor strongly rejects Direct Action. We reject it as an ineffective, expense policy that will have, in our view, a very negligible impact on emissions. The program before us is a component of the coalition's so-called Direct Action Plan. The government has pitched the Green Army as not just a youth unemployment program but a major environmental and conservation program. Let's take a look at what the government is saying here. Contrary to this assertion, Labor is concerned that the budget cuts almost $500 million from Landcare. Any of the conservation benefits from the Green Army will be cancelled out by the valuable work of Landcare volunteers that will no longer proceed because of these significant cuts. This is funding that could have and should have been going to experienced community volunteers. Many of those volunteers are in rural, remote and regional Australia. Instead, the money is going to go to projects done by inexperienced young people and, in Labor's view, this will deliver inferior conservation results. That is of significant concern. Senators in this place have all seen how effective those Landcare volunteer programs are for environmental outcomes on the ground.

Further to this, Labor is also very concerned and sceptical of the Green Army's ability to deliver any meaningful training or employment outcomes, particularly in the context of a budget that cut a wide range of skills and training programs that had been previously established by Labor to link young people with training and employment opportunities. When you add that all up with this budget as a whole and you look at attacks on access to Newstart et cetera, it is part of an incredibly regressive package for our nation's young people. The government, in putting this program forward, has provided no evidence to this place that participants exiting the Green Army Program will have further training and employment opportunities made available to them or any capacity to extend the skills that they may have picked up through the Green Army program.

So the government has tried to give Labor assurances that the program's guidelines and contractual arrangements will address these concerns about training opportunities and, indeed, significant occupational health and safety issues. You have said we can monitor the program and the rollout closely to make sure the government is fulfilling its commitment that participants in this program have an opportunity to obtain formal qualifications. This is something we want to hold you to account on, and we will watch and wait and see. We have a number of concerns about the detail of the program that is founded on the extremely poor environmental record of this government.

You simply have no credibility when it comes to the environment. In my view, it is a record that makes one ask why the idea of an environment minister does not go the same way as you have sent the science minister in this government. You simply have no commitment to it, and it therefore might as well not exist. This record is astounding. It ranges from the fact that you have moved backwards on climate change to risking Australia's global reputation for protecting its World Heritage icons, as is currently taking place in Tasmania. Soon after coming to office the Abbott government was rushing through environmental approvals. The government disallowed the endangered community listing of the Murray River from the Darling to the sea. That was an incredible thing to do, in my view. You went above all reason and advice and sneakily—very sneakily—had the world's largest ever marine reserve system reproclaimed to undo the management plans that put into effect the world's largest marine parks. I am just appalled at the government's actions in that regard. It was an incredibly sneaky and retrograde step. It is one I am incredibly angry about

The government has also begun the process of handing over environmental approvals to the states, giving Campbell Newman control of the Great Barrier Reef and Colin Barnett control of Ningaloo Reef. This government has also all but abandoned efforts to have Queensland's Cape York added to the World Heritage list and has approved every request for development in the Great Barrier Reef catchment that has landed on the minister's desk. That is despite UNESCO threatening to list the Great Barrier Reef as in danger.

Sadly, it does not stop there. In my own home state of WA we have had sharks on the hit list, with the minister approving an exemption for the WA government to allow drum lining off the coast. This is despite the complete lack of evidence that it will have any effect. I know it has had no effect so far. It has caught none of the great whites which are the species that is implicated in the attacks.