Guy Barnett (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to Senator the Hon. Eric Abetz, the Minister representing the Minister for Workforce Participation. In addition to the first anniversary of the excellent and outstanding government initiative of Work Choices, this week is also the 10th anniversary of the outstanding government initiative of Green Corps. In that regard, I am proud to say that my first official event as a senator was to launch a Green Corps event. Would the minister please update the Senate on the employment, environmental and other benefits of Green Corps and the Green Corps projects since it was launched some 10 years ago? Is the minister aware of any alternative policies?

Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Fisheries, Forestry and Conservation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Barnett for his longstanding interest in Green Corps, a fantastic program run by the government, and also for his very keen interest in the success of Work Choices. Those of us on this side recognise that the best form of income for someone is a job rather than welfare. Not only does employment deliver financial rewards, but it also provides a sense of purpose, a sense of achievement and motivation for an individual. That is why we are encouraging people back to work with our Welfare to Work policies and policies such as Green Corps, which, like Work Choices, also has a birthday, turning 10 years old this week.

Green Corps is an outstanding program for young people which delivers real employment outcomes and real environmental outcomes for our nation. It is the sort of practical environmentalism that the Howard government is all about, and has been for 10 years. During the 10 years of Green Corps, more than 16,000 young Australians have participated in nearly 1,600 projects right across the country, from the Pilbara to the Bass Strait islands to Cape York, Sydney Harbour and Alice Springs.

To date, the achievements of Green Corps include: planting over 14 million trees—I venture to suggest that that might be 14,000,002 trees more than Senator Bob Brown has ever planted; erecting more than 8,000 kilometres of protective fencing; removing 50,000 hectares of weeds; collecting over 9.5 tonnes of native seeds; and building or maintaining 5,000 kilometres of walking tracks—real, practical and genuine environmental outcomes.

In addition to delivering these environmental outcomes, Green Corps delivers real job outcomes for the job participants. As Anna Lohse, a recent Green Corps graduate who now works as a sustainability officer with the University of Ballarat, said:

Green Corps provided an important step up into the industry, which is often very difficult to get into. My six months with Green Corps opened doors in both voluntary and paid work.

The success of these programs is reflected in the low levels of unemployment and the significant falls in long-term unemployment in this country, with more Australians in work now than ever before.

Our practical policies such as Green Corps contrast with the policies of those opposite, and the Greens in particular, who talk a lot about the environment but never deliver. Indeed, I have never seen a Green at a Green Corps launch or a Green Corps graduation. That is not a matter of surprise to most of us. If you want to know what the policies of the Greens are on the environment you should listen to this. We know they do not have them up on their website at the moment, because they are on ice, so to speak, so I refer colleagues to pick up on what the leader of the Greens in Tasmania, Peg Putt, said on Southern Cross TV on 13 March: ‘In Tasmania, regrowth logs can come and do come from high-growth conservation value pristine forests that have never been logged.’ That is regrowth coming from forests that have never been logged! That is the sort of mentality that we as a government have to deal with when we engage with the Australian Greens on environmental issues. It is all said by the Greens leader in Tasmania herself. I would encourage the Greens to engage in practical projects—(Time expired).