Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Social Security Amendment (National Green Jobs Corps Supplement) Bill 2009. This bill amends the Social Security Act to provide for a national green jobs supplement of $41.60 per fortnight for eligible young people on top of their existing income support payment. The supplement will be paid to participants in the National Green Jobs Corps program who receive income support via youth allowance, Newstart allowance or parenting payment. The National Green Jobs Corps will give up to 10,000 young Australians the opportunity to develop skills and help the environment through 26 weeks of accredited training and work experience. The funding agreement commences on 1 January 2010 and will run until 31 December 2011. The National Green Jobs Corps program is a separate program to the existing Green Corps program and does not replace it. There are strong similarities between the programs with the projects they work on and outcomes they achieve for local communities, about which I will speak further later in my speech.

The National Green Jobs Corps program is specifically designed to assist young people aged 17 to 24 to gain skills and work experience during this time of global economic crisis. The program focuses on equipping young Australians with the skills to fill job opportunities in emerging green and climate change related industries. The structured projects through the program link these young people with their community and allow them to work on the protection, conservation and rejuvenation of Australia’s natural and cultural heritage.

The two most significant challenges that we as a government face today are the global economic crisis and how to halt the destruction of our natural environment worldwide. At the heart of these two challenges is providing a future for young Australians—and, importantly, a future with a natural environment that is preserved and protected. To do so, we need to address issues such as global warming, land degradation, salinity and habitat loss.

As Australia moves to being a low-carbon economy, we need to make sure there are employment opportunities for young people in industries that will be part of this low-carbon future. In July this year the Prime Minister announced that the federal government would spend $94 million over three years to create 50,000 new green jobs and training places. Ten thousand of these training places are in the National Green Jobs Corps. History shows that in times of economic downturn, as we have seen during this current global economic crisis, youth unemployment rises faster than the general rate of unemployment. Young people who have not completed year 12 or equivalent are the most vulnerable in difficult economic times.

That is why the Prime Minister announced at the April 2009 Council of Australian Governments meeting our Compact with Young Australians. This compact means that every Australian aged between 15 and 24 who is not in the workforce will be entitled to an education or training place. The Compact with Young Australians partners with state and territory governments and business and education providers to deliver a better future for young people in Australia. At the time, the Prime Minister also announced the ‘earn or learn’ policy, whereby, to continue receiving youth allowance, a person under 21 without a year 12 or equivalent qualification must be in education or training to receive income support.

In June this year the government introduced the training supplement of $41.60 for young Australians who commence an approved course of study from 1 July 2009. This bill introduces a similar supplement of $41.60 paid to people who commence in the National Green Jobs Corps program. This income supplement recognises the additional costs someone on an income support payment may face in travelling to and from the Green Jobs Corps project location as well serving as an incentive for young people to get involved in this excellent program.

I will briefly refer to the program’s environmental benefits. The kinds of projects that this program will involve include bush regeneration and the planting of native trees, erosion control, beach and dune rehabilitation, habitat protection for wildlife and construction and restoration of walking and nature tracks, about which I will speak more later when I discuss projects in my local area. The projects also include important scientific research and education assistance such as biodiversity monitoring, surveys and audits of flora and fauna and consultation and education with the community on environmental matters.

Over the years, I have been associated with numerous environmental restoration projects in my electorate, including the Dry Creek Linear Park, the Little Para River Linear Park and the Cobbler Creek Linear Park, the most recent of these being the Green Corps project at the western end of Cobbler Creek, which the Minister for Home Affairs—who at the time was the Minister for Employment Participation—and I visited earlier this year. The Green Corps project involved 10 young people working on a 26-week restoration project along the Cobbler Creek watercourse. Their work involved the establishment of a walking trail, construction of a creek crossing and undertaking soil, water, animal and vegetation surveys. I was also pleased to be able to attend the graduation ceremony for the participants, in May 2009, at the completion of the project. In May 2009 I also represented the minister at the launch of the Black Hill Green Corps project in the Northern Lofty district of Adelaide. The project also enabled participants to plant trees, construct walking tracks and fencing, remove weeds and complete surveys of plants and wildlife.

What the visit to Cobbler Creek highlighted to both the member for Gorton—the minister—and me, and what my visit to the Mount Lofty site highlighted, was both the environmental and social value of those projects. Young people who had dropped out of school, who had little hope of securing meaningful employment and whose future was very uncertain, participated in the Green Corps and subsequently had a much more positive outlook on life. They learned new skills and learned how to work with others. They embraced responsibility and saw their confidence and self-esteem lifted when their project was completed. They were able to see the results of their work and the contribution they had made to restoring part of a community linear park. Just as importantly, they learned about the importance and relevance of our environment to the overall wellbeing of communities. The Cobbler Creek site and the areas in the Adelaide Hills are locations where the natural landscape had been seriously degraded by human activities. It is only in recent years that we have truly appreciated the damage we have done to the natural environment and the devastating effect this has had on the ecosystem, water, soil quality and the habitat of local plants and animals.

Having spoken to many of the young people who were involved in both of those projects, I was able to see firsthand the effect that it had on their lives and how it had in fact changed their lives around. Most of the participants who started in both of those projects stayed on until the end. A couple did not, but those who did certainly came away as much better people for the commitment they had made. I remember speaking to the young people at the Cobbler Creek project. Because part of the time that they spent working on that linear park was in the middle of the heatwave that we endured in Adelaide earlier on this year, I said to them: ‘What did you do on those extremely hot days and how did you find it?’ The response was something like this: ‘It was tough going but we weren’t going to quit or give up. We were committed to what we were doing and we were prepared to work through the heat.’ That is an incredible commitment by young people who, prior to that, had no commitment to anything. Because they understood the work they were doing, because they learned to understand the importance of it and because they had collectively embarked on a project, they were determined to see it through. Those kinds of qualities will stay with them for the rest of their lives. It is those kinds of experiences that are so important for young people who otherwise, as I said earlier, would probably have a very bleak future.

Importantly, many of these projects are located in rural and regional Australia, where the local environment is often most in need of restoration. In such cases, the local community and farmers receive benefits such as improved water management and reduced salinity from the environmental restoration work.

There is another environmental perspective to this debate associated with restoring and preserving our environment, and that is regarding climate change and our ability to reduce our carbon emissions. We are, as most members of this House would know, in the midst of a national and international debate relating to climate change—climate change that, on the most credible scientific advice available across the world, is largely attributable to human activity raising carbon emissions into the atmosphere.

On Tuesday 17 November, I, along with a number of other members of this House, attended a breakfast hosted by the Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies, otherwise known as FASTS. The presentation was about the emissions reduction targets and the impact of those emissions on the Great Barrier Reef. It was made by a number of Australia’s leading scientists, people who have spent most of their lives working in and around the Great Barrier Reef and in the scientific fields that they are now expert in. Their presentations were made on the basis of findings which have been peer reviewed, and they are quite happy to have anyone else question the findings that they brought to us.

There were some important facts presented at the briefing that I would like to share with the House. They are as follows. More than 100 nations have endorsed the goal of limiting average global warming to no more than two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures. Many locations, including the Great Barrier Reef, would still be at risk even under this scenario. To achieve a 50 per cent chance of avoiding this two-degree rise, global emissions need to peak no later than 2020 and then reduce by 80 to 90 per cent below 2000 emission levels by the year 2050. To achieve this, emissions from industrialised countries by 2020 need to be reduced by at least 25 per cent relative to their 2000 levels. Those are serious challenges for us and the point that the scientists were making to us was that, even if we can do all that, we stand a 50-50 chance of saving the Great Barrier Reef. The point I make about all this is that the work carried out under this kind of project is going to be very important in achieving those targets.

The emissions that I referred to earlier on have been elevated as a result of both carbon pollution human activities and the wide-scale clearing of vegetation across the world—which, in turn, would have otherwise absorbed atmospheric carbon. In other words, whilst carbon emissions are rising, the natural capacity of the earth to absorb carbon is falling. I would also like to quote from the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists, from their publication Optimising Carbon in the Australian Landscape. It says:

Terrestrial carbon includes carbon stored in forests, woodlands, swamps, grasslands, farmland, soils, and derivatives of these carbon stores, including biochar and biofuels.

The power of terrestrial carbon to contribute to the climate change solution is profound.

At a global scale, a 15% increase in the world’s terrestrial carbon stock would remove the equivalent of all the carbon pollution emitted from fossil fuels since the beginning of the industrial revolution.

Revegetation programs, such as those associated with the National Green Jobs Corps projects, are invaluable in restoring the ecology and sustainability of the environment, resulting in a much more effective carbon absorbing environment. The key to successful environmental management is to think globally and act locally, and that is exactly what the investment in the National Green Jobs Corps projects do. It was also interesting that, in the presentation made in respect of the Great Barrier Reef, the point was made that what is also contributing to the damage to the reef is in fact what is happening on the land and the waters that flow out onto the reef. Again, this is all related to the clearing of areas and the run-off from the land into the reef, and it is all related to creating a sustainable environment back on the land.

These are serious matters that we, as a parliament, are trying to grapple with. This particular initiative of government I believe is invaluable because, on the one hand, at a time of economic downturn, it provides an employment and training opportunity for young people. Secondly, it provides employment and training to those young people who are probably the most disadvantaged and who would have the most difficulty in getting into full-time employment elsewhere. It is important because it restores the natural landscape and vegetation on land in so many parts of the country, in a way that will benefit the local communities in the long term, as has been the case with respect to the linear parks that I referred to earlier on. Those linear parks, as a result of this kind of activity over the past two decades, have now become some of the most used recreational areas in my electorate—all because the local communities took it upon themselves, commencing about two decades ago, to gradually but methodically restore those river systems to their natural state and, at the same time, create the walking trails through them without causing any additional detriment to the local water course. It is initiatives like that that I commend.

The Green Corps program and the funding required would have to be one of the most effective climate change investments made by this parliament. I welcome the opportunity that the National Green Jobs Corps program will give young people at a time of global economic crisis to improve their lives and the environment, and I commend this bill to the House.

See this speech in context