Ewen Jones (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Social Security Legislation Amendment (Green Army Programme) Bill 2014. I come at this bill more from the point of view expressed towards the end of the member for Hasluck's presentation, in relation to this program giving people the opportunity to have a go.

In 2012 Michael Keenan, the then shadow minister for justice, and I held a community forum on youth crime in Townsville. It was held in the Upper Ross suburb of Rasmussen. The Upper Ross is a dormitory suburb of Townsville. There is not much industry or employment there and that means people have to commute each day to and from work. It is also home to a lot of unemployment and to families needing government assistance. It is a beautiful part of Townsville which hugs the Ross River and lies adjacent to the dam wall, which provides Townsville's major water supply.

It was a night of very strong discussion regarding local crime, but what pleased me the most was the way that Townsville people approached the issue. Sure, there were some who thought that youth crime would be best solved by a good flogging, 'locking them up and throwing away the key' or worse, but the great majority of people in attendance recognised that if there was a silver bullet it would have definitely been fired by now; if there was a quick and easy option to solve the problems in our community it would have already been deployed. The fact was, though, that the problems we face with youth crime are multifaceted. One of the biggest concerns for the people in attendance was that children were dropping out of school and drifting into crime. They were dropping out because they had reached high school and were—largely anecdotally speaking, but the statistics back it up—unable to read and write. That left them largely unemployable in a modern Australia. This issue is compounded by generational unemployment. In Townsville there are homes where no-one has had a job—ever. How do we, as people in this place, rationalise how it must be for a young person to understand the message we are trying to give them that they must work hard and study hard for 12 years and, if they do that, they will get a job, and then they go home and they see that that has never happened to anyone in their family? How do we, as the people in this place, get our heads around where that person is and how do we get them to the position where they can participate in something?

So we have a large group of people who have dropped out and disengaged from the system of education and work. This is the same system around which most of us move for our entire lives, people in this place. How do we get these people into the system and keep them there? How do we get them to have a go? How do we offer them a chance for success?

The green army is not the sole answer to these questions—far from it—but it does form part of that answer for some people. What we have to do with youth unemployment and with generational unemployment is break the habit of being at home. The problem you have when you are at home and you have nowhere to go and nothing to do is that you do not keep regular hours. So quite often when you drive around Townsville—you will be coming home from a function at 11.30 at night or 12.30 or 1.30 in the morning—you will see kids on pushbikes riding around Townsville with nowhere to go. They are sleeping all day. How do we break that habit? How do we get them to turn up? How do we get them an opportunity to actually turn up and have a go? What is the motivation for them to say, 'Look, I want something more; I want something better'? How do we get them to recognise what it is to be part of a team? It is difficult because of the way insurance is with sport and the way clubs are forced to jack up administration prices, increasing the cost of getting people into sport. Along with the cost of uniforms and all of those sorts of things, it is so much more expensive now.

When I was a kid, to play in the four-stone-sevens—which, admittedly, was a very long time ago—you turned up in a pair of shorts and were given a jersey, you did not even have boots. The really classy guys had the foam inserts in the football shorts on the sides. At cricket, you did not have gloves. You did not have pads. You had a bat and ball and three stumps at one end, and one stump at the other end, and the batsmen switched over.

As for the unemployed families, to get their kids into team sport costs so much more. It is so prohibitive to get people to turn up, because they have got to have the right equipment. They are not allowed to play unless they have headgear, pads, protectors, bat and all that sort of stuff that goes with it.

A government member: Registration and insurance.

Registration and insurance. How do we get those kids to understand what it is to achieve something, when they have been in a situation where no-one has achieved much at all? Once again, this is anecdotally speaking, but I have been in conversation with people who said, 'Sooner or later, I'll go to Stuart. I'll go through Cleveland, and then I'll end up in Stuart. That is what we do.' Those are the things that we have to watch out for. This is not at all everyone on the Green Army; I am talking about one of the issues in relation to the Green Army.

To achieve something; to complete something; to see something before you started and what the finished product must be; to be able to stand back and look at your handiwork and have some pride: what must it be like for people in that situation to be there? I commend the Minister for Environment, Greg Hunt, for following this through. It is an opportunity for young Australians aged 17 to 24 to gain training and experience in environment and heritage conservation. If you talk to Dr Scott Crawford from NQ Dry Tropics in Townsville, you will discover one of the things that they are most worried about is that we are trying to get people employment in conservation, landscape gardening and all those sorts of things where there are not many jobs. That is not the thing that I see out of the Green Army.

What I see out of the Green army is the ability for someone to get up, put their boots on, go to work, do the work, come home and do it again—to break the habit of being around. The Green Army will build on the Howard government's successful Green Corps program, established in 1996. It planted and propagated more than 14 million trees, maintained more than 5,000 kilometres of walking tracks and erected more than 8,000 kilometres of fencing. What did Labor do? Labor scrapped all those things. The initiative was torn apart, rebadged and failed to improve the environment, before being terminated completely in 2012. They had far too many other good programs to install. Young people no longer had the opportunity they once had to gain training and experience. We lost the link to having vital environmental projects undertaken in the local communities. This is something we took to the electorate as a key election promise last year.

There will be 250 projects and approximately 2,500 people undertaking on-the-ground, environmental activities in the first year alone. The Green Army will grow to become Australia's largest ever environmental workforce with 15,000 participants by 2018. We have to continue to make it enthusiastic and engaging. They get the same amount of money at the moment for sitting at home and doing nothing. Why would they turn up to this? Because it is part of something and defines what it is to belong to something. Projects can be carried across urban regional areas and remote Australia on public land, Indigenous held lands and on private land where there has been a clear community environmental heritage benefit.

The coalition government understands that young people need employment and they need a start in life. At the moment, youth unemployment is double the national rate. That means it is harder to get started. And if you cannot get started, it makes it harder to make success, which makes it easier to drift on to irrelevance and other things that you do not want to be involved in. Trainees will receive a training wage, work skills and formal qualifications, so at the end of it, if they push through with this, they will be able to say that they were actually part of something, and this is the piece of paper that says it. We will provide $300 million over four years and a further $222.1 million in 2017-18, and $289.2 million in 2018-19 to re-establish the Green Army.

There have been a lot of members on the other side questioning workplace health and safety and all those sorts of things in relation to this scheme. Can I be very clear: the health and safety of participants engaged in this program will remain governed by the relevant statutes, regulations, by-laws and requirements in respect of workplace health and safety laws. This is not a fly-by-night organisation. This is not a fly-by-night operation. Service providers, the people who win the tenders, are responsible for engaging and managing participants and will hold primary responsibility for the health and safety of the Green Army teams. It is one of the things that Townsville City Council, who will be our local contact on jobs in the seat of Herbert, were very clear about. They were quite worried. They wanted to know whether they would be responsible for participants' uniforms; for participants' turning up, for sick leave and for all those things that go with being part of a job. The answer is no. Townsville City Council are there merely to tell us what they want done; how to get it done, and the end result; and to show us where to go. Project sponsors have shared responsibility for providing a safe-work environment for Green Army teams, including safe access to the site where work is to be carried out. The Commonwealth will also implement a workplace health and safety audit scheme for the Green Army Program, involving independent workplace health and safety audits of service providers and projects.

I will throw the words of the member for Grayndler back to those opposite—there has been relentless negativity from Labor. There have been chants coming from the other side. They have sounded like a vuvuzela, with a chorus of negativity that comes out of their people. They have got their set lines, they just trot them out and they say exactly the same thing. No matter how many times it is repudiated, they have just got to get it out there, because they have already sent it out to their electorate. We could do that but the member for Grayndler would get up here. He would probably come out and say that he had already started this program under Labor's infrastructure program and that he actually turned the first sod a few years ago. That is what we get from the other side.

Insurances will be required to be held by all relevant parties. The Commonwealth will also take out personal accident insurance and public and/or product liability insurance for Green Army participants. This is consistent with practice for the previous National Green Jobs Corps.

The first Townsville project we will get underway is the Booroona Trail and Loam Island clean-up. As I said earlier, the suburb of Rasmussen hugs the Ross River, one of the most beautiful parts of town. Booroona Trail is a lovely part of it, but it is infested with weeds and needs a very strong clean-up. It is a beautiful part of the river walk and it is one of the things the Townsville City Council would love to get to, but they can never seem to get there. Our Green Army project will get in there.

As the local member I would like to say to my Green Army participants that if they turn up and participate I will put on a barbecue every Friday I am in town—a sausage sizzle at the end of work on a Friday afternoon. I will invite local employers who run construction companies or sawmills or are builders, and I will introduce my people from the Green Army projects to those people around town who may be looking for someone. I make no guarantee about jobs, but this is all about an opportunity to get a job and I will do my bit to make sure that the people here get to stand in front of the people who can employ them. This area of Rasmussen has high unemployment and little infrastructure and very few federal government services. Residents have concerns about the level of unemployment in the Upper Ross region.

We have been in contact with the Townsville City Council and they found out exactly how the project was going to run, and the lack of impact it will have on the way the Townsville City Council operates. There will, of course, be some administrative burden, but the payoff at the end will be far greater than that. They are very keen to provide more things, and there are things needed around my electorate, down towards Rowes Bay and along the foreshore.

If you get a chance come to Townsville and see the new Jezzine Barracks redevelopment. It is a spectacular place. Get across to Magnetic Island. They have just had the King of the Island event. Get there and see the heritage trails around the island and the work that can be done over there by the Green Army. This is an opportunity to participate and to succeed. It is an opportunity for people to have a go and break the bad habits and find out what it is like to work for a living and discover the joys of being part of a team and of starting something and finishing it—then stand back and maybe get a job at the end of it. This is what we have to do. This is the Australia we have to be. We have to be a more productive Australia. If we are more productive we will become more affluent and if we are more affluent and more productive in the Upper Ross we will be more inclusive. That is the most important thing in the electorate of Herbert. I commend the bill to the House.

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