By Marina Cameron
In a bid to woo green votes and those concerned about youth unemployment, a federal government initiative was launched in Adelaide on January 12. Green Corps, to begin on March 3, will involve young people carrying out environmental conservation and restoration programs on a "training wage".
Green Corps is a work-for-the-dole program to replace the Landcare and Environmental Action Program (LEAP), instituted under Labor. It runs for six to 12 months; young people receive the bottom tier training wages of between $149 and $246 per week according to age and will be deployed in groups of 10 to rural and remote areas.
The program will take on only 3500 people (10% of the places in LEAP), and its budget is $26 million less than that provided for LEAP. It is the only new youth unemployment initiative; others, including the relatively successful Skillshare program, were axed in the budget.
Greens Senator Dee Margetts commented on the scheme on January 13: "In the past this kind of program was targeted at the long-term unemployed person aged between 17 and 20. Now all unemployed young people are eligible. This means the program will no longer be targeted at youth in most need of new skills."
Resistance national coordinator Sean Healy told Â鶹´«Ã½, "Many green groups supported the LEAP program as a step towards the creation of 'green jobs' and as evidence of greater government commitment to the environment. But even before LEAP was turned into Green Corps, there were major problems with the idea.
"Training young people for green jobs that aren't being created, while cutting funding to environmental initiatives, does nothing for the environment. Putting young people on work-for-the-dole schemes to replace permanent full-time workers does nothing to solve unemployment.
"The Australian Conservation Foundation actually suggested the idea of a Green Corps in its budget submission last year, but it is nothing more than a few crumbs thrown at huge problems to make the government look good. We should be calling for real solutions."