What was that?

What was the quote from our Great Leader, Kevin "King Canute" Rudd, yesterday? Ah yes - "The climate change sceptics constantly scare-monger about the possible loss of jobs through the transition to a lower carbon economy."

The climate change sceptics?? The possible loss of jobs?? It would seem that our Great Leader needs a bit of a reality check.

Browse through the following list and see how many climate change sceptics are represented in their midst (predictions as at 1 August 2009).

Date	Sector/Industry	Jobs	Ref.
30/7/09	Regional Australia to bear brunt of CPRS	45,000	ABC
15/7/09	Queensland miners warn of CPRS impact	28,000	SMH
12/6/09	Carbon trading scheme a risk to local jobs	126,000	G.A.
12/6/09	Bowen Basin jobs under threat from ETS	8,000	C.Q.N.
4/6/09	Alcoa warns of 600 lost jobs from ETS	600	M.W.
22/5/09	Carbon plan will cause jobs carnage	66,000	Aust.
21/5/09	Qld. mining jobs wiped out under CPRS	34,090	QRC
8/5/09	ETS 'will cost 10,000 coal mining jobs'	10,000	B.Times
28/4/09	ETS scheme threat to LNG jobs: Woodside	,000's	SEAAOC
17/3/09	Xstrata, Alcoa see job cuts on ETS	5,800	Bus.Spec.
12/3/09	Food and grocery manufacturing	many	AFGC
29/9/08	Visy warns of job cuts from ETS	160	Aust.

These, of course, are all real, direct and largely full time jobs that will be obliterated by this useless and unnecessary tax.

Now compare this with the fictional work-for-the-dole or part time work-experience "jobs" announced by our Great Leader yesterday.

This blog will be monitoring the status on an ongoing basis.

So will the voters.

A Great Day in "Green Jobs" History

Today, our Great Leader ordained that fifty thousand "Green Jobs" would be created. Opening Labor's national conference, he pledged to create these "green" jobs and apprenticeships for young people, albeit with no time frame specified.

"Today I announce a further measure to assist young Australians during this difficult time in our economy.

"The Government will now create 50,000 new green jobs, traineeships and apprenticeships aimed chiefly at helping young Australians to obtain new skills during the downturn – new skills which will be become highly applicable in the low carbon economy of the future.

"The climate change sceptics constantly scare-monger about the possible loss of jobs through the transition to a lower carbon economy.

"But they constantly fail to talk about the new clean energy jobs of the future which will arise from the introduction of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, the renewable energy target and energy efficiency measures in the future.

"Specifically, these fifty thousand positions will be made up of:

4000 disadvantaged job seekers participating in the current insulation program;

6000 local green jobs through the jobs fund;

10,000 places in a new National Green Jobs Corps;

30,000 trainees and apprentices in priority sectors of the building and construction sectors and other trades, where places will concentrate across the range of “green skills” competencies that will be needed in the future. These will be achieved through a new National Green Skills Agreement and will start building a new skill base in existing industries and cutting-edge industries, and create jobs and opportunities for generations to come.

"The practical job-ready skills included in this training will include:

Training electricians in the installation of solar energy;

Training plumbers in the installation of water-recycling, plumbing systems; and

Training workers in the booming home insulation industry and the retro-fitting of buildings to reduce energy consumption

"Taken together, our Nation-Building for Recovery plan and our Jobs Compact with Australia are designed to help working families see their way through the global economic crisis – rather than allow free market forces to throw them to the wolves."

The devil is always in the detail of course, and within a few hours Mark Arbib (the aptly named "Employment Participation" minister) was confused as to whether these would be paid jobs or work-for-the-dole training. (See here, here, and here).

Maybe they just caught the hapless Mr Arbib on a bad day. Or maybe our Great Leader should pop into Mr Arbib's office in the next day or two and shout at him for a bit until he gets "on-message". A couple of weeks ago, Mr Arbib was certain that 90% of the 530 "jobs" created by the Jobs Fund would be "green jobs" - so clearly he has enough attention span to pick up a simple thread like this.

We shall see.