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.