Ummm - let me rephrase that ...

I never thought I'd live long enough to see our Great Leader, Kevin "I know" Rudd, allude to the possibility that he was wrong! Or is that mistaken? But there it is in the headlines in The Australian: PM Kevin Rudd admits 50,000 green jobs not new.

When you read a little further into the article, it turns out that not only are they not new, they are not even jobs at all. And there are nowhere near 50,000 of them either. More like 6,000 short-term work-experience or w0rk-for-the-dole time wasters, it would seem.

Mr Rudd, speaking on Melbourne radio 3AW, conceded the 6000 jobs had been negotiated earlier but said the funding was "absolutely new":

"The government's $94 million package is to help train apprentices and young people", he said. "A further 10,000 places will be available in a new national Greens Jobs Corps for six months, during which time eligible unemployed people under 25 will have a training allowance added to their Youth Allowance or Newstart payment."

Oh, right. The "50,000 new green jobs" was a bare-faced lie, but trust me on the "$94 million" bit. This is what passes for "New Leadership" these days. Same old lies, but with new packaging.

During all this kerfuffle, it is instructive to note that there has been a deafening silence from our Dear Leader of the Carbon Revolution, the charming and delightful Senator Wong. We haven't heard anything from her since her abusive tirade against the Opposition last week for daring to question her dog of an ETS legislation.

God forbid that the Senate should actually be used as a house of review. It is hard to believe this is the same Labor party that ranted endlessly at the Howard government a few short years ago for wanting to ram its WorkChoices legislation through the Senate. How things change when you are holding the whip.

So - apparently we now have a revised version of Rudd and Wong's bright new "low-carb" future - unless subsequent corrections are issued. In summary: if you are a young person under 25 and your job prospects are trashed by the ETS, you may have a supplemental training allowance added to your dole payment for six months. This will give rise to the first of the Newspeak definitions to emerge in the post-ETS world: a "green collar unemployed" person will be someone who never gets a start in life because the ETS obliterated their prospects. This will be in contrast to a "blue collar unemployed" person, who is rendered jobless because the ETS obliterated their industry.

However, for the vast bulk of the tens of thousands of "blue collar unemployed" workers thrown onto the scrap heap, all they have to look forward to is the opportunity to cast their vote at the next election. Given that a fair percent of these are likely to be in the mining, manufacturing and electricity generation industries, a cynic would suggest that they could be relied on to vote for Labor anyway.

Apparently Rudd thinks it is more important to win over the 7.79% of people who gave their first preference to the Loopy Greens than it is to retain the 43.38% who actually supported Labor at the last election.