Government caps number of projects that can be carried out in a year under the environmental program, to achieve savings of nearly $318m

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

The government has nearly halved the budget of one of its core environmental programs, the “green army”, by capping the number of projects it can undertake to 500 a year.

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The savings measure, worth just under $317.5m, was announced in Tuesday’s budget update. The government will continue to put nearly $360m into the scheme over the next four years.

The program was a favourite of the former prime minister Tony Abbott, and was often touted as part of the way the Coalition’s Direct Action policy would achieve its carbon-reduction goals.



Abbott had promised, in the 2013 federal election, to build the army of up to 15,000 young people to work on local conservation projects. The budget projections had previously accounted for the army increasing in size to gradually conduct 1,500 projects by 2018-19.

Savings from the 500-project cap would be redirected into environmental programs, the government said in its budget update.

A spokesman for the environment minister, Greg Hunt, told Guardian Australia the government remained committed to the scheme.

“The green army generates significant environmental benefits and provides valuable practical training and experience for participants to help them prepare for the future and improve career opportunities,” the spokesman said. “Almost 5,000 people have already been involved in the green army, with a further 15,000 expected over the next three years.”

The Greens’ treasury spokesman, Adam Bandt, said the Coalition had its priorities wrong.



The government only mentions climate change twice in the whole document Adam Bandt

“The government only mentions climate change twice in the whole document and continues to fund Tony Abbott’s attack on windfarms via the wind commissioner,” Bandt told Guardian Australia. “The government’s hostility to environmental protection has even extended to its own green army and cuts to Landcare.”

The Greens’ environment spokeswoman, Larissa Waters, said: “In 2014, the Liberal government cut $484m from the exceptionally successful Landcare program to fund the green army, but now they’re cutting out $317m of that money.”

Landcare, a community network, will lose $2.8m from its budget, while the establishment of the wind commissioner, whose task is to assess the health impacts of turbines, will cost the government $2.5m over four years.

The government had been criticised for paying the 17- to 24-year olds who did up to 30 hours of work a week in the green army less than half the minimum wage. Abbott had defended it, calling it a “training allowance”.

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While the former prime minister has defended the program as one of the government’s “major environmental initiatives”, academics have questioned whether the scheme would involve enough trees being planted to offset carbon emissions.

“To achieve pledged return of an annual 85m tonnes of CO2 captured would require equivalent to a plantation within a minimum size more than twice the size of Melbourne and to increase wood production by more than an additional 300%,” Monash University research officer, Tim Lubcke, said. “As this analysis relied upon the most optimistic assumptions, real-world limits to tree plantation ignored and optimal yield was used.”