Controversial new laws setting up Tony Abbott’s “green army” have been exempted from a regulatory impact statement (RIS), despite the prime minister saying he would “almost never” allow an exemption from the procedure in order to guard against a resurgence of “red tape”.

The RIS exemption comes despite the fact that the social security legislation (green army programme) bill 2014 – debated in the same week as the government’s first “repeal day” – regulates to remove commonwealth health and safety, and workplace protections for the estimated 15,000 green army recruits.

When the prime minister unveiled his “bonfire of the regulations” last week – a list of laws to be repealed by the parliament on Wednesday – he criticised the former government for “routinely” exempting major measures from a regulatory impact statement, including the carbon and mining taxes and the national broadband network.

“The prime ministerial exemption was routinely provided under the former government. It will almost never be provided under the current government,” he said.

The “office of best practice regulation” in the prime minister’s department, rather than the prime minister himself, decided the green army legislation did not need a “formal” RIS.

When asked why a RIS was not needed, the department said: “When the government agreed to the proposal, it was considered to not have regulatory impacts on business or the not-for-profit sector (in line with the requirements applying at that time). Therefore a short-form RIS was prepared for the proposal.”

Both Labor and the Greens have criticised the legislation for removing health and safety protections for army participants.

Labor has introduced an amendment to the bill, which will be voted down in the lower house by the government’s numbers, but the regulatory uncertainty about workplace protections means it is unlikely to pass the existing Senate in its current form.

The environment minister, Greg Hunt, has said that service providers, who will run the program, will need to develop risk plans for each project.

He has also said that the provisions are similar to those that applied to the Howard government’s green corps, but as a paper on the bill, prepared by the parliamentary library, points out, most states and territories referred their industrial relations powers to the commonwealth in 2010.

“Under previous schemes participants would have been covered by state and territory employment laws, but this will no longer be the case,” the bills digest says.

Green army recruits – who will be aged 17 to 24 – will work up to 30 hours a week and be paid about half the minimum wage for environmental “clean-up” work like weeding, fencing and tree planting. Some of their work will constitute formal training.

It starts in 2014-15 with 250 Green Army projects and around 2,500 recruits. By 30 June 2017, around 1,500 Green Army projects will have been undertaken with 15,000 placements, according to predictions. By 2018-19, the estimated scale will be up to 1,500 projects and 15,000 placements each year.

All these trainees will be exempt from commonwealth workplace laws, including the Work Health and Safety Act, the Fair Work Act and the Safety and Rehabilitation and Compensation Act

The explanatory memoranda for the bill say: “Section 38J is inserted into the Social Security Act 1991 to specify that people participating in the Green Army Programme are not taken to be workers or employees under certain Commonwealth laws, including the Work Health and Safety Act 2011, the Safety Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 1988, and the Fair Work Act 2009, merely because of their participation in the Green Army Programme.

“This includes a person who participates in the Green Army Programme either on a full-time or part-time basis and who is receiving a green army allowance or a part-time participant who is not receiving green army allowance.”