Audit needed on the Green Jobs Program.

By, Viv Forbes. Chairman, The Carbon Sense Coalition.

It is time for an audit by the Productivity Commission into PM Rudd’s Green Jobs Plan.

Whenever politicians claim to create jobs, close examination usually finds that the jobs were created in another country and their policies have merely created more welfare recipients.

Much of the tax funded subsidy money being thrown at “alternative energy” is creating jobs in China making the hardware. Then it employs a few short term people installing the stuff. In the end, the only real jobs created are repairing wind towers and cleaning dust off solar panels. Even these are not real jobs because the moment the government stops forcing electricity companies to use their expensive and unreliable green power, these jobs will also evaporate.

Real jobs are those that produce unsubsidized goods or services that can be sold in open markets at a profit.

Jobs that depend for their existence on government subsidies or mandates are not jobs, but welfare with fancy names. They live off taxes paid by real jobs.

For example, spending $19 million of tax payers’ money on a mindless slaughter of wild camels “to save the environment” is green job creation. Harvesting camels in a sustainable industry is a real job.
Left: Government green job.

Right: Free enterprise green job.

Photos by Paddy McHugh.

Moreover, replacing the dole with “environmental training programs” is just creating indoctrination camps for green zealots. Al Gore has enough money to run his own training camps.

And managing carbon regulations, carbon taxes, carbon trading and carbon grants is not a job, it is an overhead.

Job creation is not just a matter of spending tax payer money.

All job creation starts with an innovative idea for satisfying a real consumer demand. Today, however, too many “innovators” spend their time dreaming up innovative reasons for getting access to government slush funds, protection schemes or “research” grants. The cost of supporting these green rackets always destroys jobs in real industry (see the example from Spain, below).

Grass is the most valuable green product in Australia. And managing grasses and forests to produce low cost meat, milk, grains, wool, timber and tourist products are the most important green jobs in Australia. They will be still producing sustainable green products long after the Green Jobs Program, the Ration-n-Tax Scheme and the Renewable Energy Targets are forgotten.

Disclosure: Viv Forbes and his wife Judy have real green jobs managing green grass to raise healthy cattle and sheep.