Thirty years ago, on this day, May 26, 1993, there was more hold-hands-and-sing kumbaya stuff about green jobs.
This report arises from the growing recognition by governments, industry and the community that ecologically sustainable development offers many opportunities for profitable investment and therefore for employment growth, as well as being essential for ecological survival. The community is also faced with the pressing task of finding opportunities to create more jobs and the environment industry is an obvious place to look.
The inquiry was proposed to the then Minister for the Environment, Sport and Territories [Ros Kelly] by the Committee and the Minister then formally referred the matter for inquiry to the Committee on 26 May 1993.
House of Representatives Standing Committee on Environment, Recreation and the Arts
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 360.3ppm. As of 2023 it is 420ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the Labor government of Paul Keating was extremely hostile to environmentalists, and environmentalism. One way of kind of sort of squaring the circle and giving the least radical greenies something to do, and keep them from making common cause with the radicals, was to set up things like Green Jobs Inits and have Parliamentary processes and investigations. This gets people busy giving evidence and it gives them the frisson of addressing a politician. And basically just keeps them out of mischief.
The report when it comes out, if it’s one that you can live with, you do a press release, and the speech and the “grip and grin” with the author. If it’s not, you release it on a Friday afternoon, ahead of a bank holiday or a big sporting event. And you play a dead bat in the media. More generally, it’s a win win.
What I think we can learn from this
The game is the game and the system (“man”) has ways of coping with potential upsets.
What happened next
The Green Jobs unit went nowhere. Keating had two big significant events on the environment in 1994/5. One was the loggers’ blockade of Canberra and the other was the carbon tax being defeated and the economic modelling of ABARE being used to block ambition for Australia at the international negotiations.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.