Saturday, March 30, 2024

Councils relish new green jobs

Avatar photo
The heads of two regional councils have welcomed the Budget’s promise of increased green jobs spending coming as more people have lost jobs and a winter of potential unemployment looms. Waikato Regional Council chief executive Vaughan Payne said the region’s environmental challenges align strongly with the Budget’s green jobs initiative, and the council had applied for a large number of projects.
Reading Time: 2 minutes

“Our emphasis has been on green infrastructure. It’s a great opportunity to support some of those big issues that we have been trying to address for some time – water quality, biodiversity and, increasingly, climate.

The shovel-ready projects the council has put together would result in 1000km of extra waterway fencing, four million trees and hundreds of jobs.

“It’s good to see the alignment between those ideas and what we are seeing in the Budget.”

He expects jobs to range from those involving physical labour to project management and co-ordination and administration.

“It’s a whole range of skills you would expect to see in a large infrastructure project.”

The green jobs package could help reduce the costs of central government’s freshwater abd biodiversity policies and climate change for landowners but not the council.

“As a council we have continued to maintain our budget lines through this crisis so that we’re continuing with our own planting programme and our own fencing of waterways. 

“But what this package could do is accelerate the amount of work that we can do with the community. It’s complementary to our existing work programme and reduces costs to the community.”

Bay of Plenty Regional Council chairman Doug Leeder had high hopes there would be some focus on boosting Coast Care and wetland projects and was not disappointed.

“There is a significant amount of money there, about $1 billion that is committed to green project jobs. Because they are to be delivered on a regional basis, regional councils will now have to deliver on these.

The $1.1b allocation aims to create 11,000 environment-focused jobs in the regions. It includes $433m for regional environmental projects and $315m for biosecurity, specifically weed and pest control.

“We now want to make sure that those people who have been displaced can be picked up pretty quickly and placed in these jobs,” he said.

It is now up to councils to work with the Ministry for the Environment to determine what projects are priorities. 

Leeder hopes some established projects involving farmer groups and retirees will get some extra money and manpower to speed them up.

“I think we should be able to hit our straps with these projects in the next two months. We don’t want to lose people who may have lost their job and don’t get back into it.”

His region is particularly susceptible to the ebb and flow of seasonal work and with the kiwifruit harvest nearing its end in June he hopes there will be a good supply of capable people looking to sign on. 

The tourism mecca of Rotorua has been hit hard by the covid crisis with 400 people recently laid off from the Te Puia geothermal centre and more hospitality workers expected to follow.

Leeder is confident the council can work closely with iwi groups including Te Arawa to expand projects already started. They include the Te Arawa Catfish Killas. 

That project aims to stop the spread of catfish in Rotorua’s lakes and ultimately eliminate them.

Total
0
Shares
People are also reading