The Government’s $1.1 billion idea of redeploying people into environmental jobs is great in concept but difficult to turn into reality, National’s Environment spokesperson Scott Simpson says.

“It’s a struggle to get Kiwis to take well-paying jobs in the horticulture or farming sector, so convincing people to become rat-catchers and possum-trackers in the numbers the Government is hoping for will be an enormous challenge.

“It’s all very well allocating the funding, but there’s no detail on how the job numbers will be achieved and this Government has a poor track record of delivering on their big policies.

“The $1.1 billion for 11,000 jobs means they’ve allocated $100,000 per job. There is no detail about how much of this is going to workers on the ground doing the environmental work and how much of this is going to added bureaucracy in Wellington offices.

“This is similar to Budget 2018 where $100 million was allocated to setting up the Green Investment Fund to create new green investment and jobs. But two years later not a cent has been invested and the only jobs created are for the highly–paid executives administering the fund.

“This announcement has all the hallmarks of being the Government’s environmental equivalent of Kiwibuild, a great slogan with no idea on how they’ll achieve it.”

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