PM extends his stimulus package

The Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, has effectively extended the Federal government’s three stage stimulus package by offering 50,000 new green jobs and training places.

That was done, with due ceremony, at the opening of the ALP’s National Conference in Sydney yesterday.

The announcement will inevitably be seen as a trade-off with the unions, after Mr Rudd’s blunt rejection of their earlier suggestion that his government should revive old-style “buy Australian” policies while the global economic crisis persists.

Mr Rudd said at the time that policies of that kind had produced the Great Depression of the 1930s’.

But he said the plan he announced yesterday would, instead, “build a stronger and greener Australian economy.”

The four part plan offers:-

• A 10,000 strong “National Green Corps” of long term unemployed youths, who will spend 26 weeks on projects like bush regeneration, walking track construction and restoration and similar projects.
• Green skills training, for 30,000 apprentices, on areas such as smart heating techniques and maintenance of advanced green motor engines
• Another 4,000 training places for insulation installers and
• Another 6,000 new local green jobs.

The Treasurer, Wayne Swan, who also addressed the conference said that Australia still has big challenges ahead, but the government’s stimulus packages had “made a difference.”

The best news, for the government, though, came late in the day, when the Roy Morgan organisation reported that, on its own measure, consumer confidence in Australia is now back at pre-crisis levels.

At 117.8 points, consumer confidence is now 25.8 points higher than it was in July last year – and at its highest level since January 2008.