Voters have received a newsletter boasting about environment minister Josh Frydenberg’s commitment to green army projects just days after a report the program will be axed in December.
On Monday the Australian Financial Review reported the green army would be abolished in the budget update on 19 December, after a decision by the Coalition’s budget razor gang, the expenditure review committee.
Senior government figures including Frydenberg, prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, and deputy prime minister, Barnaby Joyce refused to confirm or deny the reports the program was set to be axed.
But in Frydenberg’s most recent Kooyong community newsletter the minister said he was focused on delivering election commitments including green army projects along the Yarra River and Koonung Creek. Residents received the summer 2016-17 issue of the newsletter this week.
The Financial Review reported the decision to axe the program was made “more than a week ago”.
Former prime minister, Tony Abbott, lashed out after reports that the green army will be scrapped declaring that he is “dismayed” by the development and accusing Turnbull of dancing to the tune of the Greens.
Abbott said the program was good for grassroots conservation and “got unemployed people working too”.
“It’s a bad principle to axe your own policy for the Greens policy because it means that their priorities are more important than ours,” Abbott said. “That would hardly be a smart move for a centre-right government.”
Asked about the newsletter, a spokesman for Frydenberg referred Guardian Australia to earlier answers refusing to confirm the program would continue.
On Monday, Frydenberg told ABC Radio the green army had “been a very successful program of the Coalition”.
“We’ve had more than 1,000 projects right around the country, whether it’s planting 2m trees as a result of the green army or ridding 90,000 hectares of weeds, but these are issues that have to be looked at in the context of the overall budget situation.”
Asked if the program would continue, he said “we’ll wait and see”. “I don’t want to pre-empt what will be released in [the midyear budget update] other than to say we have to find savings across the board.”
On Tuesday Frydenberg said that the Turnbull government will not pursue emissions trading as part of adjusting its climate policy.
The backdown came after internal pressure just a day after Frydenberg explicitly said a looming review of the government’s Direct Action climate change policy would canvas the desirability of a trading scheme for the electricity sector.
