Peter Garrett's problems with poor administration within the Environment portfolio go back further than the recent disasters with the insulation and Green Loans programs, the Australian Greens said today.

"It's all happened before," said Greens Natural Resource Management spokesperson Senator Rachel Siewert.

"We first heard similar stories - of bad decisions, confusing processes and lack of attention to detail resulting in significant job losses undermining the viability of an important sector of the green economy - in 2008 with the restructuring of existing natural resource management funding into the Caring for our Country program."

"There have also been a large number of jobs lost, and the sheer amount of time wasted by dedicated workers and volunteers is huge."

"The most recent funding round saw over 1300 applications asking for $3.4B in funding, out of which only 57 projects received a total of $57.5M in funding ($19M of which went to a single large camel eradication project)."

"The Minister continues to claim he has 'revolutionised' NRM funding, while he has in fact taken us away from a longer-term strategic planning approach requiring high levels of collaboration and back to short-term 'bitsy' competitive funding of individual projects."

"Regional natural resource management organisations - who had build up their capacity to tackle land degradation issues, protect remnant native bush, and support the roll-out of sustainable agriculture over a couple of decades, under the previous Natural Heritage Trust, National Action Plan on Salinity and Water Quality and Landcare programs - have been badly affected," she said.

"We've abandoned the lessons of the past and there is now no sense of how the efforts of individuals and groups can come together to achieve landscape scale change. There is no longer an incentive or requirement for co-investment by state governments and industry groups."

"Well before roofs were catching fire and emerging businesses in energy efficiency were being gutted, we saw hundreds of green jobs being lost in the NRM part of the environment portfolio."

"I remain concerned that many hundreds of dedicated volunteers have walked away and are continuing to walk away from decades of work on land care and catchment management. As a result, our efforts to make Australian agriculture more sustainable have been set back decades," concluded Senator Siewert.

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