Should you prepare your plans before making announcements?

I read with amusement that Ms. Julia Gillard has travelled to the USA to find out how to create Green Jobs. As we all well aware, the USA is the home of the Green Movement and is clearly the greenest country on earth. The undisputed green leader of the free world I don't think.

The other amusing part of this is that KRudd announced the creation of 50,000 new green jobs in July, reference link.

"The plan will consist of the creation of a 10,000-member national Green Jobs Corps, where long-term young jobless will take part in six months of training and work experience.

Labor plans that 30,000 apprentices will be trained with green skills, while there will be an additional 4000 training places for insulation installers.

There will also be another 6000 jobs from environmental sustainability programs in priority local economies."

but when you look at the actual figures here the only new jobs here are the temporary insulation handlers and the very airy fairy 6,000 jobs from environmental sustainability programs. Whatever that means.

The rest is an addition to existing apprentice's training and a work for the dole scheme with green tinges. So the 50,000 new jobs is in reality 10,000 temporary and speculative ones.

So if they were planning this back in July, why is Julia going off to the USA now to find out how to do it? What would be wrong with asking the local green movement, they just might have some useful ideas. Certainly would be cheaper than whatever the USA will come up with since their attitude is almost always to throw lots of money at a problem.

What this really shows clearly is that, as usual, the Rudds have no clue about what they are doing. They make policy on the run, without thinking it through at all, based on some sort of focus group and very bad polling.

So where does the $100 million cost of these jobs come from? Seriously even with 50,000 new jobs that's $2,000 per job or if it's only 10,000 newish jobs it's $10,000 per job. I remember the cost of my TAFE courses in 2000. They were $2,500 per term. So $10,000 covers fees for one year for one person. I would love to see their accounting on this but I doubt it will ever become public. Puts the mocker on the pre-election bleating about fully costed policies.