Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm interested to see the member for Fenner and the minister at the table. The member for Fenner has written a number of publications in recent years, one of which is entitled The Economics of Just About Everything:the hidden reasons for our curious choices and surprising successes. Apart from the 1,152 speeches he's given on legislation to this place, when he adds another chapter, when he adds the sequel to that 2014 publication, he may well want to include some sentences about this particular bill, which is rather an oxymoron because we have Labor talking about coalminers and we have the coalition talking about workers' rights and, of course, we're all in furious agreement, which is also rather unusual.

The Coal Mining Industry (Long Service Leave) Legislation Amendment Bill 2025 is important; it absolutely is. It's important for many of the reasons that the minister, member for Shortland, has just described. Indeed, it's also very important because we need to protect the rights of our coal miners. The reason we need to absolutely, 100 per cent, get behind them is because coal generates 47 per cent of Australia's electricity.

I do look forward to question time today when the energy minister is going to hopefully explain what the government is doing in the area of fuel security. But when we talk about securing our nation's wealth, when we talk about feeding our nation, one industry which very much comes to mind, front and centre of all this, is the black-coal industry. Anyone who represents the Hunter should know that. Anybody who comes from Queensland coalmining areas would know that. And anybody in Australia should absolutely respect the job that our coalminers do. They've been demonised. They have.

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