Rowan Holzberger (Forde, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

But you're not wearing the hat, though, today—or there's nothing which I can pin on you there. I won't say that I was particularly talented at it. In fact, I only ever got to the level of being able to break things, never being able to fix them, so, as a wannabe fitter and machinist, I ended up becoming a very good station hand. But being in Broken Hill, you just know what it's like. In another job that I had later on, I was doing income protection for the coalmining industry. I got to spend a lot of time in Moranbah and in Dysart, in Mackay and in Gladstone, and I saw firsthand how it's an understatement to say that they're intertwined with the coalmining industry. These towns are the coalmining industry.

I got to know some of those people so well. I got to appreciate how difficult and dangerous coalmining, in particular, is. It's probably even more dangerous than metalliferous mining—which is saying something because, in Broken Hill, over its 100-year history, something like 700 people have died on those mines. Anyone who has been to Broken Hill would have been shocked and moved by the miners memorial that sits at the heart of that city, just as those deaths sit in the memory of that town. In fact, when I was growing up in Broken Hill, there was always a moment of fear that you could feel spread through the community when an ambulance drove past and you could hear the ambulance siren on the way to the mine, because you knew that that was potentially a family member or a friend who was injured.

From the work that I did in the Bowen Basin and around those Central Queensland coalfields, there are a few individuals that I would like to give a shout-out to today. John Hempseed, Chris Harper, Mark Johnson, Dwayne Muller and Daryl Piper are just five of the people who I came to respect enormously for the leadership that they provided through the AMWU's Coal Shop Stewards committee. Of course—Hempy, Crawchy, Johnno—everybody had a nickname. Everybody liked to throw a bit of fun at each other. I think there's a word there which would be unparliamentary if I were to use it! Daryl is also somebody who I do a little bit of work with now because he is a FIFO worker working from just near our community in Logan.

Hempy, particularly, is someone who's really an indescribable individual. Until you meet him, you just can't appreciate it. He is a big lump of man, now well into his older years. He's a guy who loves life, loves his mates and is not afraid to cry. And it's not surprising when you think about what Hempy's been through in his life. He was there during the Moura mine disaster in 1994, when 11 miners lost their lives—on top of an earlier disaster in 1974 or 1975 where I think 13 people lost their lives—and the truly horrific thing about those 11 people is that a decision was made to plug that mine up after the explosion to prevent any rescue teams endangering themselves further. So those families never knew how those people died or when those people died, and it's something that haunts them as a family, haunts the Moura community as a town and still haunts the coalmining and the wider mining community today. So, when we're making changes to this industry, we remember that these people are really the true definition of 'salt of the earth' and they deserve the support of the wider Australian community and of their governments.

The second reason is that exactly this sort of legislation shows why it is so important to have Labor governments. Fundamentally, the Labor Party exists—and the hint is in the name, the party of labour—because, as much as we fight for conditions and for wages on the shop floor, there are some things that you just can't achieve on the shop floor alone. Portable long-service leave is a perfect example of one of them, but there are other things like free health care, superannuation and free education. These are the sorts of things which you need control of the parliament—you need government—to be able to bring about. You need control of the parliament to be able to protect the rights of workers to strike in the first place. One of the reasons we exist as a party is that striking workers decades ago had to contend with troopers on horseback with sabres coming in to break up strikes. We exist, and we arise out of those battles.

Under the tree of knowledge, exactly. And so it is today. Things like same job, same pay, which this government has enacted; the criminalisation of wage theft; closing labour hire loopholes; industrial manslaughter reforms; secure jobs, better pay—these are the sorts of things that federal Labor and state Labor governments have been able to bring about, the sort of things that can't be achieved just on the shop floor.

Finally, this is a recognition that coal is an important part of our economy. The reality is that the world is committed to decarbonising, and that demand for thermal coal has plateaued and is forecast to go down. No matter what you think about the debate around climate change, two things: one is that coal has been an important part of our economy. We all know why this is such a wrench for the Australian community. Coal is still our biggest export in Queensland. Coal was the magic which powered that postwar economic miracle. Truly the competitive advantage that Australia had against the rest of the world was this ability to create cheap energy out of the ground.

So it is a wrench. There is no doubt it is a wrench on the Australian economy and the Australian people, but it is a reality as well. That's why 24 out of 28 coal-fired power stations brought forward their closing date under the former government. I think the current opposition leader, when he was energy minister, gave something like $3 million to build a coal-fired power station in Collinsville. I don't think they even finished the study, let alone the coal-fired power station. People aren't building coal-fired power stations anymore; that is the reality. One act of this government which the other side would not contemplate is that there needs to be a just transition and that, through the Net Zero Economy Authority, there is a real opportunity for this to ultimately be a good thing for our communities. But it is only Labor governments which have an eye to that just transition and that just future.

So here we have, ultimately, an industry which is important to Australia, important to Queensland and important to Logan and the Gold Coast, which I represent. It's not just people working directly in the coal industry who directly benefit from this legislation; it's people who work in associated industries. One of the biggest employers there for diesel mechanics, for example, would be Hastings Deering, based in Brisbane, right next to the airport. These are the jobs which are directly involved in the coalmining industry or indirectly involved. It just shows how important it is to our economy and how important it is to our communities.

So I want to say here today that this bill, as much as it might seem removed from an outer metropolitan seat, is something which is meaningful to me because of where I come from, because of what it means for our economy and because of what it means for our party. I commend the bill to the House.

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