Pat Conroy (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Question time is a robust debate in this place, and it should be. However, day after day we have to sit through the Deputy Prime Minister and the Melbourne inner city minister for energy claiming that I and the other Hunter Labor MPs are betraying coalminers and energy workers. In this narrative, the government is the working man's best friend and we are hypocrites. I completely reject this narrative. It bears no resemblance to reality. It is offensive to me and, more importantly it is offensive to the workers and communities that I represent.

The government is using them as debating props for scoring cheap political points, and this is the most disgraceful aspect of the debate. The Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister and the motley crew of charlatans, hypocrites and venal time servers that constitute their frontbench are an embarrassment. Deputy Prime Minister: being mates with Gina Rinehart does not make you a friend of coalminers. Coalminers don't get free trips to India on Gina's private jet. Most coalminers don't get to study at the $40,000-a-year St Ignatius' Riverview College.

To the Deputy Prime Minister I pose the following questions. If you really care about coalminers, where were you yesterday when every other federal MP who represents the Hunter region, which you purport to represent, attended the annual Miners Memorial Day at Cessnock? This day commemorates the 1,803 women, men and, tragically, children as young as 11 who have died in Hunter coalmines. Where were you, Deputy Prime Minister? I didn't see you offering condolences to the grieving family of the latest worker to suffer a tragic and unnecessary death at a Hunter coalmine. I haven't heard the Deputy Prime Minister calling for better mine regulation and safety enforcement. Instead, I see cheap taunts thrown around in question time while the Deputy Prime Minister and the government perpetrate two acts of national shame. Firstly, they continue to weaken worker protection laws in this country by restricting the ability of unions to enter workplaces and limiting what workers and firms can include in enterprise agreements, making it harder for safety standards to be enforced. The rise of labour hire and increased use of short-term contractors are undermining workplace safety. In the northern coalfields, sadly, we are averaging one workplace death a year. We have also seen the return of black lung, a disease we had hoped we had seen eradicated in our coal communities. What is the government's response? It wants to outlaw the mineworkers' union. What a shameful act!

The second act of shame that this government is perpetuating is their continuing lies to energy workers about their future. Everyone knows there'll never been a coal-fired power station built in this country without massive public subsidy. The workers know it, the generators acknowledge it and the financiers demonstrate it through where they invest their funds. Thermal and coking coal exports have a strong future, but we will never build another coal-fired power station in this country without massive public subsidies. We owe it to the energy workers, their families and the communities that depend upon that industry to have an honest conversation about that.

The most disrespectful thing a politician can do is to lie to workers, and that is exactly what this government is doing. My community understands the realities. What they want is a government that will work with them; a government that will put forward a well-resourced plan to look after the workers and communities affected and to diversify the economic base of these regions. I committed in my first speech to fight for my community and to be honest with them. I will spend every day that I have the privilege to represent the people of Shortland doing just that.

My neighbour is a coalminer and my kids go to kindy with the children of energy workers and coalminers. I am proud of our mining heritage, and recognise the wealth generated by the 18,000 coalminers who risk their lives to mine this resource. The best way I can commit to commemorating the 1,803 miners who have lost their lives in Hunter coalmines is to fight for laws that mean no other family has to receive the dreaded call that they have lost a loved one. In comparison, we have a Deputy Prime Minister, a Prime Minister and a government that continue to lie, that continue to use workers a political props and continue to treat my region—

Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! I would ask the member for Shortland to withdraw that inference.

Pat Conroy (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I withdraw it, but I was using the plural, Mr Acting Deputy Speaker. I withdraw. In comparison we have a government that continues to lie, that continues to use workers as political props and that continues to treat my region as a cheap debating trick. My community condemns their actions, as, surely, will history.