Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On a more solemn note, this Sunday I will attend the 22nd annual memorial day at the coalmining union's Federation House in Cessnock. There we will join in solemn remembrance of more than 1,500 men and boys who have lost their lives on the northern coalfields. The annual event serves as a reminder of both the dangers of coalmining and the need to maintain hard-won safety standards. All those who have lost their lives on the northern district coalfields have their names etched on a plaque on the Jim Comerford Miners Memorial Wall, and on Sunday we will again lay wreaths and remember them.

Thankfully, fatalities in the industry are now quite rare, but we have to remain forever vigilant. That's the way, of course, we also want it to stay. One death in any workplace is one death too many. I thank the CFMEU northern mining district for both its effective representation of our coalminers—I know their families appreciate that very much too—and the enormous energy they put into this annual event. I was there for the first event with then Prime Minister Paul Keating in 1996, and every year the union ensures that the event remains most relevant and is conducted in an appropriately solemn way. I know that the families of those who have given their lives on the coalfields appreciate it very much.

I also want to thank the good folk at NDIA Hunter for helping me to host an NDIS forum in my home town of Cessnock last Monday. More than 100 people with disability, family members, carers, service providers and professionals came together to discuss the enormous challenges and, indeed, shortfalls in a scheme which offered those with disability and their families so much. I think we all in this place are proud of any small role we might have played in ensuring that the NDIS became a reality, but I'm sure too that we've all experienced the problems and felt for the families who have been left disappointed. I intend to have more NDIS forums in my electorate. It was a very effective way of allowing people to express their concerns. We were able to have one-on-one meetings with many of those people. I do urge the government to do all it can to get us through these significant teething problems so that the NDIS can be all that it promised to be.