Zed Seselja (ACT, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Social Services and Multicultural Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

It is great to speak after Senator Di Natale. Today, Senator Di Natale—we heard it just then and we heard it earlier in question time—continues with this extremist rhetoric about coal and seeking to shut down an entire industry. The nature of that extremist rhetoric was particularly well exposed in question time today, when Senator Di Natale compared coalminers to drug dealers. That is what he did: he compared coalminers to drug dealers. Coalminers, of course, provide tens of thousands of jobs in this country. They provide billions of dollars in exports. They provide billions of dollars in taxation revenue and energy security for Australians, and, as we export that coal, particularly to countries like India and others—