Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

In the limited time I have available I will say thank you to the Collinsville mine and the workers there, who hosted us last week. I was there with the member for Capricornia, Michelle Landry, and the member for Dawson, George Christensen. We were joined by the mayor of Whitsunday, Mr Andrew Willcox. It was great to get out to a coal mine in North Queensland and thank all the hard workers at that mine for what they do for our country, the wealth they produce, which we really need now to help our country through this pandemic. I also talked to them about their jobs and livelihoods, about issues like casualisation, their pay and the rights they now have thanks to legislation passed in this parliament, under which they can convert to permanent work. I must say that we were proud to be there as members of this government, which supports our coal miners. We happily posted photos. Some of the guys wanted to have a selfie with us, and we put them upon our social media. We're proud of the workers of this nation.

We had a visitor up in Queensland in the last few weeks, the Leader of the Labor Party. He camped up there, north of the Tweed. There was not a single photo with workers in the coalmining industry posted on his social media feed. Where was he? There is no evidence that he actually visited a coalmine. T here is more evidence that Neil Armstrong walked on the moon than there is that the Labor Party visited workers and celebrated the coal industry in this great nation.