Andrew Wilkie didn't miss when he took aim at the coal industry in a speech to parliament on Monday.
The coal sampling scandal has international ramifications, and mining companies exporting through Newcastle are firmly in the Tasmanian MP's sights.
Mr Wilkie accused those involved in fabricating coal specification data of "fraud" and "environmental vandalism".
Industrial fraud is intolerable at any time, but with Australia and many of its coal customer nations working towards "net zero emissions by 2050", it is not only the power station operators and steelmakers who need to know the quality of the coal being burnt.
As Mr Wilkie said, this behaviour "could also be criminal, trashing corporate reputations as well as our national reputation", with "fraudulent quality reports ... and paying bribes ... to keep the whole scam secret".
Mr Wilkie named Glencore, a big Newcastle exporter, and Peabody, which runs the Wambo and Wilpingjong mines, as among the industry players implicated.
The coal sampling scandal surfaced in early 2020, just as the COVID lockdowns were starting and the bulk of public attention was focused on the virus.
At the time, the Newcastle Herald was told that manipulated sampling results were an "open secret" in the industry.
One of the big testing outfits, ALS, called in the police, and while ASIC investigated the company, it took no action, despite ALS acknowledging that up to half its test results had been doctored over a 13-year period.
The scale of the alleged falsification - and an apparent disinclination to dig deeper - are factors that support Mr Wilkie's inquiry call.
For the industry, the doubts raised about its honesty could not come at a worse time.
Coal is a historic bedrock of the Hunter economy, and continues to be so.
But the high-level consensus on the greenhouse effect and the resultant need to dramatically cut carbon dioxide emissions means the pressure on coal will only increase, and this region needs to diversify its economy.
It may take decades for the world to develop the technology needed to fully replace fossil fuels, but for an industry under siege, fudging the results of crucial specification tests only adds to the existing pressures.
For its own sake, as well for the environment, the coal industry needs to come clean.
Dishonesty does it no good.
