The recent result in the Upper Hunter by-election seems to suggest the coal mining heartland is not convinced federal opposition leader Anthony Albanese and his ALP comrades in New South Wales have coal miners' backs.

The National Party was comfortably returned in the seat and the ALP lost its primary vote despite having a coal miner and a Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union member as its candidate.

The voting public is not prepared to swallow the double-speak cooked up by ALP spin doctors that tries to meld the party's supposed concern for the working coal miner with its full-throated support for battling climate change and dismantling the coal industry.

The ALP brand is in deep trouble and its members on the ground in the Hunter and in Central Queensland know it.

They have joined federal member for the Hunter Joel Fitzgibbon in telling the media that the ALP can no longer take the coal miner vote for granted.

Cessnock deputy mayor Darrin Gray told the Sydney Morning Herald the party had to "put labour back into Labor" while Muswellbrook councillor Malcolm Ogg said the federal caucus members had to "decide what they stand for".

Federal member for Paterson Meryl Swanson told the federal caucus she feared they were "sleepwalking off a cliff".

Albo mistakenly thinks he can win the miner's vote by turning up at mining shows in Perth or Brisbane and getting himself photographed in high-vis gear.

He can take the shadow cabinet to the Port Hedland for an introduction to mining as many times as he likes. The mere fact that he has to do that is a scandal - Australia is a mining nation.  

Everyone knows Albo can't wait to return to his inner western Sydney seat of Grayndler where he can wax lyrical about climate change and be hailed as a hero for the environment.

His predecessor Bill Shorten made the same mistake over the Adani Carmichael project - telling the Queensland voters he didn't oppose it and then going home to Melbourne to tell his mates how bad it was.

The net result of that duplicity was the federal ALP was virtually voted out of Queensland.

As the next federal election draws near the ALP needs to reassure its traditional coal mining industry support base that it will honour the long heritage it shares with the labour movement and continue to back coal miners.