Why Chris Bowen is the weakest link in the Albanese government

Faced with the biggest energy crisis in Australia’s history, Chris Bowen has done a combination of absolutely nothing and doubling down on the lunacy that caused the mess in the first place.

There’s one huge and dangerously potent exception to the ‘Labor-starting cautiously’ theme I argued yesterday.

This is the Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen.

Coming into office to be faced immediately with the biggest energy crisis in Australian history – with prices of both electricity and gas going through the roof and with the very real threat of actual electricity blackouts and also gas shortages at the same time – what did Bowen do?

Simply, instructively and ominously, a combination of absolutely nothing and doubling down on the very cocktail of drift and the killing off our gas and real electricity generation that has caused the mess we are already in and has taken us right to the edge of a truly cataclysmic cliff.

Bowen, in the privacy of his delusions, undoubtedly thought he was given an agenda-setting landmark speech to the National Press Club in Canberra Wednesday. It was in fact a mess of sludge and – clearly to Bowen, utterly uncomprehended – contradiction.

He ruled out banning future coal and gas projects, but said he would not approve anything that was “inconsistent with our mandate”. That’s a mandate which effectively totally bans certainly coal-fired power stations and is all but incompatible with gas-fired power stations.

Does anyone seriously think this Labor Government and this ‘Energy’ minister is going to even grudgingly approve far less aggressively push for either coal or gas?

I put ‘Energy’ in quotation marks because it is seriously important to note that Bowen is the “Climate Change and Energy” minister – not the other way round. This government has made it officially clear that the main policy objective and focus is on ‘Climate Change’. It is officially not on ‘Energy’. Not on actually securing energy for 26m Australians – far less, securing that energy at the cheapest possible price and reliably and without rationing. That is secondary.

Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen. Picture: AAP Image/Steven Saphore

That in itself is disturbing enough in a generalised sense. But putting the preference for ‘Climate Change’ over ‘Energy’ in the hands of Bowen makes it far worse, for he is the very worst combination of ambition unmatched by ability and rather petulant enthusiasms. He’s not one that takes even discussion far less contradiction well. And in his short and unremarkable ministerial career he’s shown a predilection for childish enthusiasms. In his portfolio space his enthusiasm is clearly not energy for Australians but Rudd-style climate change posturing – made dangerously worse by exactly the same energy unicorn delusions of the official Dark Greens.

In his Wednesday posturing Bowen said the – my words, very definitely not his: utterly insane, devastatingly destructive and completely unachievable – 43 per cent CO2 emissions cuts by 2030 was not a ceiling but a floor.

That’s to say, give me more – climate change-posturing cuts, not more actual real, reliable, electricity and gas. Yes, he walked into an inherited mess that boiled over thanks in part but only part to Russia, so far as gas was concerned. The electricity mess was all entirely home-grown. But what has he done about it? What did he commit Wednesday to do now to cut prices for electricity and gas and guarantee supply?

Zero, zip, nada nothing. His speech was almost all about the wonderful world of Australia’s (fantasy) renewables future.

The one ‘today thing’ he boasted about was encouraging more EVs and building more EV chargers?

Does he understand – and it is a serious question, given that we are talking about Bowen – that EVs take electricity from the grid, they do nothing to add electricity to the grid?

Be afraid, be very afraid: he’s the ministerial twerp shaping your energy future.

Let me finish with one prediction: the seismic event in this Albanese Cabinet’s future could well develop to be a titanic struggle and climactic clash between Bowen’s lunacy and Treasurer Chalmers realism.

Originally published as Why Chris Bowen is the weakest link in the Albanese government