Chris Bowen’s pasta disaster should have been tasty fodder for the Coalition

If the opposition – or oppositions – were not so busy fighting over the ashes of their incompetent election campaign, they could have had a field day with Chris Bowen’s gnocchi-noshing sacrilege, writes James Morrow.

Australians on the east coast now brace for their next power bills, which are expected to jump by another $200 as more and more of those wonderfully cheap and reliable renewables are pumped into the grid.

Yet they can still rest assured knowing the nation’s energy policy is being run by the very best of minds.

Because by a coincidence that could almost be described as heaven-sent, just as news broke about how much more Australians will be forced to pay to keep from cooking God’s creation, there emerged video of Energy and Climate Minister Chris Bowen.

And not just any video.

This one had the man in charge of the nation’s poles and wires and all the electrons that flow between them stuffing his gob with gnocchi out of a cardboard bowl.

While – and this is the shaved parmigiano reggiano on top – at a Catholic mass.

It’s the sort of thing that sounds like it was ripped from an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm or Seinfeld.

Which, given Australia just suffered through the 2025 “campaign about nothing”, makes this little incident a great sequel.

Energy and Climate Minister Chris Bowen slurps a bowl of pasta during mass at Club Marconi in Sydney.

Now in his defence, Bowen is not the most religious of fellows, having previously described himself as a “non-practising Methodist”.

And the mass was an outdoor affair at an Italian cultural festival, so it is not exactly like he stumbled into the pews at Our Lady of the Rosary looking for a quiet place to eat.

But still, religious services of whatever stripe are kind of hard to miss, whether the celebrant up the front is a priest, rabbi, imam, or holy-rolling climate evangelist.

Bowen likely doesn’t keep Sky News on in his office, but surely even the godless ABC would have broadcast a bit of footage of recent events in Rome, which the minister might have recognised as being a bit similar to what was taking place in the marquee.

Let’s be very clear here.

The man in charge of leading Australia’s crusade for “net zero” is so clever that he did not realise that he had ambled into the middle of a liturgy and instead plonked himself down in the middle of a group of worshippers like he was in a food court.

The whole situation was nicely rounded out by the added detail that the frankly delicious-sounding gnocchi dish was finished with truffle.

Had a Liberal pollie made such a gaffe, Labor would have leapt on this “fat cat” ingredient like it was Joe Hockey’s 2014 pre-budget cigar.

So while there is certainly enough outrage in the world, it does seem odd that more has not been said about the incident (the priest celebrating the mass was reportedly annoyed, but the local hierarchy has run dead on this issue).

Indeed, if the opposition – or oppositions, plural, depending on the day – were not so busy fighting over the spoils of self-harm and the ashes of the most incompetent political campaign in modern Australian history, they could have a field day.

It is the sort of incident that is laughably, comically ridiculous, something that an opposition with a bit of wit could have a blast with.

It is almost better that this did not happen during the campaign, because any Coalition response would have been lost amidst the avalanche of Spongebob Squarepants memes whipped up by Young Liberal volunteers.

A hungry Mr Bowen poses with the pasta that got him into an unholy mess. Picture: Instagram

But now, while the Coalition (if it reforms) absolutely needs to go back and re-read their Menzies speeches – to say nothing of every big thinker on the subject of liberty from John Stuart Mill to Isaiah Berlin – it also has to undermine Labor.

One of the best ways to do this is by painting them, their policies, and their actions as absurd.

Which figures like Chris Bowen quite clearly are.

Again, the guy driving up Australians’ power bills shovelling truffle gnocchi into his face at
mass is such a “let them eat cake” moment that if an author put it into his novel, the editor would say it was too on the nose.

In 1971, a Chicago radical named Saul Alinsky wrote the bible for left-wing activists, Rules for Radicals.

Pretty much all his commandments can be adopted by the right, but one in particular seems tailor-made for dealing with this comical Labor government.

“Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. There is no defence,” Alinsky wrote.

“It is almost impossible to counter-attack ridicule … also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage.”

Given that from Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on down, every member of the Labor partyroom fears nothing more than not being taken seriously, laughter may well be the best weapon the right has as it seeks a path back to power.