Andrew Bolt: Why Bowen is the dreamer whose help we don’t need

In an Albanese government stuffed with dreamers and incompetents, Chris Bowen is the most worrying — everything he touches in his global warming crusade turns to rubble.

Oh no, he’s done it again.

So if Chris Bowen shows up at your business saying he’s come to help, slam the door.

In an Albanese government stuffed with dreamers and incompetents, Bowen is the most worrying.

The Energy and Climate Change Minister, a global warming extremist, has a track record of such extraordinary failures – I’ll list just some – that it’s astonishing he’s still there.

The damage he’s doing is immense.

His latest embarrassment is typically comic.

Two years ago Bowen tweeted a picture of himself in the US next to a Ford-150 Lightning, an electric SUV priced about $110,000.

This was the electric car for our tradies!

This F-150 was “hugely popular in America”, Bowen claimed, and “has a range of around 500km, can tow boats and caravans and goes like you wouldn’t believe”. As if.

Chris Bowen complained we couldn’t buy this ute in Australia because of ‘poor policies’ by past Coalition governments, but he’d change that.

Bowen complained we couldn’t buy this you-beaut ute in Australia because of “poor policies” by past Coalition governments, but he’d change that.

Indeed, he’s since passed new “emissions standards” to effectively stop Australians from buying the much cheaper SUVs they prefer, like the Toyota HiLux, with twice the range at two-thirds the price, and without needing 45 minutes to refuel.

But last week Ford admitted – surprise! – the F-150 just wasn’t selling like it should, and cancelled plans for an updated model next year.

It posted a loss of nearly $3bn, and says it still has “no news to share about any plans to bring F-150 Lightning to Australia”, no matter what Bowen says or does.

You’d laugh, until you realise this is now a pattern with Bowen. Everything he touches in his global warming crusade turns to rubble.

For instance, Bowen, along with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, repeatedly promised his global warming schemes would cut your electricity bills by $275.

Oops! Power bills have instead gone through the roof. Gas prices, too.

The fact is renewable energy costs more, because you also need to build a second power system to kick in when the wind doesn’t blow and sun doesn’t shine.

Bowen repeatedly promised his global warming schemes would cut your electricity bills by $275. Picture: Martin Ollman

Bowen also promised to bring us green hydrogen, made from pumping vast amounts of green electricity through water, to give us an alternative renewable fuel, boasting this would “help Australia become a renewable energy superpower”.

Oops! Despite the Albanese government promising billions in subsidies to green hydrogen investors, Australia’s biggest hydrogen entrepreneur, Andrew Forrest, last month walked away from most of his projects and sacked 700 workers, admitting the gas was too expensive.

Bowen even promised to run the new Kurri Kurri gas plant in NSW on green hydrogen to make it “the centre of the green hydrogen revolution”.

Oops! The plant operator, Snowy, this week admitted that not only was there no green hydrogen for Kurri Kurri, there was no natural gas at the moment, either. It would have to run for months on the even dirtier diesel.

Ha, ha, ha. Getting the picture with Bowen?

Bowen announced the Albanese government would spend $1bn to get Australian companies to make solar panels here, and singled out Sydney start-up SunDrive — which is now cutting staff. Picture: X

In March, he announced the Albanese government would spend $1bn to get Australian companies to make solar panels here, and singled out SunDrive, a Sydney start-up, saying it would make “the most efficient solar panel in the world here on this site”.

Oops! SunDrive instead this month cut staff, replaced its boss and said it was changing direction, inventing panels rather than manufacturing them.

It’s comic, except for the cost. And the same farce happens again and again. How does Bowen still have a job?

Four weeks ago, Bowen announced yet another harebrained green scheme – he’d give Ampol $100m to roll out another 200 charging stations by next year.

You guessed it. Oops! Ampol just two weeks later admitted it couldn’t be done. There were delays in hooking up to the national grid.

Bowen has been frantically saying no to nuclear, which actually works. Picture: AAP

Meanwhile, Bowen has been frantically saying no to nuclear, which actually works.

Almost every day he tweets attacks on the opposition’s plans for seven nuclear power stations, claiming they’d been too expensive and too slow to build to help us out of the crisis he’s actually creating.

“I mean nuclear reactors can take 20 years to build and that’s before you built a regulatory system, built a workforce,” Bowen protested.

But just last week, China’s State Council approved 11 nuclear reactors, all to be built in five years – not Bowen’s 20.

Would you buy a used electric car from this man? Then why is he in charge of the nation’s electricity and gas system?

We’re now facing critical shortages of both, and Bowen is fumbling while our nation’s crumbling.