Chris Bowen has called on News Corp to sack Andrew Bolt after the controversial commentator penned a column suggesting Australians are “sick of kowtowing to the primitive”.
Bolt on Wednesday criticised the climate change minister for staging what he contended was “a one-man clown show at the United Nations’ global warming jamboree in Dubai” which included a “sermon” linking “the government’s disastrous race-based tribalism with its ruinous crusade against oil and gas”.
After a last-ditch wrangle, nearly 200 countries at the Cop28 climate summit in Dubai agreed to a deal that for the first time calls on all nations to transition away from fossil fuels to avert the worst effects of climate change.
Bowen opened his national statement to the UN-led summit by acknowledging “that at the heart of action on climate change must be profound respect for those people who have cared for our respective lands for millennia – Indigenous people across the world”.
He reaffirmed the government’s commitment to including First Nations people in its response to the climate crisis and the transition to clean energy, “recognising that respect for Indigenous knowledge, cultures and traditional practices is critical”.
Bolt responded to Bowen’s remarks by declaring them “brainless posturing” and arguing that “everyone in Australia is surely linked to some indigenous people somewhere on the planet from ‘millennia’ past”.
He queried whether Bowen was demanding respect for the knowledge of Celts from the United Kingdom, Saxons from Germany, Gauls from France or Romans from central Italy – “or are the ‘indigenous people’ [Bowen is] flattering only people who aren’t white?”
Bolt went on: “Bowen wouldn’t have dreamt that the ‘indigenous peoples’ he claims have cared for lands ‘for millennia’ included the white tribes of Europe, let alone the Japanese or Han Chinese.
“And why not? Because those people left their ‘indigenous knowledge’ behind as they used reason and science to work out better ways to live without dying early and poor.”
Bolt went on to say: “In contrast, we’re supposed to show ‘profound respect’ for the “indigenous knowledge” of Aboriginal people, some of whom are now in the Federal Court trying to stop a $5.6bn offshore gas project by claiming an undersea pipeline will upset a man-turned crocodile they claim has lived in that patch of ocean since the Dreamtime.”
Bolt contended that Bowen was “not just racist but anti-science, which makes him a threat to Australia”. Before declaring that the Labor frontbencher should be dumped, Bolt wondered whether Bowen and Anthony Albanese realised “many Australians are sick of this kowtowing to the primitive?”
Bowen took to social media to respond. The minister noted: “Like most Australians, I usually ignore Andrew Bolt.
“But on this occasion I won’t.
“His attack on First Nations people as ‘primitive’ is racist and disgusting. News Ltd should sack him.”
In a response to Bowen’s comments, Bolt told Guardian Australia that Bowen had “embarrassed himself again by confirming his comprehension skills are appalling”.
“I do not call Aborigines ‘primitive’,” he said. “Indeed, I have Aboriginal friends far more sophisticated than our energy minister.
“What I call ‘primitive’ is a belief in a man who has turned into a crocodile and would wreak havoc on Tiwi Islanders if an underwater gas pipeline goes through his supposed patch of sea.”
The federal court at the centre of a battle between Tiwi Islanders and Santos over the proposed pipeline has heard that Wiyapurali, the Crocodile Man, and Mother Ampitji, a Tiwi iteration of the Rainbow Serpent, “reside in the deeper waters and sea floor around the proposed pipeline route”, according to the ABC. If they were disturbed, it would harm Tiwi people, the court heard.
“I’d suggest that an energy minister who lets such professed beliefs – now the subject of a federal court hearing – block a major gas project is himself a neo-primitive not fit to be trusted with our electricity system, which is now falling to bits in his hands,” Bolt said.
The columnist, who has a long history of campaigning against measures to reduce emissions, has previously described global heating as a “cult of the elites”.
The commentator is known for promoting the views of climate science deniers, and for his own attacks on “alarmists” and his derision of climate change science.
Despite this, News Corp’s executive chairman, Rupert Murdoch, said in 2019 “there are no climate change deniers around I can assure you”, after he was asked at the corporation’s annual meeting why his company gives them “so much airtime” in Australia.
News Corp has been contacted for comment.
