Chris Bowen has called for fierce critic Andrew Bolt to be sacked for saying the energy minister was ‘kowtowing to the primitive’ by opening a speech in Dubai with a modified Acknowledgement of Country.
Mr Bowen hit at Bolt on Thursday, claiming that the column had crossed the line, and was a ‘racist and disgusting’ attack on First Nations people.
‘Like most ns, I usually ignore Andrew Bolt,’ Mr Bowen wrote.
‘But on this occasion, I won’t. His attack on First Nations people as ‘primitive’ is racist and disgusting. News Ltd should sack him.’
The word Mr Bowen objected to was in the context of Bolt condemning the minister’s modified ‘Acknowledgment of Country’ that he gave to ‘Indigenous people across the world’ while speaking on Saturday during last week’s UN Cop28 climate talks in Dubai.
‘Don’t Bowen and the Prime Minister himself realise many ns are sick of this kowtowing to the primitive?’ Bolt wrote.
Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen has called for conservative pundit Andrew Bolt to be sacked, accusing him of calling Indigenous ns ‘primitive’
Although Acknowledgement to Country is normally recognition by non-Indigenous people of being on the land of Aboriginal people, Mr Bowen made it much more general and wide-ranging before his Cop28 speech.
‘I begin with an acknowledgement 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,’ Mr Bowen said on Saturday.
‘I reaffirm our Government’s commitment to the inclusion of our First Nations people in our climate change response and clean energy future.
‘Recognising that respect for Indigenous knowledge, cultures and traditional practices is critical,’ he said.
Bolt labelled Mr Bowen’s gesture as ‘brainless posturing’ and ‘race-based tribalism with its ruinous crusade against oil and gas’.
‘Everyone in is surely linked to some indigenous peoples somewhere on the planet from ‘millennia’ past,’ he argued.
‘Is Bowen seriously demanding ‘profound’ respect for the ‘indigenous knowledge’ of every Celt from England, every Saxon from Germany, every Gaul from France, or every Roman from central Italy?
‘Or are the ‘indigenous people’ he’s flattering only people who aren’t white?
In the tweet Bowen labelled Bolt’s column attacking him as ‘racist and disgusting’
‘In fact, Bowen’s little homily is not just racist but anti-science, which makes him a threat to ‘.
Bolt argued that ‘indigenous people’ in Europe and Asia had ‘left their ‘indigenous knowledge’ behind as they used reason and science to work out better ways to live without dying early and poor’.
‘In contrast, we’re supposed to show ‘profound respect’ for the ‘indigenous knowledge’ of Aboriginal people,’ Bolt wrote.
‘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 said by sacking Mr Bowen, the prime minister could show his ‘government is guided by reason, not by this new racism, tribalism or pagan earth worship that makes it seem so dangerously out of the voters’ control’.
The Cop28 climate talks have wrapped up in Dubai but took an unscheduled extra day to iron out a deal that, for the first time, commits countries to transition away from fossil fuels ‘in a just and orderly fashion’ but gives no specific timeline.
Bolt has urged Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to sack Mr Bowen for being ‘anti-science’
United Arab Emirates Sultan Al Jaber, who is also head of the giant state-owned oil producer Adnoc, is credited with having a brokered a deal after the summit reached an impasse about whether nations would commit to ‘phasing out’ fossil fuels.
While most countries, including , wanted the summit to agree to ‘phasing out’ fossil fuels the oil-producing nations, particularly Saudi Arabia, wanted a deal that committed to ‘phasing down’ fossil fuels and using other ways to cut emissions.
Veteran climate campaigner and former US vice president Al Gore tweeted that the compromise agreement was ‘an important milestone’ but also the ‘bare minimum we need and is long overdue’.
‘Whether this is a turning point that truly marks the beginning of the end of the fossil fuel era depends on the actions that come next and the mobilization of finance required to achieve them,’ he wrote.
During the Cop28 conference Mr Bowen said the phasing out fossil fuels was vital for the Pacific region.
‘We also live in the Pacific, and we are not going to see our brothers and sisters inundated and their countries swallowed by the seas,’ he said.
The Alliance of Small Island States, which represented a number of tiny Pacific nations at Cop28 expressed bitter disappointment at the closing deal.
‘We see a litany of loopholes,’ the Alliance’s statement said.
‘It does not deliver on a subsidy phaseout, and it does not advance us beyond the status quo.’
‘We do not see any commitment or even an invitation for Parties to peak emissions by 2025.’
Mr Bown opened his speech to the Cop28 climate talks with an ‘Acknowledgment’ of all the worlds indigenous peoples