Ego Trumps Energy Security

If energy policy were judged on superficial speeches and symbolism, Chris Bowen’s 2025 performance could be declared a triumph.

He has announced, promised and travelled – and basked in any international admiration that came his way.

Unfortunately for Australian families, manufacturers and workers here at home, it is outcomes, affordability, reliability, confidence and economic security that matter.

Bowen’s energy plan is failing to deliver any of this.

He is the architect of Labor’s extraordinarily ambitious transition – a 62–70 percent emissions cut by 2035, 90 percent renewables, a six-fold increase in storage, and wholesale restructuring of industry, transport and the grid.

And while Bowen wants history to crown him the author of Australia’s climate future, 2025 revealed a very different reality: a Minister driven by ego and ambition, increasingly detached from economic realities and unable to deliver on the commitments he has made on behalf of the Albanese Government.

Australians were promised cheaper, more secure energy, instead power prices have soared, volatility persists and Labor’s once-iconic $275 price cut commitment hangs inconveniently around its neck as 2026 begins.

In fact, the latest data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows electricity prices jumped nearly 20 percent in the year to November 2025, including almost 7 percent between October and November alone.

An ACCC report released at the end of last year similarly confirmed costs rose throughout 2024-2025.

The consequences are significant, with households sinking deeper into debt.

The Australian Energy Regulator reported last month that the average residential energy debt now sits at $1,367 – up $381 or 38.6 percent since 2022-2023 when Labor came to power.

Small businesses are struggling alongside them, with an average energy debt of $2,516.

Meanwhile, emissions progress has stalled at around 28 percent, well short of the Government’s own 2030 pathway.

Yet Bowen insists – with increasingly theatrical confidence – that he can now accelerate decarbonisation at more than double the current pace.

If he cannot deliver near-term commitments, why should Australians trust even grander promises?

Energy is the economy, and this is the core charge against the Albanese Government’s approach.

Bowen is racing ideologically ahead, without regard for cost, reliability, delivery capacity or investor certainty.

Business leaders warn that Labor’s ambition requires hundreds of billions of dollars in capital and unprecedented coordination and execution.

Former chief scientist Alan Finkel calls it the most difficult economic transition in human history.

Yet the Minister talks as if it were a routine software upgrade.

That disconnect is now economically dangerous – from jeopardising manufacturing to simply keeping the lights on at home when demand spikes or the wind does not blow.

Renewables without adequate firming aren’t a transition, they are a gamble, and Bowen is gambling with grid stability, jobs, competitiveness and household budgets.

When coal capacity exits faster than reliable replacement enters, Australians pay the price.

His “historic” gas reservation announcement, while welcome in theory, is the perfect case study: lacking in detail, minimal immediate benefit, and a warning beacon to investors.

It is part of a pattern characterised by rhetoric, thin delivery, and careless economic consequences.

But investors see through it and know Labor’s approach is to act first and worry about the consequences later.

So, while Bowen may think he is rewriting energy policy, markets believe he is rewriting Australia’s reputation for energy reliability.

Even on community engagement, the Albanese Government’s credibility is eroding.

Bowen says regional Australians with ‘legitimate claims’ about renewable rollout have his “full attention’, yet his own Australian Energy Infrastructure Commissioner’s report – tabled by Bowen himself – observes regional communities are “not being informed, respected” and in the worst cases “patronised by the government”.

The same credibility problem extends to climate risk messaging.

The Government’s National Climate Risk Assessment warned Australians of a staggering $611 billion collapse in property values by 2050, and potentially $770 billion by 2090.

However, under questioning in Senate Estimates, officials confirmed these claims were lifted directly from a 2019 Climate Council report and had not been independently verified before being embedded in Government analysis.

Bowen is yet to make a clear comment on the numbers, which leaves Australians to wonder whether the Government stands by this prediction of catastrophic property value collapse or concedes its warnings are exaggerated, unscientific and deliberately misleading.

Either answer reflects poorly.

And then comes a more recent problem – the Minister is distracted by the wrong priorities.

While many Australians struggle to pay their power bills, the Albanese Government found the money to send a substantial delegation to COP30 in Brazil.

Evidence given at Senate Estimates confirmed expenditure of $1.6 million was approved for 43 bureaucrats, an average of almost $40,000 per person, with 32 of the officials from Bowen’s own department.

A further $1.36 million was allocated for a pavilion to “tell Australia’s climate story”.

This was, at least in part, an ultimately failed pitch to host the next COP in Australia, which would have been a multi-billion dollar undertaking.

Bowen has now secured the role of President of the next UN climate negotiations.

It is a title that he craved, but a job Australians never asked him to take.

This emphasis on global climate statesmanship is not compatible with Australia’s desperate need for a full-time Energy Minister with both eyes on the ball and who is prepared to listen and consult.

Labor has tied its fortunes to Bowen’s performance, with Anthony Albanese ultimately staking his credibility on Bowen’s capacity to turn aspiration into delivery.

Bowen writes off his critics as ignorant but, on current evidence, they have every right to be sceptical.