Energy Minister Chris Bowen has taken a shot at Sky News host Andrew Bolt after he threatened to quit News Corp if James Murdoch took over.
Billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch is locked in battle with three of his children after he went to change the terms of his family’s trust – moving the bulk of his empire to his eldest son and News Corp chairman, Lachlan Murdoch.
His three eldest siblings, James, Elisabeth and Prudence, will go to court over the matter in September.
James resigned from the News Corp board in 2020 citing strategic decisions and editorial content he did not agree with.
On Thursday, Bolt unleashed on the youngest Murdoch son, saying: ‘James could sack me if he did take over, but he wouldn’t need to.
‘I wouldn’t be the only one who wouldn’t work for him.’
Hours later, Federal MP Chris Bowen shared Bolt’s resignation threat on X – with the sarcastic comment: ‘How would we cope?’
Climate and energy minister Chris Bowen is pictured at the National Press Club last week
Lachlan Murdoch could inherit the bulk of News Corp once his father dies. He is pictured with his wife, Sarah.
On Friday, Chris Bowen responded to Andrew Bolt’s threat to leave News Corp if James Murdoch took over
Users hit back, with one saying: ‘Why do you care? Oh that’s right, because he calls you out.’
Another wrote: ‘Good one, what a cabinet minister should be doing, diving straight into the gutter.’
But not everyone was critical, with some expressing excitement over the idea that Bolt could resign.
A third user said: ‘Come on James! You can do it.’
Someone else wrote: ‘There is a very good chance we will manage.’
The minister’s post follows years of mud-slinging between the pair.
Last week, Bolt penned a scathing column about Mr Bowen in News Corp papers – slamming the minister as an ‘idiot’ and a ‘liar’ over comments he made in the National Press Club.
Mr Bowen had said: ‘Open climate change denial is now less fashionable than it was ten or 15 years ago in the public debate.’
‘Andrew Bolt still does it, but most other people don’t bother with it.’
The conservative commentator argued he is not in denial about climate change, he just doesn’t believe the situation is ‘catastrophic’ like Mr Bowen says it is.
Bolt has consistently attacked Mr Bowen’s plans to transition from fossil fuels to wind and solar farms, labelling him as someone in ‘total denial’ who ‘cannot hear the truth’.
He also once claimed Mr Bowen was ‘the most dangerous person in government’ after the minister asserted green energy was getting cheaper.
Conservative columnist Andrew Bolt (pictured) once called the climate minister a ‘threat to Australia’
Rupert Murdoch is pictured, centre, with his two sons Lachlan, left, and James, right
In return, Mr Bowen has called for 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.
The minister said Bolt has crossed the line, labelling the comment ‘racist and disgusting’.
‘Like most Australians, 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.’
Bolt labelled Mr Bowen’s gesture as ‘brainless posturing’ and ‘race-based tribalism with its ruinous crusade against oil and gas’.
‘Everyone in Australia 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 fact, Bowen’s little homily is not just racist but anti-science, which makes him a threat to Australia’.
Bolt argued that indigenous people in Europe and Asia had ‘left their indigenous knowledge behind because they used science to work out better ways to live without dying early and poor’.
