Article by Nick Evans, courtesy of the Australian.
24.10.2025
It is easy to speculate on the contents of the departmental briefing given to Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen after the last election. It likely included the fact that progress towards meeting government targets for emissions reductions was off track and more expensive than imagined.
If they were frank and fearless, the bureaucrats would have admitted that the window to find a workable replacement for retiring coal-fired power stations was closing fast. They would have said the global situation was not meeting the high ambitions of the Paris Agreement. And that Australia’s big plans to host a climate conference in co-operation with Pacific Island nations next year were being frustrated by a refusal on the part of Turkey to withdraw from its own ambitions. If they were really honest, they would have admitted that claims of a change in the frequency of extreme weather events driven by climate change were overblown.
Having been the responsible minister in the previous parliamentary term, Mr Bowen would already have known this. The extreme effort now being put into making sure the public is not given access to the same information is a blight on Anthony Albanese’s claims to champion open government. Mr Bowen’s department has refused multiple Senate orders for it to hand over copies of the first volume of the incoming government brief. Incoming government briefs contain a host of detailed information aimed at helping ministers familiarise themselves with their new areas of responsibility, and can contain advice on problems facing the new government in implementing its election promises.
Several other major government departments, including Treasury, Foreign Affairs and Trade, Health, Education, and Employment and Workplace Relations, have all complied with requests to release their briefs. Mr Bowen and the Department of Climate Change, Energy, Environment and Water, however, have continued to withhold volume one of the brief, citing exemptions under the Freedom of Information Act. Reasons for not doing so include the usual bureaucratic obfuscations, including that it contained material subject to legal professional privilege; deliberative matter the disclosure of which would be contrary to the public interest, and; information the release of which would involve the unreasonable disclosure of personal information.
These arguments have been rightly rejected by the Clerk of the Senate, Richard Pye, who said the documents could be withheld only if the minister makes a public interest immunity claim specifying the harm to the public interest that could result from handing the document to the Senate.
The ball is in Mr Bowen’s court. This is an opportunity to level with the Australian public about what they have signed up for in the quest for net zero. Experience has shown that information withheld is exactly the sort of information the public must have a right to know.