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Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen will denounce Peter Dutton as the “alternative prime minister from the alt-right” in a major speech to an energy summit, which the opposition has condemned as childish, while attacking his support for nuclear power and accusing him of accommodating climate deniers and vaccine sceptics within the party’s ranks.

In an address to the Australian Clean Energy Summit on Tuesday, Bowen will accuse the opposition leader of presiding over a “cabal of climate denial that runs policy in the federal opposition”.

Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen will accuse Opposition Leader Peter Dutton of being the “alternative prime minister from the alt-right”.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen/Dominic Lorrimer

“In 2023, the alternative government of Australia is replete with climate change deniers,” Bowen will say, according to a draft extract of the speech.

The minister’s attack on Dutton, linking him to extremists, comes after Minister for Indigenous Australians Linda Burney in June charged campaigners against the Voice referendum of spreading misinformation by “importing American-style Trump politics”.

Bowen will accuse Dutton of condoning fringe “alt-right” views within his ranks, highlighting the letter of endorsement he wrote for controversial Liberal Queensland Senator Gerard Rennick who was dumped by party preselectors earlier this month.

“The man who wants to be considered as the alternative prime minister of Australia strongly endorsed the candidacy of a man who engages daily in blatant conspiracy theory propagation and disinformation when it comes to climate and vaccines,” Bowen will say.

“He is the alternative prime minister from the alt-right.”

The term “alt-right” was originally associated with the resurgence of far-right white nationalist groups during the Trump era, but has since been used by some commentators to refer more generally to extreme right-wing ideologies and the crossover with conspiracy movements, particularly during the pandemic.

Dutton is on leave, but acting Opposition Leader Sussan Ley responded on his behalf, saying Bowen was “more focused on insults than solutions” and was diminishing the character of the Albanese government.

“It is time for Chris Bowen to grow up. It is time for him to take responsibility for the energy crisis that is spinning out of control on his watch and get on with the job,” Ley said.

Sussan Ley called Bowen’s accusations “juvenile” and said the energy crisis was “spinning out of control on his watch”.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

“We are committed to strong action on climate change and to net zero and I reject Chris Bowen’s juvenile commentary.”

Bowen will name Coalition MPs Barnaby Joyce, Keith Pitt, Colin Boyce and Nationals Leader David Littleproud as the vanguard of the Coalition’s attack on renewables, but will single out Rennick and South Australian Liberal senator Alex Antic as revellers “in the climate-denying, vaccine-decrying, World Economic Forum-fearing, Putin-loving dark nether regions of the kooky right”.

“The fact that the Coalition is perfectly happy to accommodate these denizens of denial should fill anyone concerned about climate change with dread,” Bowen will say.

“The existence of this bloc in the Liberal National Party is a handbrake on sensible policy from the conservative side of the aisle and an indication that a conservative government, should one be elected, would be even worse than a return to the ten years of delay we so recently emerged from.”

Rennick, who argued in the past that COVID vaccines were unsafe and ineffective and that “climate change is junk science”, said Bowen’s comments were a “slur” and “childish” while Antic said the minister should “try turning his mind to the damage his policies have done to Australians’ power prices”.

Bowen will also use his speech to step up the government’s attack on Dutton’s push for nuclear power to be part of Australia’s energy mix, accusing him of failing to understand how renewables work and deriding nuclear as a “fantasy story”.

Dutton used his budget reply speech last year to call for a debate on nuclear power, and in a speech earlier this month proposed that Australia’s energy demands could be met cost-effectively by building small nuclear reactors on the site of ageing coal-fired power stations.

Bowen will tell the conference that using nuclear to power Australian homes would be expensive, slow to build, unproven, not flexible, and produces enormous waste.

“[Small modular reactors], even with all the supposed technological advancement coming this decade, are tracking to be up to five times more expensive than firmed wind and solar in 2030,” he will say.

“Even the World Nuclear Industry status report tells us that nuclear costs rose 36 per cent between 2009 and 2021 while solar costs fell 90 per cent and wind by 72 per cent.

Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis from Jacqueline Maley. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter here.

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