Essay by Eric Worrall
Apparently someone in the office stuffed up the invitations.
Snubbed in Fiji: Bowen’s luxury resort summit tops Labor’s $152m climate spending under fire
BY THE EDITOR 30 JULY 2026
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The Australian has revealed Mr Bowen’s office spent $4.2m booking foreign officials into five-star Fiji resorts, on top of almost $500,000 in travel in the first four months of the year, and signed a $415,644 contract in early June with a firm, Iconic Holdings, that specialises in “behaviour change campaigns”.
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A pre-COP is the warm-up meeting held before the main UN COP climate conference. Australia is hosting this one in Fiji on October 5 to 8, with a side trip to Tuvalu, after ceding the full COP31 summit in November to Turkey. Under that compromise deal Mr Bowen was named COP31 “president of negotiations”. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who skipped the annual UN climate conference every year of his prime ministership, is now expected to attend both events.
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Why nobody is coming
The problem is that almost no one wants to come. The Australian reports the government cannot lock in a single head of government or head of state from outside the Pacific. Diplomatic sources point to long travel times, crowded leaders’ schedules, and the awkward reality that the main COP31 summit runs in Turkey just five weeks later.
However, the failure most squarely at Australia’s own door is the invitation strategy itself. Canberra pitched its invitations at prime ministers and presidents rather than foreign and climate ministers, causing surprise in international capitals. “Foreign ministers are not being considered,” one source said.
The effect is that ministers who might have filled the room were never asked, while the heads of government who were invited are not coming. Chris Bowen’s department has not explained who made that call or why. Mr Bowen himself conceded last month that modern COPs deliver no “massive breakthroughs” and are “more iterative”, which makes a warm-up event even harder to sell to a world leader’s diary.
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Read more: https://www.onenewsaustralia.com/labor-spending-under-fire/
What an embarrassment. As “President of Negotiations” for the upcoming COP31 in Turkey, Australia’s Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen is supposed to be the driving force which brings everyone together to ink the next climate agreement. But he can’t even get VIPs to commit to showing up to an all expenses paid party in a tropical paradise.
Here’s a suggestion. All those families doing it tough because of Australia’s failed green energy policies, why not help some of them attend the conference? It’s probably too late to get a refund on the resort booking, but bringing some sunshine into the lives of Aussies experiencing energy poverty, many of whom are skipping meals or eating from trash cans according to the Salvation Army, at least some good would come of all this wasted money. And maybe while they are there, Bowen and Albanese can explain to ordinary Australians why they are making their lives miserable by forcing energy retailers to buy expensive green energy and pass the cost on to consumers, instead of allowing utilities to fulfil all of Australia’s electricity needs by purchasing the cheapest electricity available on the open market.
