BEN HARVEY: Bowen clash shows there’s no hiding behind spin in Budget Estimates, the ultimate truth serum

Budget estimates hearings are good sport for journalists.

It’s the only time of the year when we hacks have half a chance of finding out where the Government of the day has buried the bodies.

Submitting a formal media enquiry about a controversial public policy initiative is an exercise in futility. You always get an answer; just never to the question you asked.

By the time the spin doctors have performed their dark arts, the response mirrors whatever talking points have been issued about the controversy du jour.

The freedom of information process is a complete joke. It takes at least a year to get whatever documents you are chasing and even then they are usually so heavily redacted you’re lucky to find even half the alphabet.

Question Time in Parliament is no silver bullet for the simple reason that ministers don’t need to answer the question put to them.

A Budget Estimates hearing is the ultimate truth serum because the ministers (and their mandarins who run whatever government department falls in said minister’s portfolio) risk contempt of Parliament if they fail to answer questions honestly.

The sports rorts affair of 2019, which saw $100 million in “community sports infrastructure” grants channelled to politically sensitive electorates, was exposed fully during estimates hearings.

Two years later the carpark rorts scandal was revealed. Under careful questioning in the Senate, politicians had to admit the “commuter car park fund” had become of pork-barrelling tool for then-prime minister Scott Morrison.

Government MPs despise estimates hearings because they can’t spin their way out of trouble. Opposition MPs love them because, for a few hours each day, the parliamentary power balance is tipped on its head.

That dynamic was on show this week when Liberal frontbencher Dan Tehan grilled Energy and Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen about his stewardship of an annual United Nations summit which goes by the Soviet-esque title of the “conference of the parties”.

We know it as COP, which, depending on how you view the science of climate change could mean either “cop this dead polar bear floating past you” or “cop this backout as we mindlessly pursue the folly of net zero”.

Bowen is the 2026 COP’s president of negotiations. It’s a title so ridiculous Sir Humphrey Appleby would blush when handing out the business card.

Cop31, so-called because it’s the 31st meeting of its kind (we won’t dwell on the proposition that if you need to hold 31 meetings about something it’s pretty clear someone’s not doing their job) will be held in the country formerly known as Turkey.

Taxpayers are bankrolling Bowen’s mission to save the world to the tune of 150 million dollarbucks.

When Tehan questioned the travel bill during an estimates hearing on Tuesday, Bowen got hot and bothered. At an ensuing press conference he called Tehan the “biggest hypocrite in Federal Parliament”.

He argued that $150 million was money well spent because it put the country front-and-centre of a debate so important that “the very existence of some Pacific countries is at stake”.

Passing up such an opportunity would be un-Australian.

“We’re patriots, we want Australia doing well,” Bowen said.

As with the preposterous spectacle of 31 COP conferences, we won’t dwell on the absurdity of branding as “patriotism” Australian support for a conference in Europe that will benefit countries in the Pacific.

Nor will we be so churlish as to suggest the only concrete thing to come out of COP31 will be the agenda for COP32, which is being held in Ethiopia (like they need to be told it sucks to live somewhere hot and dry).

As Bowen went toe-to-toe with Tehan about the legitimacy of going to Turkey, the climate wars continued to rage within our borders courtesy of Andrew Forrest’s broadside at fellow iron ore miners.

Twiggy, who electrifying his Pilbara operation, used a series of advertisements to diesel slut-shame the likes of BHP and Rio Tinto. He argued that the Federal rebate, which allows companies to claim a tax credit on the fuel excise they pay, should be capped at $50 million.

BHP claims more than 10 times that amount each year and the miner’s profligacy at the bowser had become a story in its own right before Twiggy unleashed his media barrage.

Internal BHP emails revealed this week by the ABC suggest the Big Australian’s Pilbara carbon footprint will reduce by just one per cent, which places a question mark over the miner’s net-zero aspirations.

Forrest would have welcomed the debate about the relative sizes of carbon footprints, if only because for the first time in his life he could feel proud saying “mine’s smaller than yours”.