Climate minister Chris Bowen leaves X for Bluesky saying it’s no longer a place for respectful debate

Cabinet minister Chris Bowen has quit the social platform X after deciding it was no longer a place for respectful debates about topics like climate change.

The Climate Change and Energy Minister has instead become active on Bluesky and is also on several other social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram and Threads, all owned by Meta.

“In considering my approach to social media in 2025, I reached the view that X is no longer a place where you can have an informed, respectful conversation on important issues like climate change,” he said.

“So despite having more than 140,000 followers, entering 2025 saw the deactivation of my X account.”

Shadow minister Ted O’Brien questioned whether it was the right time for Mr Bowen to focus on his social media arrangements.

“Instead of coming back from a Christmas with a plan to fix his energy failures, he instead returns with a new public relations plan,” the Liberal energy spokesman said.

Not all politicians have X accounts, although in the past many have found it useful to communicate directly with Australians.

Labor frontbencher Ed Husic was one of the first to abandon the platform, leaving it in 2017 despite being a prolific poster after deciding it had become a “bully’s pulpit”.

Ministerial colleague Anne Aly doesn’t have an account and Don Farrell has a dormant one that hasn’t been used since it was created in December 2022.

The rest of their frontbench colleagues use X and list their accounts on their official Labor Party profiles.

Most shadow ministers don’t list their X platforms among other social media offerings on their party profiles, although all except Andrew Hastie, Angie Bell and Gavin Pearce appear to have accounts.

Rick Wilson has a dormant X account, while Mr Hastie has never had one.

Bluesky is a platform created by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey that was spun off in 2021, before billionaire Elon Musk purchased Twitter, and opened to users in early 2023.

It experienced a massive surge in users after the US presidential election in November, tripling its user base in three months to reach more than 20 million people.

Many users describe it as feeling like “old Twitter” with conversations akin to those held on early days of the more mature platform.