Do we like Matt Kean?
Our score: 8 out of 10. He has repeatedly spoken up on climate and against anti-trans rhetoric at a cost inside his own party, with one messy personal episode from 2018 and some partisan sniping.
Matt Kean was the Liberal MP for Hornsby in Sydney's north from 2011 to 2024. He rose through the party's moderate faction to become NSW energy and environment minister, then treasurer. In 2024 he walked out of state politics, ruled out going federal, and weeks later Labor appointed him to chair the Climate Change Authority.
On climate he has been a rare voice inside the Coalition. As energy minister he drafted laws to build 12GW of clean energy and 2GW of storage, which passed with near-unanimous support. He fell out with Morrison over a net zero commitment, and later took on the Coalition's nuclear plan using CSIRO and AEMO reports.
On the harm test he comes out well. We searched for harmful words or acts of his own and found none. Instead he spoke out on trans people and on climate, and he called the Coalition's dumping of net zero by 2050 "just politics". When the Coalition threatened to sack him in 2025 over the Authority's nuclear analysis, he challenged them to find errors in the report.
He is not a saint. In 2018 private explicit text messages involving him were published online by his then-partner, and Premier Gladys Berejiklian said she was deeply disappointed but took no action. In 2023 he defended Dominic Perrottet over the Nazi costume furore and called anonymous Liberal leakers cowards. Nationals leader David Littleproud called his Authority appointment a political stunt.
Nothing fresh or alarming has turned up on him lately. The latest reporting we read had him at the COP30 summit in November 2025, criticising the Liberal Party's abandonment of net zero. The record is mostly public policy fights, and we couldn't open a voting-record page, so that part is thinner than we'd like.
So would we back him? Yes. He has taken hits from his own side for standing up for people and the planet, and nothing we found says he's the type to turn on anyone. The 2018 messy chapter is one for the personal ledger, not a pattern.