Do we like Matt Preston?
Our score: 7 out of 10. A decent record with years of food-rescue work, but the sources say little about where he stands on LGBTQ+ or climate issues.
Matt Preston is the cravat-and-big-voice bloke from MasterChef Australia. He judged every season from 2009 to 2019, and he says he got the gig by “pure luck”. Before the telly, he thought of himself as a writer first.
The big career moment was the 2019 exit. He, Gary Mehigan and George Calombaris left MasterChef after contract talks with Network Ten broke down. Preston said they “failed to agree on the other terms”, and he reported learning about it through Instagram. He later admitted to “dark moments” of wondering what he'd done.
His one real public stoush was in 2017. Preston made comments on a radio interview about Marco Pierre White Jr's Big Brother UK antics, and White Jr fired back on Twitter. White Jr then apologised on air. Preston said the pair's families were trying to clear the air, so it reads as a spat between blokes, not a pattern.
On the harm check, the record is thin and there's nothing nasty in it. We found no words or acts from him against LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants, public health or the planet. We also found no campaigning for any of that, no conspiracy rabbit holes and no dodgy co-stars. That also means we have little to go on about his positions, so the pass rests on a clean record, not a loud one.
The recent news is a comeback of sorts. Plating Locally is a slow, gentle series that puts farmers, fishers and winemakers ahead of the host. He calls it “the dreamiest job in the world”, and it suits a man who has built a career on loving food and the people who make it.
The good stuff is real. Preston is a proud ambassador for food rescue charity SecondBite and, in December 2023, hosted a festive breakfast for food relief staff and volunteers to launch its Christmas appeal. He said he's passionate about the charity because its work is about more than feeding empty stomachs.