Death threats, 3am texts: Former Liberal MP Matt Kean on becoming a climate champion

This story is part of the March 22 edition of Good Weekend.See all 13 stories.

Matt Kean is confuzzled. A white-and-cinnamon-coloured cat, with a gloriously fluffy coat and a bell on its collar, is standing in the middle of our path that winds through Sydney’s Berowra Valley National Park. The cat is momentarily frozen, knowing it’s been caught where it shouldn’t be, and is brazenly staring us down. Minutes earlier, Kean and I had been kicking up the mushy, decaying leaves along the path, heading towards a pocket of the endangered Blue Gum High Forest. We’d been taking in the grandeur of the trees, the buzzing cicadas, a bombardment of birdsong, and then … a cat? Make that two smug cats. Another feline, with similar markings, pads out from behind a large eucalypt. Welcome, it seems to purr.

Kean’s been coming to this part of Berowra Valley National Park, about 30 kilometres from Sydney’s central business district, since he was a child. The entire park stretches across almost 4000 hectares from Sydney’s north-western suburbs out towards the Hawkesbury River. When Kean was growing up, it was designated a bushland park and then a regional park. Later, when he became a state politician – Kean is a former NSW deputy Liberal leader, treasurer and energy and environment minister – one of his first acts was to lobby successfully to have most of it gazetted as a national park. The elevated status ­imposed a greater protection on the park’s wealth of animal and plant species.

The cats, however, never got the memo. The predatory pair with their perky tails aren’t here on a bushwalk, and instead have managed to embarrass Kean in his green wonderland, where we’ve come to discuss his latest role as Australia’s climate change tsar. “This does not look like the most natural environment with two cats, does it?” he says, shaking his cleanly shaven head and laughing. “Please, tell me this isn’t a stitch-up!”

The 43-year-old, who’s fit and chatty, is only ­half-joking. He has reason to be mildly suspicious of the cats being a prank. A few years ago, when Kean was NSW’s energy and environment minister, he’d also taken steps to protect Kosciuszko National Park, by culling and relocating wild horses that were destroying the alpine wilderness. His decision enraged the save-the-brumby advocates, and a militant few planned to lay horse carcasses all over his front yard in protest. They were stopped by police, but the message got through to Kean’s family that their home was no longer a safe place. “I never took that stuff personally, but my family really did,” he says. “It was hard for [my partner] Wendy and the kids.”

With partner Wendy and family.Credit: @mattkeanmp/Instagram

It wasn’t the worst intimidation Kean experienced during his 13 years as a politician. The worst came when he began vigorously calling for climate change action. His staff were menaced, his inbox and voicemail filled with vile and abusive messages, including multiple death threats. At the time, then-Sydney radio shock jock Alan Jones sent texts, sometimes at 3am, telling Kean he would lose his job and didn’t know what he was doing.

Kean had upset many with his outspokenness on global warming. However, it was his controversial plan to reform NSW’s electricity grid that drew the most outrage. The grid was the state’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, which trap heat in the atmosphere and warm the planet. Kean wanted to reduce emissions, such as carbon dioxide and methane, by phasing out the state’s ageing coal-fired power stations over two decades and replacing them with renewable energy sources such as wind, solar and hydro, as well as battery storage. And he did, after achieving the seemingly impossible by uniting all sides of politics – Liberals, Nationals, Labor and Greens – behind his plan.

Last year, Kean announced his retirement from ­politics. He intended to pursue a corporate career in the energy sector. The NSW Coalition was no longer in power, and Kean wasn’t enjoying sitting on the sidelines in opposition, having no influence. He also wanted to spend more time with his family. “I had a discussion with my partner whether, as a family, we were going to saddle up for another eight to 12 years in politics. It’s a really big commitment. Wendy had pretty much been a single mum for the time that I’d been NSW’s treasurer, and had to largely manage on her own. My son was growing up to see his dad more on the television than at home. I thought, ‘That’s not the kind of dad, or partner, I want to be.’ ” Kean has two stepdaughters, a son, and another baby on the way with Wendy.

After Kean announced his retirement, the offers flowed in from the private sector. The one that got his immediate attention, however, was actually from the federal – Labor – government. It wanted Kean to chair the Climate Change Authority, an organisation that helps set the national agenda to fight climate change by shaping federal policies and laws. The role would make Kean Australia’s climate change tsar. It would give him a national stage from which to fight global warming, and combine the two things he is most knowledgeable and passionate about: energy and the environment.

Kean with Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen (left) and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese at the announcement of his new role.Credit: The Sydney Morning Herald

It wasn’t an easy decision to make. For starters, the Climate Change Authority role, while high-profile, was only part-time, and the pay was terrible: just $65,000 a year. Kean would have to get another job to support his family, which he did by accepting a full-time position at climate investor Wollemi Capital as director of regulatory affairs and strategic partnerships. The bigger problem was the Liberal Party. If he took the job, the backlash would be enormous: he’d be working for the enemy. But Kean had a history of ­upsetting his own party and, in the end he thought, Why stop now?

Kean was due to start as the Climate Change Authority’s new chair in August. However, Labor decided to call a press conference in June to announce his appointment. So there was Kean, a soon-to-be retired Liberal politician and still a member of the party, standing on a podium at Parliament House Canberra alongside Labor Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen. It sent the Liberal Party’s right-wing and conservative commentators into a rage. They called Kean a traitor, a climate communist, a green-eyed monster, worse. He was … Green Kean!

The splenetic response wasn’t surprising, but businessmen such as billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes, a climate change activist and investor, found it frustrating. “It should be applauded when they choose the right person for the job, even if that person is from the other side of the room,” he says, adding Kean cares about the environment and the economics of climate change, and wants to address problems with action and diplomacy.

“He’s very smart and that’s rare for politicians,” says Cannon-Brookes, who runs the tech company Atlassian. “He brings an intelligence and thoughtfulness to everything I’ve interacted with him on. He gets deep. I run into a lot of politicians where they have three talking points, and you ask them two questions, and they fall apart.” Cannon-Brookes is behind a private group that’s backing a $30 billion solar energy project in the Northern Territory, which intends to sell electricity to Asia.

Billionaire businessman and climate activist Mike Cannon-Brookes says Kean is “very smart, and that’s rare for politicians”.Credit: Lisa Maree Williams

His endorsement of Kean is shared by Kerry Schott, one of the nation’s leading energy experts, whose previous jobs have included helping redesign the National Electricity Market for the increase in renewable energy, and chairing NSW’s Net Zero Emissions and Clean Economy board. “I thought Matt was a very good appointment after a decade of the federal government doing nothing about climate change,” says Schott. “His absolute goal is fighting climate change. He sees it as an existential crisis, about the survival of life on this planet, which, frankly, it is.”

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For two decades, there was slow progress on climate and energy policy in federal politics, thanks to tribal and ideological differences among the major political parties, aka the climate wars. Those wars helped topple prime ministers from Julia Gillard to Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull to Scott Morrison. At the state level, it was a different story. There was significant progress made on climate and energy policy thanks to politicians such as Kean, who were prepared to put principle before party politics. But even that was hard-won; Kean had to push back against critics within his own party to get the NSW electricity reform passed. “He stood up for what he believed in, even if it was not popular within his own political framework,” recalls Michael Photios, a former NSW Liberal politician, now a lobbyist. “It was career-defining.”

‘I decided a long time ago that I was prepared to pay a price. It’s not about the position you hold, it’s what you do.’

Matt Kean

It was also career-limiting. Kean’s willingness to have stoushes with politicians on his own side – including then-prime minister Scott Morrison – helped stymie his ambition to be NSW premier one day. “I took a decision a long time ago that I was prepared to pay a price,” says Kean. “It’s not about the position you hold, it’s what you do.”

Kean wants people to understand that embracing the fight against climate change will create jobs and grow the economy. “We’ve got a chance to have some of the cheapest energy bills anywhere in the world by taking advantage of our biggest natural resource, and that’s renewable energy,” he says. “It will drive investment in our new jobs and industries, and we can help solve the rest of the world’s climate challenge by providing them with clean fuel, materials and supplies – which they’re going to need – and make a lot of money doing it.

“Surely, we can all agree that we want to see more jobs, more investment and an environment that’s cleaner, healthier and better for future generations.”

Kean’s in full politician mode now. But his arguments are backed up by numbers. Last year, for example, investors poured $US2 trillion ($3.2 trillion) into global renewable energy projects, twice as much as was invested into fossil fuels such as coal and gas, according to the International Energy Agency. “I keep telling my friends who don’t believe in taking action on climate change that they don’t need to,” says Kean. “They just need to believe in capitalism, and the capital has made up its mind!”

There’s further evidence to support Kean’s argument, including the rise of the so-called “net zero dad”. The net zero dad is a typical middle-aged man with kids, who – according to surveys and opinion polls – shouldn’t care about climate change. Contrarily, however, he’s interested in solutions such as rooftop solar, electric vehicles and heat pumps, if they save him money. The net zero dad has been a big driver of rooftop solar. “We have the highest penetration of rooftop solar in the world,” says Kean. “It doesn’t matter what people’s political views are, whether they’re climate deniers or true believers, people are taking up rooftop solar because it makes economic sense. Rooftop solar is the largest generator of electricity in our system. It’s, like, 26 gigawatts. The combined capacity of the nation’s coal-fired power stations is not as big as that.”

An excellent communicator, Kean’s obsessed with facts and rational debate, but he exists in a world that increasingly doesn’t value either. Since taking on the Climate Change Authority role, he’s been confronted with the return of Donald Trump, one of the world’s biggest climate change deniers. In his second term as US president, Trump has introduced a sweeping anti-climate agenda, including pulling America out of the Paris Agreement and declaring the country will increase its investment in mining and drilling for coal, oil and gas. Trump’s return has also emboldened populist politicians around the world, including from Argentina, Germany and New Zealand, who are pushing back more aggressively against climate change, citing it as a hoax, and the policies and action to address it as unaffordable and even “woke”.

‘I want to make sure that we make energy policy about engineering and economics, not about ideology.’

Matt Kean

Kean has equally pressing challenges at home, where energy policy is front and centre of debate in a looming federal election. Kean and the Climate Change Authority are strong supporters of federal Labor’s plan to turn Australia into a renewable energy superpower. Labor’s set a target to have 82 per cent of the national electricity grid run on renewables by 2030, as a key part of its objective to reduce greenhouse emissions and meet its commitments under the Paris Agreement. In the final quarter of last year, almost half of Australia’s national electricity grid was powered by renewables. “This is a big nation-building project – replacing the electricity system,” says Kean. “I’m confident we’re going to get there, and certainly in the short to medium term, the pathway is very clear for Australia. It’s the rollout of renewable energy at scale.”

However, the federal Coalition, led by Peter Dutton, doesn’t agree. It’s questioned the use and the reliability of renewables. What happens when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow? Kean says the answer lies in advances in battery storage technology, to store the electricity generated by renewables. Dutton and his colleagues aren’t convinced and have instead proposed that Australia’s energy future be driven by nuclear power. They’ve released a plan to build seven nuclear power plants, costing taxpayers at least $330 billion. The plants would take almost two decades to construct, and significantly delay the closure of greenhouse gas-emitting coal-fired power plants.

The plan was dismissed by expert scientific and ­energy bodies, such as the CSIRO and the Australian Energy Market Operator, as unrealistic and unaffordable. They argued that renewables remain the nation’s best long-term option. Kean was more damning of Dutton and the Coalition’s nuclear policy. “I want to make sure that we make energy policy about engineering and economics, not about ideology,” says Kean. “Those politicians who are pushing nuclear energy should stop looking after their own political interests and start looking after the community’s interests, because talk of nuclear in the current energy and economic environment is just laughable. I don’t think any serious decision-maker or person in Australia thinks that one of those reactors will be built here, and certainly not in time to meet the closure of our existing coal generators. Let’s get on with the technologies we have available to us, which will benefit households and businesses through lowering electricity prices – and that’s renewables backed up by storage and firming [ensuring enough energy is always available].”

Kean has also called the Coalition’s policy “ridiculous”. His strident criticism could be seen as unwise, given that Dutton could soon be Australia’s next prime minister and, ultimately, Kean’s boss. It even has Kean’s dad, Noel, worried. “If Dutton wins, I hope he’d respect Matthew’s knowledge and retain him in that role, but the game at that level is very shaky.”

Kean campaigning with his father, Noel, who had cried upon hearing that his son had been made NSW energy and environment minister.Credit: Courtesy of Matt Kean

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The path Kean is leading me on continues to wind deeper into the Berowra Valley National Park and closer to a pocket of the rare Blue Gum High Forest. The mischievous cats are long gone. They grew skittish soon after our arrival, and made a dash for the road that leads into the park. However, unfortunately for Kean, his encounters with small creatures aren’t over. We’ve stopped to admire a large garden of giant ferns. “It’s really beautiful here in the early morning when the mist rolls in,” he says. The picturesque spot has also captured the attention of Good Weekend’s photographer, who’s joined us. He asks Kean to pose among those tall ferns, in which, unbeknown to both men, an army of leeches hides. They slither onto Kean’s shoes and up his pants. The leeches also latch onto the photographer, who jumps about like a marionette to shake them off. “Oh my god, this is the worst,” he cries. “Do they climb?” The bloodsuckers don’t seem to bother Kean, who calmly flicks them off. “This is like our backyard. My four-year-old is constantly coming back with leeches.”

As a teen with Noel and mum Cecelia.Credit: Courtesy of Matt Kean

Before entering politics, Kean was an accountant for PwC. He’d followed his father into the profession. Noel had worked for almost half a century in accounting and audit in the NSW public service and the energy sector. Kean would also follow him into energy after the 2019 NSW election. “When [former NSW premier] Gladys Berejiklian appointed me as the minister for energy and environment, the first call I made was to my dad,” says Kean. “Dad was just silent, and then I could hear him crying on the other end of the phone. It was like the next generation was coming in to make a contribution.”

Before that phone call, Kean was almost in tears, too, but for another reason. He’d been a strong political performer and a rising star within the NSW government. He was a confident, clear communicator – always ready with the perfect soundbite – hardworking and meticulously prepared. He was expecting to be offered a major portfolio after that 2019 election. “I thought, ‘This is great, I’m going to be the transport minister or the education minister. Amazing!’ ” recalls Kean, who’d previously served as innovation and fair trading minister. Instead, he was dismayed when Berejiklian offered him energy and environment. “I thought, ‘What have I ever done to upset you?’ You have to remember this was at the height of the climate wars. Turnbull had just been ripped apart. The National Energy Guarantee had been dumped. It was awful.”

Kean stayed silent on the phone, leaving Berejiklian and her offer hanging. “I remember her saying, ‘Matty? Matty? You don’t sound happy.’ ” Berejiklian continued to impress upon Kean, a key ally of hers, that it was an important role. She’d chosen him because she needed someone with his talents to stand firm in a very difficult portfolio. He eventually came around. “I just knew that once he got into it, he’d do a great job,” says Berejiklian. “I also knew he’d do the right thing by the public, first and foremost. He went away and read everything and got super excited about it, and now he’s so motivated and so passionate. He gives his all to everything he does, and he’s very outcome-focused.”

With then-NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian, who gave him the energy and environment portfolio despite his initial dismay: “I just knew that once he got into it, he’d do a great job,” she says.Credit: Edwina Pickles

Kean was NSW energy and environment minister for only 20 months when he secured bipartisan support to deliver the landmark legislation to decarbonise NSW’s electricity system. The legislation, which was expected to draw in more than $30 billion in renewable energy investment by 2030, passed at the end of 2020. Kean won support for the legislation by “understanding what was motivating the different parties and using all the levers available to me in terms of personal relationships, political influence, policy tweaks to build a broad coalition”.

However, also fresh in the mind of many NSW politicians was the devastation caused by the Black Summer bushfires, less than 12 months earlier, which were among the worst Australia had ever experienced. Twenty-six people died, 5.5 million hectares were burnt and more than 2400 homes and buildings were destroyed in NSW alone. If the politicians needed another reason to vote for Kean’s legislation, they had it.

It was also during those bushfires that Kean welcomed the birth of his son Tom. He recalls stepping out of the birthing suite in January 2020 and looking out a window and seeing that Sydney’s sky had turned an apocalyptic blood-orange from bushfire pollution. “It wasn’t normal. I didn’t want that to be the childhood of my child or anyone’s children.” It spurred on Kean to get support for the legislation, but also to pressure his federal colleagues, who were doing little in the battle against climate change. Kean picked a fight with then Liberal prime minister Scott Morrison, who was infamous for once holding up a lump of coal in parliament and telling Australians: “This is coal. Don’t be afraid. Don’t be scared.”

Morrison had gone on holiday to Hawaii during the catastrophic Black Summer bushfires and copped a public drubbing for it. Kean later joined the pile-on, claiming there was a revolt in the federal cabinet, with moderates and even right-leaning cabinet ministers wanting Morrison to take stronger action on climate change. Morrison was furious and declared talk of cabinet division a “beat-up”. He rebuked Kean by dismissing him as the Nigel Nobody of politics. “Most of the federal cabinet wouldn’t even know who Matt Kean was,” he declared.

He was wrong. Kean was getting noticed. “From an early age, he was assertive and fearless,” says Photios. “Now that’s easily a characteristic of young people, usually because they’re overestimating themselves. It means there are many who come and go quickly. Then there are those who you can see are on an onwards and upwards trajectory and that was, in every sense of the word, Matt Kean.”

Kean would clash again with Morrison during the 2022 federal election. Kean, alongside other Liberal moderates, had criticised Morrison for backing lawyer Katherine Deves, who had been vocal in sharing controversial views on transgender rights, as a candidate. She’d described trans children as “surgically mutilated and sterilised” and equated anti-transgender activism to standing up against the Holocaust. Kean called for Deves to be disendorsed, declaring there was no place for “bigotry” in a mainstream political party. “I incurred the wrath of the prime minister’s office and his allies in the media for calling out Katherine Deves’ appalling comments,” Kean says. “If I had my chance again, I would do the same in a heartbeat.”

That wasn’t the last of it. Things really blew up when Kean was accused of texting a journalist to get her to ask some pointed questions of Morrison about Deves at a press conference. Some of Kean’s colleagues accused him of treachery and trying to undermine the Liberal Party’s election chances, which Morrison would go on to lose.

There were other scandals, ones that made Kean’s colleagues question his maturity and discipline. Among them, he was caught up in an embarrassing sexting scandal with Liberal MP Eleni Petinos. There was also the time he had to dump Malcolm Turnbull from a key role – Kean had appointed Turnbull as the inaugural chair of the NSW’s Net Zero Emissions and Clean Economy Board, but apparently hadn’t consulted colleagues. Turnbull was a polarising figure in Liberal circles, and had also called for a moratorium on new coalmines in NSW’s Hunter Valley, which was unpopular in the party. Kean was forced to reverse the appointment, and Turnbull was eventually replaced by Kerry Schott.

Kean in 2021, while NSW energy and environment minister, with former PM Malcolm Turnbull.Credit: Steven Siewert

Kean and Turnbull’s friendship survived that embarrassing turn of events. Indeed, Turnbull and his wife Lucy attended Kean’s valedictory speech at NSW Parliament last year, and the two men have caught up since, including at the 29th United Nations Climate Change Conference in Azerbaijan. The conference was described by most who attended as a failure and another nail in the coffin for efforts to fight climate change.

Last year, the United Nations Environmental Protection agency warned that the Paris Agreement goals would be dead “within a few years” if nations didn’t “accelerate their action” and “show a massive increase in ambition” in reducing emissions through their next round of commitments, which are due this year. But now those ambitions have been thrown into turmoil by Trump. China and the US are the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitters. What they do is consequential to the world’s ability to stay within the safe limits of global warming.

Kean downplays the risk posed by Trump, and whether global momentum to tackle climate change can sustain a second assault. “People are obviously disappointed that it means there’s an absence of American leadership. It is what it is,” he says. “We need to get on with it. I’ve every confidence that humanity can rise to the challenge. We’ve met huge challenges in the past.” Even so, he concedes that geopolitics has forced the Climate Change Authority to recalculate Australia’s goals on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, which are now likely to be less ambitious. “There’s no point putting forward advice if it’s not achievable, or if it’s going to hurt our economy,” he says. “We need to make sure that when we make a recommendation that it’s in our economic interest.”

Meanwhile, Kean’s been getting on with the show, spending time with businesses, engineers, scientists, economists and government to understand how refining policy and laws can help accelerate the country’s energy transition. Last October, the Climate Change Authority released its long-delayed review of the challenges facing multiple sectors – including electricity, transport, manufacturing and agriculture – from making that transition to renewables. Kean and the authority’s priority remains the national electricity grid. “By doing the electricity grid first, you help other sections of the economy to decarbonise, such as manufacturing and transport,” says Kean.

Kean’s also been busy giving speeches and media interviews. Sometimes his message has been blunt, such as the talk he gave last year to the Australian Clean Energy Summit. He told them to get up off their bums and fight. “Those whose interest is maintaining the status quo and their own super profits and self-interest at the expense of Australian families and the national interest are hard at work undermining the transition,” he said. “While many here remain silent and hopeful, they are loud and determined. It’s time for many of you in this room to put your mouth where your money is. It’s time for you to enter the debate and argue for Australia.”

We’ve arrived at the Blue Gum High Forest, a rare ecological pocket that takes its name from the majestic trees. The forest is listed as critically endangered because less than 5 per cent of it remains, compared to when British colonists first arrived in Australia. Such forests were destroyed by logging and urban development.

It’s cool and shaded beneath the towering trees, which can grow to a height of more than 30 metres. Their smooth, pale, blue-grey to white bark gives them a ghostly appearance. As we admire them in silence they stand tall like Kean, the chair of the Climate Change Authority. How long he continues to be in the role may depend on who wins the federal election.

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