Matt Kean not keen on Dominic Perrottet’s adviser

NSW Treasurer Matt Kean has publicly refused to support Premier Dominic Perrottet over his ­appointment of former Snowy Hydro chief executive Paul Broad as a special energy adviser.

NSW Treasurer Matt Kean. Picture: NCA Newswire / Gaye Gerard

NSW Treasurer Matt Kean has publicly refused to support Premier Dominic Perrottet over his ­appointment of former Snowy Hydro chief executive Paul Broad as a special adviser on energy.

A longstanding ally of the Premier, Mr Kean, who also holds the energy portfolio, declined multiple opportunities in question time on Tuesday to explicitly back-in Mr Broad’s promotion to the newly created role in the Premier’s office.

“The Premier is a great captain and Paul Broad is his pick for a staffer … look what he has done for Snowy 2.0,” Mr Kean told question time.

Mr Broad has been a noted critic of the NSW government’s energy road map, a plan devised by Mr Kean. He blasted the NSW energy infrastructure plan last year, saying it was “fundamentally flawed” and would drive “sub-economic investment”.

Recently returning from the COP27 climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt, Mr Kean revealed that he found out about Mr Broad’s new role “on Twitter” while he was overseas, before taking a veiled crack at his Premier’s new adviser.

“I was interested to read on Twitter that he had been appointed. He is well placed to advise the Premier on one of the greatest risks to the energy transition, the significant delays on the Snowy Hydro project that are threatening energy security on the east coast,” he said.

The comments were a sharp divergence from Mr Perrottet, who described Mr Broad as “highly regarded, and his experience in water, engineering and infrastructure is second to none in this country”.

He said Mr Broad would be focused on the controversial raising of the Warragamba Dam wall, in Sydney’s west, and the expediting the delayed Narrabri gas project, a plan expected to provide up to half the state’s gas needs.

After a decade as the boss of the Snowy Hydro, Mr Broad abruptly resigned in late August amid rumours he had been sacked by federal Energy Minister Chris Bowen.

Reports at the time claimed Mr Broad had expressed his concern about the government’s plans to convert the Kurri Kurri gas power plant in the Hunter Valley to run on hydrogen.

Mr Broad’s criticism of Mr Kean’s energy road map was predicated on the concern it would make Australia less competitive by the end of the decade.

“I don’t want to be overly critical but I don’t like (that) what he seems to be doing is massively underwriting investments and sort of guaranteeing returns: I think that’s a fundamentally flawed principle to start from,” he told The Australian Financial Review.