Matt Canavan and the male breadwinner model: A throwback to the ’50s

March 15, 2026 — 4:00am

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The women of Australia are on notice: Senator Matt Canavan wants “more Australian babies”.

In the remarks he made following his election as Nationals’ leader on Wednesday, the Queensland senator did not specify who would be having the babies, or who would primarily raise them, but perhaps we can infer that – Canavan is a family traditionalist who clearly enjoys trolling feminists.

In 2020, he posted on social media that he had bought his wife a clothesline for Mother’s Day.

The post, small though it was, served as an effective display of Canavan’s significant political talents.

He made headlines – the post was widely shared on social media (often by people who missed its irony), it was discussed on breakfast television, and it had the welcome side effect of upsetting snowflakes on Twitter (now X), thereby shoring up Canavan’s political brand as a refreshing iconoclast.

But Canavan was also making a nationalistic point about economic sovereignty – the type of clothesline he bought for his wife was not a traditional Hills Hoist, a brand now made in China, he said.

It was an “100 per cent Aussie made Austral clothesline”.

Canavan’s protectionist instincts are not surprising for a Nationals politician, but they are surprising for a former Productivity Commission economist, which he is.

Also surprising, for an economist, is his insistence that the taxpayer subsidise ongoing coal production, and his insistent preference for fossil fuels.

The latter is a particularly puzzling stance at a moment when the war-disrupted oil supply chain is threatening to damage the Australian economy.

From Marxist to rebel to leader: The making of Matt Canavan

The surge in oil prices and our reliance on “foreign” oil are acting as an effective carbon price for Australian consumers. You won’t hear the fossil-fuel fetishists admit that.

It was Canavan’s interest in the fiscal policy of “income splitting” that drew the attention of the sorts of people he was hoping to irritate with his clothesline post.

Income splitting is when the higher-income-earning half of a........

© Brisbane Times