The Matt Canavan I know is an intellectual with ‘raw political talent’

March 15, 2026 — 10:30am

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When Matt Canavan was preselected before the 2013 election, there was astonishment in the Liberal Party room. The new National Party senator for Queensland was an economist from the Productivity Commission! It scarcely seemed possible. Then, as he took his early steps as a new senator, introducing himself at party branches around Queensland, Canavan astonished his audiences in a different way, confessing, with good-humoured mockery of his younger self, that as an undergraduate, he had been a communist.

The Matt Canavan the public has come to know is about as far away as possible from either a Hayekian neoliberal or a Marxist. We should be wary of trying to define him by some ideological straitjacket.

After his election as leader, one of his National Party colleagues (evidently not a fan) dismissed him as “a city intellectual who used to be a Liberal”. While Canavan no longer lives in a capital city – he is based in Rockhampton – the “intellectual” part is right. He is a policy wonk, who famously prefers to spend his Canberra evenings at home reading economic reports while his colleagues carouse in the restaurants of Manuka and Kingston. And – as I well remember from his contributions to cabinet discussions during the Turnbull government – he is very, very smart.

Canavan is also an obviously gifted communicator, with a talent for distilling........

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