‘Fuzzy maths’ has long cruelled political campaigns. Conversely, economic fluency can help unlock government initiatives and inspire change. Former New South Wales treasurer Matt Kean FCA and New Zealand MP Carl Bates CA discuss their paths to parliament.

Matt Kean FCA

New South Wales Parliament, 2011–2024

“The best way to make a difference is to get involved,” Matt Kean FCA tells Acuity about his 13-year political career that included a 17-month tenure as treasurer of the New South Wales Government. “Effectively, I got involved in politics because my family and the communities of my neighbourhood were fighting against the destruction of a local part of our environment.”

Kean was a Young Liberal throughout university and always harboured a desire to work in government. He completed his chartered accountant graduate diploma in 2008, working at PricewaterhouseCoopers then, in 2011 he entered parliament as the member for Hornsby. Kean showed a cheeky side in his inaugural address by referencing the area’s most iconic ‘resident’, Ginger Meggs (cartoon strip). It was the first sign that he would do things differently.

“People would be surprised to hear that there’s a lot of overlap [between politics and accounting],” says Kean. “I think it was that accounting training and discipline which probably saw us take a bit of a different approach to the work we did and the analysis we brought forward, before making decisions.”

“I got involved in politics because my family and the communities of my neighbourhood were fighting against the destruction of a local part of our environment.”

Supporting clean energy

Kean quickly rose up the ranks, citing the “professional discipline required to be a successful accountant” as well as “thorough analysis, attention to detail and hard work” as important elements in his success. Where others tended to rely on soft skills, Kean says he applied his education to extract truths from the numbers at hand and why it made economic sense to pursue certain policies.

Kean served under then NSW premier Dominic Perrottet (from 5 October 2021 to 28 March 2023) and challenged the state’s reliance on fossil fuels, often as a near-lone voice in a largely conservative room.

In 2022, Kean helped to deliver the Electricity Infrastructure Roadmap, to bipartisan acclaim. It is New South Wales’s 20-year plan to deliver an energy-efficient, more affordable and environmentally clean power system. In addition to its climate initiatives, it is responsible for 6300 construction and 2800 operational jobs, mostly in regional areas.

Electric legacy

The Electricity Infrastructure Roadmap will inject about A$32 billion of private sector investment into the New South Wales economy, ensuring Australia’s most populous state is also an undisputed leader in clean energy. Without it, the state’s goal of reaching net zero emissions by 2050 would not be possible.

“We effectively ended the climate wars in doing that and we found a way forward in modernising our electricity system,” says Kean. “To this day, we achieved what other governments have failed to do and that is finding a way forward in terms of getting multi-partisan support for energy policy and climate policy.”

Kean handed in his resignation as an opposition MP in June 2024, just a day before the Coalition’s proposal to build up to seven nuclear power plants if they win the election. His climate legacy was recognised by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who appointed Kean as chair of the Climate Change Authority weeks later.

Albanese praised Kean as someone who has “focused his working life in recent years on making a difference, not just today, but for the generations to come.”

Carl Bates CA

New Zealand Parliament, 2023–present

“We made a pretty big call to move back from Africa,” says Carl Bates CA, who was born in New Zealand’s Whanganui but followed his entrepreneurial spirit to South Africa. “I always had an intention to serve my community but I didn’t necessarily think it was going to happen at this point in my life.”

Bates watched from afar as “the political challenges that the previous government had created” frustrated him. It emboldened him to sell his business, cross the globe with his young family and campaign full-time in order to win the seat of his hometown.

He founded the company Sirdar in 2006, a board training and management firm based in Cape Town. It implements first-time boards for entrepreneurial startups or refreshes established boards with contemporary thinking. Bates successfully expanded into other African markets, with offices in Ghana, West Africa, and Nairobi, Kenya.

“When I say to people I am a chartered accountant, people and voters appreciate having someone who has real experience.”

The business of politics

“Coming from a background of entrepreneurship and having built my own businesses on multiple continents, I come from a fairly rigorous work environment,” says Bates. “We can only have a New Zealand that is able to provide the health, education and other social services that Kiwis deserve, if we have a country that can pay for them.”

Bates studied at Massey University in Palmerston North at 16, became an independent director at a not-for-profit aged-care facility at 18, and a chartered accountant at 22. He also authored Traversing the Avalanche and Laws of Extreme Business Success.

Among all these achievements, Bates singles out his CA designation as one of his greatest assets in political circles.

“It’s been really valuable in terms of providing professional credibility,” says Bates. “I think when I say to people: ‘I am a chartered accountant, I’ve worked in business’, people and voters appreciate having someone who has real experience.”

Making the leap from Excel to parliament

Both Kean and Bates agree that their CA education has given them a unique vantage point and equipped them well for government work.

“Diversity of thought, diversity of disciplines and different perspectives,” says Kean. “That’s what we need. That will make our policy-making process all the stronger.”

“Remembering the moral and ethics training that you have as a CA and not forgetting that going into politics is important,” says Bates. “Some of those principles have helped guide me through some of the decisions I’ve had to make. I would say to fellow accountants: ‘don’t leave your training at the door’.”