Matt Canavan
Australian politician
Matthew James Canavan (born 17 December 1980) is an Australian politician who has served as the leader of the National Party of Australia since 2026. He has been a senator for Queensland since 2014, and served as a minister in the Turnbull and Morrison governments from 2016 to 2020.
Born in Southport, Queensland, Canavan graduated from the University of Queensland with bachelor's degrees in arts and economics. He then worked as a senior economist for the Productivity Commission and KPMG and as a director of the Productivity Commission. Canavan was chief-of-staff to Nationals senator Barnaby Joyce from 2010 to 2013. He was first elected to the Senate at the 2013 federal election, running on the Liberal National Party ticket in Queensland.
Canavan was appointed minister for Northern Australia in February 2016 and was elevated to cabinet after the 2016 election with the additional role of minister for resources. In July 2017, amid a wider parliamentary eligibility crisis, he resigned from cabinet after he might hold Italian citizenship by descent in violation of section 44 of the constitution. He was reappointed to cabinet in October 2017 after the High Court ruled that he was not an Italian citizen.
In February 2020, Canavan resigned again from cabinet to support Joyce in his unsuccessful bid for National Party leadership.
The public source identifies “Matt Canavan” as australian politician. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Matt, Canavan and Australian.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16202391. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1980, 2026, 2014 and 2016.
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This entry incorporates text from “Matt Canavan” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.