Matt Kean’s budget is all about women – but is it also about the future of the Liberals?

Matt Kean says the Liberal party will fight the election on a ‘commitment to invest in our kids [and] to provide opportunities for women to thrive’. Photograph: Dan Himbrechts/AAP

Matt Kean wants to talk about women.

In the week leading up to his first budget as New South Wales treasurer, Kean, who perhaps more than any other figure has come to represent the struggle over the Liberal party’s ideological future, has set his sights on winning over the voters who abandoned the Coalition at last month’s federal election.