Funding doxer is a stain on Creative Australia

One of the most troubling schisms that occurred in the aftermath of October 7 was the response of the creative communities. Weeks of silence from many arts organisations and muted condemnation of Hamas at best. Jewish artists, writers and others felt a cold shoulder from their communities and many joined a Whatsapp support group.

The hostility reached a nadir early last year with death threats against Jewish artists, loss of livelihood and the doxing of some 600 members of the Whatsapp group, which became an international news story.

Although government arts agencies were not directly involved in any of the above, the main funding body, Creative Australia (CA), has played a role in supporting one of the most virulent public campaigners against Israel and Jews within the Australian arts community.

His name is Matt Chun, real name Matthew Jones. Chun is a NSW-based illustrator and author of children’s books. He was also one of the leaders of the doxing campaign and has a prominent history of anti-Zionist advocacy. Of course, he is entitled to hold these views in a country such as ours. But should he be rewarded with public funding of his arts projects?

In May 2023, Jones and his artistic collaborator Amy McQuire received a grant of $42,452 from Creative Australia (formerly the Australia Council for the Arts) to produce a picture book titled Policing In Australia, to be published by August this year.

Last month the Australian disclosed the awarding of the grant by Creative Australia (CA) in response to a question on notice in a Senate estimates hearing. The project description provided by CA said the book “will deepen Matt and Amy’s proven collaborative partnership, which led to the creation of the successful, 2022 Australian Book Industry Awards shortlisted children’s picture book Day Break,” the Australian reported.

Day Break bills itself as a picture book that “refocuses the narratives around Australia Day on Indigenous survival and resistance” and one that would “open up a conversation on truth-telling for the next generation”, the report added.

Chun had also received another Australia Council grant in 2017 for a residency in Taiwan. So he has been on the public arts radar for a while, and his artistic concerns well-known.

But so, too, are his views on Israel and Jews. “Having now read the entire transcript, I’ll research and publish a number of posts about specific individuals from this leaked group chat, and the organisations with which they intersect,” he wrote on Instagram at the time of the doxing, the Australian reported.

“The group chat confirms what we already know: Zionists are thoroughly racist, thoroughly anti-Indigenous and thoroughly committed to colonialism.”

Now, it needs to be made clear at this point that Chun was awarded his grant in May 2023, before October 7, before his involvement in the doxing campaign - something the Australian failed to point out in its report.

However, his poisonous advocacy against Israel and Jewish causes was publicly known well before this year.

In December 2021, Chun initiated an online campaign against Schwartz Media, which publishes The Monthly, The Saturday Paper, Black Inc books and a raft of other publications.

The campaign appeared to have been inspired by a book published by ABC journalist John Lyons, Dateline Jerusalem: Journalism’s Toughest Assignment (Monash). In his book Lyons claimed Australian pro-Israel advocates had bullied Australian media into self-censoring over stories that were critical of Israel.

Within the book, Lyons claimed Schwartz Media, which is owned by Melbourne Jewish businessman Morry Schwartz, has deliberately ignored the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in its publications. Matt Chun, citing Lyon’s book, created a publication titled The Sunday Paper, which had a list of pro-Palestinian content as a corrective to The Saturday Paper’s alleged omissions.

Chun called for a boycott of all Schwartz Media publications, and went further, calling for a boycott of the prominent Melbourne art gallery owned by Schwartz’s wife, Anna.

“Don’t give your labour, journalism or money to The Saturday Paper or The Monthly. Unsubscribe. Remove that garbage from your bio,” he wrote on Twitter at the time.

Again, Chun is entitled hold these views and to publicly advocate them, offensive as they are.

But Creative Australia has a responsibility not to swallow them uncritically. It knew of them, or should have known of them, as part of its background research into assessing his grant application.

The criteria for receiving public funding go beyond narrow technical skill and projects. Government grants are designed to support an artist, not just their project, in the interests of enriching society. The applicant’s character and broader background form a crucial part of their fitness for being approved.

Even before 2023, Chun had been aggressively advocating censorship, ghosting and harassment – behaviours in diametric opposition to the flourishing of artistic expression that public funding is designed to promote. His activism should have disqualified him from receiving a grant.

Creative Australia was derelict in approving the grant to him and his collaborator. But it goes beyond that. When Chun’s involvement in the doxing campaign became known in February – a campaign so infamous that it prompted the Albanese government to tighten its anti-doxing legislation – Creative Australia could have decided to rescind the grant to Chun and McGuire.

It did not. It should have. The grant funds a project, which benefits a person. Chun is not a fit and proper person to receive government funding. 

The most benign interpretation of this affair is an ignorance of Chun’s anti-Zionist and anti-Jewish activism, which is hard to believe given the coverage it received. To be blunt, the ongoing funding reflects a tacit tolerance of his offensive activism. It is a stain on Creative Australia.