Matt Chun’s hate speech prompts change in arts funding policy

Creative Australia says it will not attempt to recoup the funding grant given to the children’s book illustrator Matt Chun, who provoked outrage when he claimed the victims of the Bondi Beach massacre were not innocent, because the project for which he received funding has been completed.

However, in an acknowledgement of the loophole in its grant contracts, the government’s national arts funding body told The Jewish Independent that it is looking to insert legal provisions into contracts for future recipients to enable it to terminate grants if they engage in hate speech, racial or religious vilification that is “unlawful”.

Chun, real name Matthew Jones, received a grant of $42,000 from CA in 2023, together with Indigenous writer Amy McQuire, to produce a children’s picture book titled Policing In Australia, which was to be published by last August.

There is no evidence that the book has been published. TJI could not find any reference to the title in bookstores, websites or publishers lists. A spokesperson for CA said the grant was given for the creation of the book but was not contingent on it being published.

Chun, whose history of antisemitic and anti-Israel campaigning includes his leading role in doxing a WhatsApp group of Jewish creatives, was investigated by police over his self-published article after the Bondi massacre titled: We don’t mourn fascists - Liberal capitulation and the Chabad shooting at Bondi.

The article began: “On 14 December, an event hosted by the Zionist Jewish-supremacist organisation Chabad was targeted by shooters on Bondi Beach. While this was immediately and widely reported as an ‘antisemitic attack’ at an ‘innocent Hannukah gathering’, Chabad is in fact a network of centres and institutions which actively, publicly, and extensively helps to facilitate the ongoing Zionist and Euro-American imperialist holocaust of Palestine.”