University of Queensland Press abandons children’s book after illustrator’s remarks on Bondi attack victims

The University of Queensland Press announced on Wednesday that it would no longer publish Bila, A River Cycle, a children’s picture book authored by award‑winning Indigenous poet Jazz Money and illustrated by Matt Chun, because the illustrator had publicly described the victims of the recent Bondi Beach terror attack as “affluent beneficiaries of imperialism,” a statement that the publisher deemed incompatible with its values and market expectations.

In the wake of the publisher’s decision, a number of prominent Indigenous writers, including Evelyn Araluen and Melissa Lucashenko, issued a joint declaration that they would refuse future collaborations with the press, citing the institution’s apparent willingness to sacrifice artistic ventures for the sake of public relations management, thereby exposing a fragile commitment to supporting Indigenous voices when they become inconvenient.

According to the press release, the publisher also indicated that any already printed copies of the book would be subject to “recycling options,” a phrasing that underscores an administrative focus on logistical remediation rather than an acknowledgement of the broader cultural fallout generated by the decision to terminate the project.

The sequence of events—illustrator’s controversial comment, publisher’s swift cancellation, and subsequent author boycott—highlights a pattern within the publishing sector whereby reputational risk assessments are prioritized over sustained investment in Indigenous talent, revealing an institutional gap between proclaimed diversity objectives and the mechanisms employed when those objectives clash with mainstream sensibilities.

While the immediate controversy centres on a single illustration dispute, the episode implicitly questions the robustness of Australian cultural institutions’ policies regarding freedom of expression, editorial independence, and the protection of marginalized creators, suggesting that the underlying framework may be more reactive than principled, thereby perpetuating a predictable cycle of tokenistic inclusion followed by strategic exclusion whenever controversy arises.

Published: April 23, 2026