To respond to Storrar’s question by showering him with money – so much money, in fact, that it may potentially impact his benefit payments and require the assistance of a financial manager – seems to misunderstand the nature of the problem, no matter how well-intentioned the many donors may be.

There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with matching funds. Looked at upside-down, however, matching funds looks less like government largesse and more like a new condition imposed on funding applicants. That $5.3m was once administered by Australia Council peers and, whatever the faults in that process, it’s apparently now the free market that decides where it goes.