Matt Brown

Matt Brown is the ABC's Indonesia correspondent based in Jakarta. He was formerly the ABC's national security correspondent and covered terrorism, defence and foreign affairs for all ABC outlets.

He was Middle East correspondent for more than four years, reporting on wars in Iraq, Lebanon, the Gaza Strip and Georgia. During that time he won Australia's highest award for journalism, a Walkley, for a story on an Islamic Jihad terror cell in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. He has been a Highly Commended Walkley finalist several times for reports ranging from an investigation into paramilitary policing in Papua New Guinea to a shooting in suburban Brisbane.

Matt has worked for the ABC's flagship radio and television programs for more than 15 years. He filed his first story for the ABC, a radio documentary on a gold mine in Fiji, before landing his first job in a one-person newsroom in Albany, Western Australia.

Matt is a keen surfer whose travels with a board have taken him from the long, winding point-breaks of south-east Queensland to the rock-ledge reefs of New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia. He has enjoyed surfing abroad in locations as diverse as the coral reefs of Western Samoa, Sumbawa and Bali, and the beach-breaks of the Gaza Strip and Portugal.