Kerry Michael O'Brien (born 27 August 1945) is an Australian journalist based in
Byron Bay. He is the former editor and host of ''
The 7.30 Report'' and ''
Four Corners'' on the
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) is Australia’s principal public service broadcaster. It is funded primarily by grants from the federal government and is administered by a government-appointed board of directors. The ABC is ...
(ABC). He has been awarded six
Walkley Awards
The annual Walkley Awards are presented in Australia to recognise and reward excellence in journalism. They cover all media including print, television, documentary, radio, photographic and online media. The Gold Walkley is the highest prize and ...
during his career.
Life and career
O'Brien was born into a
Catholic
The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...
family in
Brisbane
Brisbane ( ; ) is the List of Australian capital cities, capital and largest city of the States and territories of Australia, state of Queensland and the list of cities in Australia by population, third-most populous city in Australia, with a ...
,
Queensland
Queensland ( , commonly abbreviated as Qld) is a States and territories of Australia, state in northeastern Australia, and is the second-largest and third-most populous state in Australia. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Austr ...
, where he attended
St Laurence's College. He started as a news cadet at Channel 9 in Brisbane in 1966. He has worked in newspapers, wire service and television news and current affairs, as a general reporter, feature writer, political and foreign correspondent, interviewer and compere, and served as press secretary to Labor
leader
Leadership, is defined as the ability of an individual, group, or organization to "", influence, or guide other individuals, teams, or organizations.
"Leadership" is a contested term. Specialist literature debates various viewpoints on the co ...
Gough Whitlam.
O'Brien said: "I guess it was my curiosity that drove my attraction to political journalism—and drove my desire to work for Gough Whitlam when that opportunity came up—because I wanted to see what it was like behind the scenes. I wanted to see what it was like to be a part of the process, rather than just reporting on it. When I came back to journalism, I realised that the experience I'd had in the back rooms of politics was like gold for me—in terms of being able to understand and second guess what was really going on behind that sort of opaque screen that the political processes, the processes of government throw up."
''The 7.30 Report''
After six years as compere and interviewer of the
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) is Australia’s principal public service broadcaster. It is funded primarily by grants from the federal government and is administered by a government-appointed board of directors. The ABC is ...
's ''
Lateline'' program, on 4 December 1995 O'Brien moved to ''
The 7.30 Report'' as editor, compère and interviewer. He also anchored and moderated the ABC's election telecasts for 20 years. O'Brien has won many awards, including the top award in Australian journalism, the
Gold Walkley in 2000. He has also made several appearances on ''
The Chaser's War on Everything''.
With respect to effective interviewing, O'Brien has said that "It's very much about being prepared. Think through the issues related to what you're talking about—think them through. Look for the logic. Try to understand as best you can, then you try and cut to the heart of the issue in the same way, I suppose, a lawyer might."
O'Brien announced in September 2010 that he would be resigning as the editor and presenter of ''The 7.30 Report'' at the end of the year and would move on to new roles within the ABC in 2011.
He concluded his time at ''The 7.30 Report'' on 9 December.
''Four Corners''
On 14 October 2010, the ABC announced that O'Brien would host ''
Four Corners'', beginning in 2011.
On 6 November 2015, O'Brien announced he would be stepping down as host of ''Four Corners''. He was succeeded by
Sarah Ferguson in 2016.
Awards
During his career as a journalist, O'Brien has won six
Walkley Awards
The annual Walkley Awards are presented in Australia to recognise and reward excellence in journalism. They cover all media including print, television, documentary, radio, photographic and online media. The Gold Walkley is the highest prize and ...
for his journalistic work.
His first two awards came in 1982, when he won the award for the best television current affairs report and the ceremony's top award, the
Gold Walkley. He again received awards in 1991 and 2000. In 2010, his final year on ''The 7.30 Report'', he received two awards: one for broadcast interviewing and the other for journalism leadership.
He has been awarded two honorary doctorates, a
Doctor of the University from the
Queensland University of Technology
The Queensland University of Technology (QUT) is a public university, public research university located in the city of Brisbane in Queensland, Australia. It has two major campuses, a modern city campus in Gardens Point, Brisbane, Gardens Point ...
in April 2009 and a
Doctor of Letters
Doctor of Letters (D.Litt., Litt.D., Latin: ' or '), also termed Doctor of Literature in some countries, is a terminal degree in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. In the United States, at universities such as Drew University, the degree ...
''
honoris causa'' from the
University of Queensland
The University of Queensland is a Public university, public research university located primarily in Brisbane, the capital city of the Australian state of Queensland. Founded in 1909 by the Queensland parliament, UQ is one of the six sandstone ...
in December 2011.
In 2011, O'Brien was a recipient of the
Queensland Greats Awards.
In 2019, O’Brien was inducted into the
Logie Hall of Fame.
In 2021, O'Brien was appointed an
Officer of the Order of Australia
The Order of Australia is an Australian honours and awards system, Australian honour that recognises Australian citizens and other persons for outstanding achievement and service. It was established on 14 February 1975 by Elizabeth II, Monarch ...
, but declined the award in protest at
Margaret Court
Margaret Court (''née'' Smith; born 16 July 1942), also known as Margaret Smith Court, is an Australian former world number 1 tennis player and a Christian minister. Her 24 women's singles major titles and total of 64 major titles (includi ...
's receipt of the
Companion of the Order of Australia
The Order of Australia is an Australian honours and awards system, Australian honour that recognises Australian citizens and other persons for outstanding achievement and service. It was established on 14 February 1975 by Elizabeth II, Monarch ...
.
Books
*
*
Personal life
O'Brien has been married twice and has six children, three from his first marriage and three with Sue Javes, who he married in 1981.
Political views
O'Brien, the son of university-educated hospital administrator, says that in his head his youth was "working class".
Educated by the Christian Brothers, he became a non-believer in his mid-20s, but said in 2015: "I don't regret the Catholic culture I was exposed to in terms of social justice and basic fairness, that sense of all people being born equal."
O'Brien worked as press secretary to the
sacked Labor prime minister
Gough Whitlam in 1977, while Whitlam was Opposition Leader. After Whitlam lost the 1977 election, O'Brien worked for deputy Labor leader
Lionel Bowen.
In interviews O'Brien has said of South African president
Nelson Mandela
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela ( , ; born Rolihlahla Mandela; 18 July 1918 – 5 December 2013) was a South African Internal resistance to apartheid, anti-apartheid activist and politician who served as the first president of South Africa f ...
that "To be close to that kind of greatness, I would regard as a privilege." He described US president Barack Obama as having a "generous nature", former Soviet president
Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (2 March 1931 – 30 August 2022) was a Soviet and Russian politician who served as the last leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 to dissolution of the Soviet Union, the country's dissolution in 1991. He served a ...
as "impressive" and British prime minister
Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher (; 13 October 19258 April 2013), was a British stateswoman who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party (UK), Leader of th ...
as "looking down her nose at you". In 1988, Thatcher terminated an interview with O'Brien and, by O'Brien's account: "She hissed, 'You just had to go too far.'"
[
Former conservative Liberal prime minister John Howard wrote in his autobiography '' Lazarus Rising'' that "the politics of Kerry O'Brien, presenter of the ABC's ''7.30 Report'' were a mile away from mine. Yet I appeared regularly on his program, because it was a serious current affairs presentation". Of the 1996 prime ministerial election debates, Howard wrote: "I flatly refused to have Kerry O'Brien of the ABC oderate the debatesbecause of the way he had handled the second Keating- Hewson debate in 1993" (in which, Howard wrote, O'Brien "went in to bat" for Keating).
O'Brien opposed the Howard government's budget cuts to the ABC, and said the appointment of Jon Shier as its Managing Director was a manifestation of the "conservative obsession with the ABC as a kind of biased, left-wing culture".][
After retiring from the ''7.30 Report'', O'Brien presented the 2013 ABC series ''Keating: the Interviews'' from which he wrote a biography of former Labor prime minister Paul Keating, who co-operated with O'Brien rather than write an autobiography.
O'Brien welcomed the replacement of Liberal prime minister Tony Abbott by the less conservative ]Malcolm Turnbull
Malcolm Bligh Turnbull (born 24 October 1954) is an Australian former politician and businessman who served as the 29th prime minister of Australia from 2015 to 2018. He held office as Liberal Party of Australia, leader of the Liberal Party an ...
in 2015, telling Fairfax that it was "a little burst of sunlight nationally" and that "There's a surge of relief because things were so bad."
In his 2019 induction speech to the Logie Hall of Fame, O'Brien voiced his support for the Uluru Statement from the Heart and called on the Australian Parliament
The Parliament of Australia (officially the Parliament of the Commonwealth and also known as the Federal Parliament) is the federal legislature of Australia. It consists of three elements: the Monarchy of Australia, monarch of Australia (repr ...
, during the current term, to "make a genuine effort to understand and support what is embodied in the Uluru Statement From the Heart". He added "the Uluru statement represents no threat to a single individual in any corner of this country, and certainly no threat to the integrity of Parliament. And if you're told that, don't you believe it. On the contrary, it will add much to the integrity of our nation."
References
External links
*
Paul Keating in conversation with O'Brien
Ideas at the House on YouTube.
{{DEFAULTSORT:OBrien, Kerry
1945 births
Living people
Australian people of Irish descent
Australian political journalists
Australian Roman Catholics
Australian republicans
Australian television journalists
Australian television newsreaders and news presenters
Journalists from Sydney
Mass media people from Brisbane
People educated at St Laurence's College
Queensland Greats
Walkley Award winners