Guardian Australia has won a Walkley Award for excellence in journalism for a series on Australians confronting the truth of their family’s involvement in border violence.
Guardian Australia won the Walkley Indigenous Affairs Award at Thursday night’s ceremony for the series The Descendants, which is based on Guardian Australia’s 2019 Walkley Award-winning series The Killing Times. The series explored the deeply personal process of telling the truth from both sides of the border about some of the most horrific events of Australia’s past.
The team was led by former Guardian Australia Indigenous affairs editor Lorena Allam, now Industry Professor at the Jumbunna Institute for Indigenous Education and Research at UTS, as well as former Guardian Australia Indigenous affairs reporter Sarah Collard and Guardian Australia Indigenous affairs reporter Ella Archibald-Binge.
Descendants Data & Interactive was created by Data & Interactive Editor, Nick Evershed, and Editorial Developer, Andy Ball. The illustrations are by desk maker and illustrator Victoria Hart, with photography by Yamatji man Tamati Smith and Guardian Australia photographers Ellen Smith and Blake Sharp-Wiggins.
Christopher Hopkins was also named Nikon-Walkley Press Photographer of the Year for his portfolio of work, which was published in Al Jazeera, The Age and The Guardian. The judges praised Hopkins as “a powerful storyteller who uses beauty and an artistic approach in her works, ranging from protests to portraits in both color and black and white”.
Adele Ferguson and Chris Gillette won the 2025 Gold Walkley, Australian journalism’s highest honour, for a series of stories on 7.30, Four Corners and ABC Online that explored systemic failures in childcare.
Ferguson and Gillette won three Walkley categories: TV/Video: Current Affairs Short, TV/Video: Current Affairs Long, and the All-Media Award for Investigative Journalism. The pair worked on the latter two with colleagues Ben Butler and Lara Sonnenschein. The Walkley jury unanimously described his work as the investigation of the year.
Rick Morton was awarded the Walkley Book Award for Mean Streak which was about a robodebt scheme.
Peter Manning, former head of ABC TV news and current affairs, was honored for his outstanding contribution to journalism.
Manning oversaw a golden age for Four Corners between 1985 and 1989, launching programs such as Lateline, Foreign Correspondent and Landline, before becoming a journalism academic. The Board of Directors of the Walkley Foundation selects the award from peer nominations.
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