The World Today with Eleanor Hall

Eleanor Hall

Eleanor Hall is the voice of ABC Radio at lunchtime. She hosts the ABC's daily newshour, The World Today, which delivers national and international news and analysis to radio and online audiences nationally and throughout the region.

With two decades of reporting experience and with degrees from the US, Australia and a term studying at Oxford University, Eleanor is a truly international journalist who has reported with intelligence and compassion from all corners of the globe.

She has hosted The World Today since 2001. Prior to that she worked in television for ABC TV News, the 7.30 Report, Lateline and the Foreign Correspondent program. She was the ABC's Washington correspondent and covered the Clinton impeachment in the late 1990s and she worked for five years in the Canberra parliamentary press gallery. Eleanor made her professional home at the ABC after working and studying in the United States as a recipient of the Harkness Fellowship and earned her masters in journalism from Columbia University in New York.

In 2009 she won a scholarship to the UK where she completed a term at Oxford University's Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and submitted a paper on politics in the YouTube age, focusing on the Obama e-campaign.

Eleanor's career has taken her around Australia and the globe including to the US, Mexico, Nicaragua, Cuba, Guatemala, Britain, Hungary, Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and India. Prior to joining the ABC, Eleanor was a scriptwriter on the documentary, Chile Hasta Cuando, which won Brazilian and Cuban film festival awards. She also freelanced from Central America for National Public Radio in the United States.

Eleanor was born in the UK but brought up in Australia. She has two wonderful children.

Scott Bevan

Prior to joining The World Today on Fridays, Scott Bevan has been presenting Afternoons Live on ABC News 24, and before that was host of News 24's evening international affairs program The World as one of the channel's foundation presenters.

Previously, Scott was the ABC's Moscow Correspondent and a reporter and occasional fill-in host for ABC's nightly television current affairs program, The 7.30 Report. Since beginning work for the ABC in mid-2005, Scott has also produced for Australian Story and presented on ABC Local Radio.

Scott began in journalism in 1984 at The Newcastle Herald, before reporting and presenting news for commercial radio. With a desire to use the Japanese he had studied at university, he moved to Tokyo in 1989 and stayed for 15 months. His language skills improved, but not nearly as much as his ability to perform karaoke.

Realising his days of singing Country Roads Take Me Home were numbered, Scott returned to Australia and became a television reporter. He worked for the Nine Network in news and current affairs. Among the major events he reported on were the East Timor crisis in 1999-2000, the Australian Embassy bombing in Jakarta, the 1998 Papua New Guinea tsunami, and the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami in Banda Aceh.

He returned to East Timor for The 7.30 Report in May-June 2006, to report on the civil unrest in the young nation.

In addition to pursuing journalism, Scott has written two plays that have been produced and two non-fiction books, the most recent being Battle Lines: Australian Artists at War. When he's not chasing stories in Russia, the former Soviet states and Eastern Europe, Scott is chasing his twin boys.

Emma Alberici

Emma is the ABC's Europe Correspondent and has been based in London since August 2008.

Emma studied journalism and economics at Deakin University and Italian at Melbourne University (Bachelor of Arts) before joining Melbourne's Herald Sun as a cadet.

Emma spent close to 10 years at Channel Nine where her career spanned reporting for Money, Business Sunday, A Current Affair and the Today program, as well as helping launch The Small Business Show. During this time Emma was twice a Walkley finalist for investigative reports, first on the death of a Star City Casino patron in 1998, and then for revealing the Tax Office's treatment of taxpayers who participated in mass marketed schemes in 2001. She also wrote The Small Business Book, published by Penguin (2001).

Emma joined the ABC in 2002, where she presented a new business program, Business Breakfast, until it went off air in 2003, and Emma moved to the co-host slot at Midday News and Business.

Prior to moving to London, Emma was a senior business journalist for ABC TV and Radio Current Affairs. She worked on The 7.30 Report and Lateline Business, as well as reporting for AM, PM and The World Today.

Anne Barker

Anne has been the ABC's Middle East Correspondent since April 2009, and is based in Jerusalem.

She has worked for the ABC for more than 20 years, after joining the newsroom in Melbourne as a cadet straight after university. Over the years she has worked in Darwin, Canberra, Sydney and Adelaide, covering everything from indigenous affairs in the Northern Territory to Federal Parliament.

At the start of the century, Anne covered South Australian issues for The 7.30 Report, including the capture of David Hicks in Afghanistan and riots at the Woomera detention centre. In 2002 she made the move north to the Territory, and became the Northern Territory Correspondent for ABC Radio. From Darwin she covered events in East Timor, including the civil unrest in 2006, the 2007 presidential and parliamentary elections, and the assassination attempts on President Jose Ramos Horta and Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao.

Anne has been a Walkley finalist several times, and in 2007 won the Walkley Award for Radio Current Affairs for her coverage of the Commonwealth's intervention in remote indigenous communities in the Northern Territory.

Emily Bourke

Emily completed the journalism course at RMIT University in Melbourne and joined the ABC radio newsroom after a stint in documentary film making.

She then worked in the SBS radio newsroom for several years where she covered federal elections, immigration and refugee issues and other stories affecting Australia's ethnic and indigenous communities.

Emily returned to the ABC and joined Radio Australia as a reporter, newsreader, producer and presenter of Asia Pacific. Now based in Sydney, Emily works across AM, PM and The World Today as a general reporter and occasional producer.

Matt Brown

Matt has worked for the ABC TV and Radio for more than 15 years. He filed his first story, a radio documentary, on a gold mine in Fiji, before being posted to a one-person news room in Albany, Western Australia.

Matt spent 2009 as National Security Correspondent after returning from a four-year posting in the Middle East, where he reported on wars in Iraq, Lebanon, the Gaza Strip and Georgia. During that time he won a Walkley Award for a story on an Islamic Jihad terror cell in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. He’s 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.

In 2010, Matt will head overseas again, this time as the ABC’s new Indonesia Correspondent.

Matt’s 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’s 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.

Rachael Brown

Rachael started her career as the ABC's Melbourne cadet in 2002. She still remembers the deciding moment, six years earlier, as a 16-year-old work-experience student; while the journalist was struggling to find an airport car park, she was thrown out of the car with a tape recorder, in pouring rain, and instructed to find a Minister she'd never heard of. She finally found a crowd, decided the man in the middle was her target, and on tiptoe was ready for his comments... soaked to the bone, heart racing, and certain this was the life for her.

After learning the ropes during her cadetship, Rachael helped run the ABCs' Gippsland bureau in Sale, eastern Victoria. It was here the girl from Essendon learnt how to dig for stories, met colourful characters who'll be mates for life, and, as her mentor noted on her farewell card, learnt the region's important lessons; milk price hikes are a good thing, and you can't get beers at the Lakes Entrance (sand) Bar.

Back in Melbourne, Rachael ran the Victorian Courts round for 18 months, covering prominent stories like terrorism trials, and Melbourne's gangland war. She won numerous legal reporting awards for her coverage, and in 2008, won the Walkley Award for Best Radio Current Affairs Report, for her breaking story that exposed negligence by the Victorian Medical Practitioners Board. She'd discovered the Board had ignored rape complaints against a Victorian dermatologist. She earned the trust of the women subsequently assaulted, and sat on the story for a year as not to jeopardise their case.

In 2008, Rachael joined the flagship national Radio Current Affairs programs AM, PM and The World Today, and is now based in London. She's since done stints with Insiders and most recently, The 7:30 Report. Rachael's most testing assignment in 2009 was covering Victoria's Black Saturday Bushfires, and their devastating aftermath.

Alison Caldwell

Alison is an award-winning journalist who has received dozens of awards for her work, among them the United Nations Prize for Journalism for her coverage of the Hindmarsh Island Bridge controversy.

In 2006, Alison covered the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne for ABC Radio Current Affairs, before heading further south a month later to report for AM from Beaconsfield, Tasmania, covering the search for and rescue of the two miners trapped underground for almost a fortnight.

In 2009 she covered the Victorian bushfires for ABC Radio, filing stories from Yea, Kinglake and Flowerdale over three weeks. She also briefly returned to her television roots filing TV news and current affairs stories for Ausnet News and News Hour, the ABC’s foreign news service, broadcasting to millions of people in South East Asia and the Pacific.

Peter Cave

Peter Cave has reported from more than 60 countries during a career with the ABC spanning more than 40 years.

As foreign affairs editor, he has a roving brief to provide reporting and analysis of stories across the globe.

Peter's first foreign posting was to Japan in the early 1980s and since then he has also been chief correspondent for Europe and the Middle East based in London and bureau chief in Washington.

Before going back on the road he was the presenter of the ABC's flagship radio current affairs program AM.

He is a five-time winner of Australian journalism's most prestigious accolade, the Walkley Award. He was recognised twice for his coverage of the Tiananmen Square massacre and for the fall of the Berlin Wall. He won two Walkley awards for his international exclusive on the Iraq hostage Thomas Hamill.

Other major stories he brought home to Australian audiences include the end of apartheid in South Africa, the Palestinian intifada in the Occupied Territories, Glasnost and Perestroika in the former Soviet Union, the break-up of the former Yugoslavia and the wars in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo.

Peter has covered just about every major international story of the past two decades including two Gulf wars, conflicts Lebanon and Libya, the fall of President Suharto in Indonesia, the first Bali Bombing, the coups in Fiji, the troubles in Northern Ireland , the election of George W Bush and the Revolution in Egypt.

Peter has helped his fellow foreign correspondents with trauma training and peer support. He was a pioneer the ABC's groundbreaking peer trauma support scheme and in 2009 he was awarded an Ochberg Fellowship by the Dart Centre for Journalism and Trauma.

Lyndal Curtis

When the new Parliament House was being built in Canberra, Lyndal - then at high school - took a tour of the half-finished building with her parents. When they walked through the House of Representatives Press Gallery, she turned around and told them that she would be working there one day. Not too many years later she parlayed her passion for politics into paid employment.

Lyndal has covered federal political and national affairs for most of her career, starting with commercial radio in 1988 before moving to the ABC in 1993.

After a five-year sojourn into the heady world of ABC News management as ACT State Editor, running the ABC TV, Radio and Online newsroom in Canberra, she returned to Parliament in 2008 in one of ABC News' most senior reporting roles - Chief Political Correspondent for AM, PM and The World Today.

She's travelled the world with, and interviewed all the Prime Ministers from Bob Hawke to Kevin Rudd, and reported on numerous elections, budgets, and leadership changes. And she's also been given chances to indulge her other passion - as a dedicated armchair sports fan - reporting on the Atlanta and Sydney Olympic Games for the ABC.

Lyndal was a Walkley finalist in 2002, and in 2009 was the first ABC journalist to win the Paul Lyneham Award for Excellence in Press Gallery Journalism.

Andrew Geoghegan

A sense of adventure prompted Andrew to move from behind the business desk in Sydney, where he was Finance Correspondent, to Johannesburg, where he became Africa Correspondent in late 2006.

Andrew fell into broadcasting while completing an urban planning degree and spending his spare time dabbling at the university radio station. His hobby led to a cadetship at the ABC in Perth.

In Asia and the UK, Andrew covered some of the world's major news events, and in Australia he has worked at every commercial television network and SBS, where he honed his craft as a current affairs reporter. At the ABC, Andrew has worked on The 7.30 Report, Lateline, Inside Business and ABC Radio programs AM, PM and The World Today.

Brigid Glanville

Brigid has been a reporter and presenter for the past 11 years.

In 2002 she was awarded the prestigious Andrew Olle Scholarship where she filed for a variety of television and radio programs and worked in the ABC's Washington bureau.

As well as reporting on AM, PM and The World Today, Brigid has worked across a variety of television programs including ABC News, The 7:30 Report, and Stateline. Brigid has also worked in the ABC's rural department reporting from the field around the country.

Brigid contributes to the PM finance report and Midday finance report on ABC TV. She has also presented a range of radio and television programs including local radio, ABC TV's Lateline Business and Business Today on the Australia Network.

Charlotte Glennie

Charlotte is an award-winning radio and television journalist who now reports from the ABC’s Brisbane bureau. Charlotte has been a China Correspondent for ABC's Australia Network, as well as Asia Correspondent for Television New Zealand.

In 2005 Charlotte won New Zealand's Supreme Award for Television Journalism for her Indian Ocean Boxing Day tsunami reporting and her general contribution to coverage of news in Asia. She was also awarded a Special Service medal by the New Zealand Government.

Charlotte has degrees in law and arts.

Emma Griffiths

Emma began her career in Tamworth working for Prime Local News, and moved to Brisbane for an ABC cadetship in 1997. The next year, she won the prestigious Andrew Olle Scholarship and gained a taste for international reporting working in the ABC's London and Jakarta bureaux.

She returned to Australia to cover state politics in Queensland before moving to Canberra in 2002 to join the ABC's parliamentary team.

During this time Emma also reported on the Australian reaction to major international stories, including the conflict in Iraq, the US-led war against terror, and the 2002 Bali bombing.

Emma's long-held ambition to work as a foreign correspondent for the ABC was fulfilled in April 2004 when she took up the posting in Moscow.

Emma covered the horrors of the school siege in Beslan, the political upheavals of Ukraine's "orange" revolution, travelled to the Arctic circle to report on Russia's indigenous whale hunters and kept an eye on Vladimir Putin – all while trying to master the local art of vodka toasts.

Her coverage of the events in Beslan won her a highly commended nod in the 2005 Walkley Awards. Emma returned to Australia in 2008 and became state political reporter for New South Wales, before moving back to Canberra to take up a position in the Parliament House bureau. After a year covering the ups and downs of NSW State Politics, Emma has returned to Canberra to report on federal politics for AM, PM and The World Today, and ABC TV News programs, including Lateline.

Ashley Hall

Ashley grew up in Melbourne, studying economics and law at Monash University and filling his spare time with community theatre, before heading to Perth to study at the WA Academy of Performing Arts. Paying the bills by waiting tables in a cafe, he did work experience in the ABC Newsroom while also presenting programs on community radio.

Ashley moved to Kalgoorlie to take up his first on-air post, hosting music programs and covering local news for Radio 6KG. A move north-west took him to the rich red dirt of the Pilbara, where he reported for ABC News, covering local, regional and resources news, and some unlikely events like the Pannawonica rodeo.

His next move saw him present and produce SBS Radio's international current affairs program World View for nearly four years in Sydney. A stint at Radio 2UE as a program producer was quickly followed by a return to ABC Radio, where Ashley's served as a news reader and reporter, including a long stretch covering the HIH Royal Commission.

Ashley reports and occasionally fills the presenter chair for AM, PM and The World Today.

Nance Haxton

Nance Haxton is a journalist with a passion for justice that has stretched throughout her 20 year career. Nance's excellent reporting over more than two decades has won her Australia's most prestigious journalism honour, a Walkley Award, not once but twice, and most recently in 2012.

Nance's Walkley Award for Best Radio News and Current Affairs Reporting recognised a series of stories titled "Justice System Fails Disabled Victims of Sexual Abuse". The judges said: "Nance Haxton showed how journalists can be a catalyst for change. She took a difficult subject, researched it for months and wove her interviews into stories that clearly and emotively explained how disabled children were being discriminated against. As a result of her work, the South Australian Government pledged to change the Evidence Act."

Nance started her career in journalism at Quest Newspapers in Brisbane before moving on to become the ABC's sole reporter at the Port Augusta outpost, covering more than half the state of South Australia.

Nance received a commendation in the 2000 Walkley Awards for her television and radio current affairs story on possible mining in the Gammon Ranges National Park in far-north South Australia, and graduated from the Queensland University of Technology in 2001 with a Masters in Journalism after completing her research thesis, titled The Death of Investigative Journalism.

Nance was recognised with the Walkley Award for Best Radio News story in 2001 for her coverage of riots at the Woomera Detention Centre, and was also a Walkley finalist in the same year for Best Coverage of Regional Affairs for the same story.

Nance hopes her Walkley Awards are a vindication of the work of many rural and regional based reporters, who are often under-recognised for their groundbreaking work.

After a year in the Sydney ABC Radio Newsroom, Nance became the South Australia correspondent for ABC Radio Current Affairs, reporting for AM, PM and The World Today.

Nance has won a number of awards in that role, including a Walkley finalist nomination in 2007 for her story on Operation Flinders, South Australia's Radio Journalist of the Year in 2006 and a United Nations Media Peace Award in 2003 for her story on Iga Warta.

For Nance, her greatest journalistic skill is empathy, something she learned in spades from her intellectually disabled older brother Ashley. She would like to thank him especially for inspiring her daily to reach for the stars and do all that you can with the skills that you have every day on Earth.

Nance is also a qualified speech and drama teacher.

Lindy Kerin

Lindy started her career in community radio. After studying at the University of Technology Sydney she headed to Alice Springs and worked as a reporter at the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association.

In 1998 she joined the ABC as a news and current affairs cadet. She worked in Sydney in radio and TV news before returning to Darwin, where she travelled to many remote Aboriginal communities reporting for TV and radio news, and became the producer of Stateline. Lindy enjoyed spending time with Territory locals and broadcasting from towns like Katherine and Tennant Creek.

She returned to Sydney in 2006 and joined the Radio Current Affairs team, filing for AM, PM and The World Today. She was lucky to join AM and TWT in Canberra to cover the national apology to the Stolen Generations and the 40th anniversary of the 1967 Referendum. She also joined the AM team on their 40th anniversary trip to Maningrida in Arnhem Land.

Ben Knight

Ben enjoyed a spectacularly unsuccessful academic career, spending several years working in bottle shops and supermarkets, before somehow landing a short-term job with the ABC in his hometown of Mildura as a radio producer.

A few years later, he stopped worrying that someone was going to tap him on the shoulder and tell him there had been a horrible mistake, and moved to Melbourne to host the ABC's daily statewide morning show.

Bouncing around jobs in Radio Current Affairs, TV news, and The 7.30 Report - even presenting the weather in order to get his face on TV - he suddenly realised his long-repressed dream of a foreign correspondent's job might be within reach.

He now lives in Jerusalem with his wife and two children, and is enjoying every minute of it.

Sabra Lane

Sabra started her career in the media back in the ‘80s as an overnight police scanner monitor to help pay her way through university. She eventually made her way up the ranks of commercial TV to become the executive producer of a weekly national current affairs program.

In 2006, she dipped her toe into the waters of the ABC (for a second time). This time, she joined AM, PM and The World Today, and she was hooked.

In 2008, Sabra jumped at the chance to move to Canberra to cover federal politics. When she’s not at work, she's the personal assistant to two Burmese cats and loves riding her Townie cruiser bike or Vespa around Lake Burley Griffin and Canberra.

In 1998 he returned to Sydney to take up the position of executive producer of AM, the ABC's flagship national Radio Current Affairs program. From mid-2000 until taking up his Washington posting in mid-2001 John was a reporter for ABC TV News.

Brendan Trembath

Brendan covers a diverse range of stories for AM, PM and The World Today. Recently he interrupted a diving holiday in the Philippines to report on a fierce typhoon which caused huge floods in the capital Manila. He befriended a man with a makeshift boat and together they paddled along the flooded Pasig River. In Australia, Brendan has reported on everything from the Iraq bribery inquiry in Sydney to an international jousting festival in Lithgow.

As well as being a senior reporter, he often fills in as an executive producer and presenter.

Brendan's ABC career began in 1990 when fresh out of university he landed a job in radio news. Notable stories he covered then included the long running trial of the backpacker killer Ivan Milat and the police corruption inquiry based on the evidence of the underworld boss Arthur "Neddy" Smith.

In 1996 Brendan was hired by a New York-based business TV network to be its Australia Correspondent. He later moved to the network's Tokyo bureau.

Brendan returned to the ABC in late 2004.

Lexi Metherell

Lexi reports for Radio Current Affairs from Melbourne, where she covers economic and business news for the ABC’s radio news bulletins. Since starting with the ABC in 2005 as a cadet in Canberra’s Northbourne bureau, she’s worked in Alice Springs and at Parliament House in Canberra. Lexi has a Bachelor of Arts and Economics from the Australian National University.

David Weber

David first started working with the ABC in the Illawarra region in the early 1990s, after completing a degree with Wollongong University. His varied experience included stints with SBS, Agence France Presse, newspapers and commercial radio. He re-joined the ABC in 1998, working in Darwin.

David has reported on all of the major stories inside Western Australia - and many others elsewhere - since taking a full-time position with Radio Current Affairs at AM, PM and The World Today. While he has a fierce interest in radio, he's also reported for ABC TV News, Stateline and The 7:30 Report.

David has been a moderator at political debates, and plays music at parties when he finds the time. To enhance a presumed rock'n'roll lifestyle, David displays a penchant for animal-skin jackets (preferably fake) and feather boas, but this attraction to glamorous clothing should not be taken as a hint regarding sexual preferences. In fact, David has a lovely girlfriend and daughter, both of whom also like wearing (preferably fake) animal-skin jackets, and feather boas.

David won a United Nations Peace Prize in 2005, and has taken out the Radio Prize in the WA Media Awards for three years running.

Mark Willacy

Mark has reported for the ABC from more than 20 countries. He’s filed stories from Casablanca to Kandahar, Nablus to Nagoya, and Baghdad to Birdsville.

Mark began his career with the ABC in 1995 in his home town of Toowoomba. In his role as the regional sports reporter he covered such topics as the subtle art of women’s boxing and the high pressure world of pub darts.

After stints as a news reporter in Brisbane, Gladstone and Cairns, Mark moved to Adelaide in 1997 to take up the position of South Australian reporter for AM, PM and The World Today. After helping the Adelaide Crows to their maiden flag it was off to Melbourne. The highlight of this posting was being shirt-fronted by the then Premier Jeff Kennett at a doorstop for asking "a bloody stupid question". Mark then covered Mr Kennett’s political demise at the election a few months later.

Between 2000 and 2002 Mark was a political correspondent for ABC Radio Current Affairs in Canberra. This gave him an unrivalled opportunity to ask an array of political figures thousands of bloody stupid questions, a prospect he accepted with relish. During this time Mark covered the ‘children overboard’ affair, the introduction of the GST, and the 2001 Summernats.

In 2000 he set off on his first foreign assignment, reporting from Suva on the Fiji coup. He faced innumerable dangers, including being invited to drink kava by the armed men holding the entire parliament hostage. Twenty-eight coconuts of kava later he was freed, but was unable to report about his ordeal because his whole face was numb.

Then in 2002 Mark was posted to Jerusalem as the ABC’s Middle East Correspondent. He won a Walkley Award for his reporting for AM on the fall of Saddam Hussein. Mark was also nominated for a Walkley for AM in 2004 and 2006 for his coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Along with cameraman Louie Eroglu he broke the ABC record for the longest off-base assignment, spending 93 days on the road in and around Iraq covering the war. But the story he was most remembered for was about playing a game of cricket in Baghdad with several armed Iraqi security guards and some confused Japanese journalists. It petered out to a draw after five days.

Mark has a written a book about his four years reporting in the Middle East, The View From the Valley of Hell. In a review, the foreign editor for The Australian, Greg Sheridan, called it too silly for words, which immediately resulted in a surge in sales.

In 2008 Mark was posted to Tokyo as the ABC’s North Asia Correspondent. From Tokyo he has covered typhoons in the Philippines, interviewed North Korean defectors in Seoul, and drank schooners of sake with 180 kilogram sumo wrestlers in Osaka.

He is married to the infinitely patient Suzie. They have two daughters, both of whom were born in Jerusalem.

Philip Williams

Philip Williams has been the ABC's Europe Correspondent since July 2008, and is based in London.

This is Philip's second stint in London for the ABC. He was previously there for four years from 2001-2005, a time marked by the issue of terrorism. Philip covered the 9/11 attacks on New York, the Madrid Bombings, the Iraq war from Baghdad and Europe's response to that conflict. He reported from the Beslan siege in which so many innocent children and parents were slaughtered, and covered the Boxing Day tsunami from Phuket in 2004.

Philip was the ABC's Tokyo Correspondent from 1990 to 1993. He covered many major events in the Asia Pacific region including the Kobe earthquake in Japan, French nuclear tests in the Pacific, APEC summits, the fall of President Suharto in Indonesia, events following the 1999 referendum in East Timor and the 2000 political crisis in Fiji.

He was a founding producer on Australian Story, worked as a reporter in Canberra for The 7.30 Report and spent many years travelling rural Australia with Countrywide.

Prior to his first posting to London in 2001, Philip covered Australian national politics in Canberra, where he was Chief Political Correspondent for the ABC's national Radio Current Affairs programs, and before that the ABC's Diplomatic and Defence Correspondent.

After returning from London in 2005, Philip presented the local Canberra Stateline.

In 2006, Philip was awarded the prestigious Dart Centre Ochberg Fellowship in recognition of excellence in reporting in hazardous working conditions and the dangers involved in covering particular news stories.