All Media: Investigative Journalism Winner

Caroline Overington, The Australian and The Weekend Australian, “AWB Kickback Scandal”

Caroline Overington broke the first story into the AWB kickback scandal in 2004, reporting that Iraq had instructed the Australian wheat exporter to pay “transport fees” to a Jordanian trucking company.

After the release of the UN’s Volcker report into Iraq’s Oil for Food scheme, Overington’s investigations went on to outline the extent of the AWB’s knowledge that the money was funding Saddam Hussein’s regime.

She interviewed key AWB whistleblowers and was the first to reveal Iraq had cancelled all trade with Australia. More recently, her ongoing investigation and analysis produced a series of groundbreaking reports involving AWB whistleblowers and contributed to the establishment of this year’s Cole inquiry, which saw Federal Government ministers giving sworn evidence for the first time in 25 years.

Caroline Overington is a senior reporter and columnist with The Australian. A former New York correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, she won a Walkley with Malcolm Knox in 2004 for the Norma Khouri investigation. She will soon publish Kickback, a booklength investigation of the AWB scandal.

Judges’ comments
Overington’s work led intense international media coverage of the AWB scandal. She got scoop after scoop through great digging. It was her story from the outset and she held on to it with great tenacity.