Most Outstanding Contribution to Journalism Winner

Gerard Noonan

It’s hard to think of a time in his three decades in journalism when Gerard Noonan was not fighting – for the truth, for the integrity of the mastheads that employed him, or for the wellbeing of his colleagues.

He’s been a leader since his first days in the business, working for Peter Isaacson’s magazines in his home town of Melbourne, at AAP and then for The Australian Financial Review in its Melbourne bureau.

Even as a student in the 1970s, before he got his start in the media, there were clear signs that he had the qualities any great journalist needs – plenty of front and a healthy disdain for authority.
Noonan has those attributes in spades and they led him and a friend to the Boxing Day test at the MCG in 1974 where, just before the resumption of play after lunch, they pulled on a couple of white lab coats, donned umpire hats, and strode out to the middle of the arena while 80,000 spectators looked on blankly.

It was only when the next two umpires strode out to the wicket, and met with Gerard and his mate who were busy prodding the pitch, that the crowd twigged to the prank and roared its approval.
He’s kept his sense of humour in the years since then, but his energy has gone into more serious matters.

He learnt about industrial relations the hard way, on the picket lines, and on the executive of the Victorian branch of the Australian Journalists Association which was embroiled in the six-week national journalists strike in 1980.

Noonan was never content with simply reporting change, he wanted to be part of it. He was involved in the negotiations and battles that saw the creation of JUST, the Journalists’ Union Superannuation Trust.

Fairfax recognised his skill in organising others and made him the chief of their Melbourne bureau. When he excelled at that they moved him to Sydney and made him editor of the Financial Review – no doubt the first leader of a strike to hold this position.

Australia had a former union leader as prime minister at the time, but Fairfax’s then owner (and now convicted criminal) Conrad Black decided there would be no former union leaders running any of his papers.

Noonan was sacked and went to work for a small magazine publisher.

He remained the chairman of JUST, but he ached to return to a newsroom where he could get his hands dirty in the issues of the day.

After Black left Fairfax and went back to plunder London’s Telegraph, Noonan was allowed back into the building and was employed by The Sydney Morning Herald. His work was as good as it ever was, always measured, incisive and tough, whether writing on a specialty area like education or editing the entire paper.

In the decade he’s been back at Fairfax, he has done a lot more than report and edit – he’s been the chief campaigner, the one person most determined to ensure Fairfax remains an independent company devoted to quality journalism. He’s done that because he rightly believes that it is in the interest of a fair and equitable Australian society.

His fearlessness in speaking out for what is right, for organising staff to fight to preserve what Fairfax stands for, has helped preserve the value and integrity of the company.

He has been valued especially as a teacher of the young staff, explaining to them the principles their colleagues have fought for. Much of it he’s done alone; long nights spent writing submissions, addressing meetings, and planning the next battle. Few have made a contribution to match his.