 Hello and welcome to the 2020 Lowy Institute Media Award presentation. The Media Award was established in 2013. It is among the richest in Australian journalism. We established this award because we believe the world matters to Australia, and therefore Australians need to be informed about the world. Australian journalists see the Australian angle in a story in a way that others cannot. We want Australian journalists on the global beat because they bring their own sensibilities to the craft of reporting, including pragmatism, a lack of deference to authority, and a sense of humour, as well as an understanding of Australia's interests. And what a year it has been for Australia and for the world. The bushfires at the start of 2020 focused our minds on perhaps the most consequential news story of our era, climate change. Since then we've seen increased tensions in our relationship with China, in which foreign correspondents themselves became part of the story. We've had the craziness of the 2020 US presidential election. And of course we are living through a deadly pandemic that has upended life as we know it and caused us to forgo our annual media award dinner and instead experiment with this format. The purpose of this award is to recognise excellence and by doing so to encourage proprietors and editors to continue to invest in foreign coverage. Each year we appoint a distinguished judging panel for the award. You'll meet some of this year's judges later in the program. The judges came together in September to whittle down an impressive list of nominees to a short list of four finalists. Here they are. Jemima and Angus' damning revelations of high level corruption began with an anonymous source in the business community. This was a case of someone who was really outraged by the behaviour that he'd heard about and felt that it was being covered up. So this story is really about how an Australian listed oil company Horizon Oil paid 10.3 million US dollars to a shell company in Papua New Guinea that was connected to the then petroleum minister. Key to the team's investigation were revealing leaks of internal documents. We actually got this huge case of documents that just laid bare how executives talked to one another, how they talked to political fixers up in P&G and sort of the whole chain of command backwards and forwards and the whole network. It was really extraordinary. I think the most shocking thing about this story was that there was a joint venture partner involved which was regulated in the US, therefore it was subject to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and so a fancy DC lawyer was called in and he ran a mile from it. He said things like there was red flags, it was fruit of the poison tree and so the joint venture partner ran from this deal but the Australian listed company Horizon Oil went ahead with it anyway despite all these warnings. When the story was published the big moments really came pretty quickly afterwards. The stock dropped 35% on the first morning, the CEO was suspended, he was later dismissed. The federal police said that they've begun an investigation into the matter and so pretty quickly we knew that this story had had a fairly big impact. When we spoke to a lot of people they said look, one of the things that might be challenging for you guys is whether anyone wants to push this issue and really shine a light on the corruption up there because if Australia pulls back and we leave a vacuum it's just filled by the Chinese. So there's all these amazing geopolitical things or feeding into this tiny troubled country and we don't talk about them. In Tell the World, Australian Uighurs tell their stories of persecution. Everyone we interviewed was severely traumatised, every interview was heartbreaking. Person we interviewed was crying, I was crying, cameraman was crying, sound guy was crying. It was just horrific, you know, this is the largest incarceration of people on the basis of their religion since the Holocaust. It was an extraordinary thing to be involved in. People were terrified of speaking out and they'd waited to say anything. But they had reached sort of a breaking point where they had to speak out. Suddenly you had this community standing up and saying yes this is a picture of my family member and I haven't seen them in two years, three years, ten years. They did it as a community, you know, the whole community in Australia really worked with us on this story. And they just wanted to tell you and it was our job to get their story and tell it properly and make sure it was heard. The Four Corners team also covered civil unrest in Hong Kong. I'll never forget those weeks on the streets of Hong Kong because it felt like history in the making. You know, you're witnessing an amazing moment in history as the people of Hong Kong rose up, you know, to demand their freedom. The anger, the hope, it was just so extraordinary and it's a very important story, I think, for the world to understand China. What the Communist Party is doing to its own people is so important for the Australian people to know and I think what we're proud of with this work is that we think it helped change the narrative in Australia on China. When all the rules are broken, you know, look what happens. Look what happens in a place like Xinjiang. Look what is happening in Hong Kong. I think we need our governments to hold people to account. Hans joins us from isolation at home in London where the coronavirus is resurgent. The coronavirus has been, yeah, it's been an interesting story to cover because the one thing that coronavirus does is deprive you of the ability to connect with other people and meet them and talk to them. This is London's West End on a Friday night. The streets are silent. And some of the stories that I wrote were a little bit more, I guess you could say, solipsistic than normal. I mean, I would actually kind of write from a personal perspective because for a little while there almost wasn't anything else apart from you in your house, in your room. And actually those things really resonated. I got a huge feedback on those. It seemed that people really just wanted to kind of feel everyone else's pain. A number of cases has quadrupled in the last three weeks. Another thing about coronavirus is it just has a way of finding things out. Any weakness or frailty that a political system, or an administrative system might have, you know, coronavirus would sort of shine its kind of unpleasant light on that. I was asked to write quite a few stories about the World Health Organization because it's based in Geneva, and the kind of, you know, the pressure that was put on that. So it became a story with a lot of different facets. And of course before the pandemic, the biggest story in Europe was Brexit. It was a melodrama. It was a sort of compelling kind of train wreck that we all wanted to kind of rub a neck. But at the same time, it was a sort of complex story of parliamentary rules and regulations. So, you know, it was trying to find that balance of, you know, of detail and nitty-gritty and drama and melodrama and making sense of it for Australians. If anything keeps me awake at night, it's that worry that we're sort of stepping back from a world that's integrated and that's kind of growing prosperous together and that's kind of sharing culturally into a kind of world where a lot of barricades are going up. And I know, I realise that globalisation has had some unfortunate impacts. But at the same time, without it, I don't think the world is going to be a richer and more peaceful place. I think it's one of the few things Australians might know about the Pacific region. You know, it's a nice place to go on holiday and some of the islands are at risk of going under because of climate change. But one of the incredibly hopeful things about the region is that they are also huge players on the global climate field when it comes to the global climate fight. At the Pacific Islands Forum, the climate fight led to a diplomatic standoff. It was incredibly dramatic. It felt like a moment. The Pacific leaders had decided that this was the year that they were going to very firmly stand up to Australia, really, and make some demands on climate change. And it got pretty tense. I'd been trying to get an interview with the Prime Minister of Fiji the entire week that I was there. And then finally, on the last night, he invited me to drink carver with him in his carver circle. And he was livid and let loose about how he felt about our Prime Minister's behaviour during the meeting. I believe it's all patched up now, but it was quite an experience to be drinking carver. Being taught how to drink carver by the Prime Minister of Fiji as he, yes, was very unhappy. As Pacific editor, Kate collaborates with journalists on stories they cannot publish at home. We can do investigations that it's really hard to do sometimes by local media in country because it's not safe. The investigation we did into the Fiji prison's commissioner, he's the brother-in-law of the Prime Minister. That's a very hard story for the Fiji Times to report, though they are an excellent newspaper. And so that's part of what the Guardian, that's part of what I'm doing is working with Fijian and Samoan and Papua New Guinea reporters and giving them the platform of the Guardian where we can do those stories. We can sort of hold power to account. It's an impressive lineup. Each year is part of the media award presentation. We hear from an influential figure in the media industry. In the past, that has included a chair and a managing director of the ABC, the global chief executive of News Corp, a federal communications minister, columnists for the New Yorker and the New York Times, and a head of the Australian secret intelligence service whose father was a storied Australian war correspondent. This year, I'm speaking with Peter Costello. Peter was, of course, a long-serving and distinguished treasurer of Australia. He's now the chairman of both Nine Entertainment Corporation and the Future Fund. Nine is one of Australia's leading media companies, the assets of which include the Nine television network, radio stations, online properties, and, of course, major mastheads, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Age, and the Australian Financial Review. Peter Costello and I sat down earlier for a conversation about the state of the Australian media, China, COVID, and the economy. Peter Costello, thank you for speaking with me today. Good to be with you. Let me begin by asking you about journalism and the media industry in general. Obviously, foreign correspondents have to be paid out of the general revenues of media companies. So tell us a bit to begin about the economics of the media industry in Australia at the moment. You've seen a situation where big international tech companies, in particular, have come into the market. They've been very successful at getting online advertising. That has affected the advertising that commercial operators can earn. And you've also seen a situation where people are now able to consume news on the Internet for free. So this has put enormous pressure on commercial operators. Of course, I'll leave the ABC out of this because it has guaranteed funding. Enormous pressure on commercial operators. And over the last year, we've seen many jobs disappear. I estimate probably about 2,000 in the last year. Many of them in regional Australia, but not all. Many of them in television. Fortunately, in our operations at nine, very few people because we've been able to hold our revenues by diversification. Let me ask you, there's been a lot of discussion in the last year or two about the balance between national security and media freedom. You've seen this from both ends of the telescope. First of all, as a cabinet member and now as chairman of a major media company. Has that changed your perspective on where the balance should be struck? Look, it is a very difficult balance. And I am aware of both sides of the argument. I was on the National Security Committee of Cabinet for nearly 12 years. And you do see occasions where something could affect the national interest and could affect people's lives. And obviously that should not go into print or on television or on radio. On the other side, you do see things which really are just leaks and they're politically embarrassing. And sometimes national security is invoked to try and stop those leaks getting out. Now it shouldn't be. A leak is a leak. I was in Canberra long enough to know. There are very few secrets in Canberra. And I do think this is a case for striking a careful balance. I think sometimes the security agencies and the police and the ministers are prepared to go too far. I really do. I thought that when I was in office and I think that from my position in the Australian media, it's a question of getting that balance and hopefully we're working towards it. Nobody wants to see a situation where journalists' private homes are being raided because there's been a leak. I don't think that's good for the security agencies. I don't think it's good for Australia, really. And not everything where national security is invoked actually turns out to be real national security. All right, let me come, Peter, to the question of foreign coverage. As Chairman of Nine, you preside over a network of foreign correspondents based all over the world, including in Washington and Jakarta and until recently in Beijing. How important is foreign coverage as a component of Nine's journalism? Well, the purpose is to give, surely, an Australian perspective. It's not just to say CNN reported the following or the New York Times reported the following or the China People's Daily reported the following. The purpose is to say, what does this mean for Australia? How will this affect Australia? Why is an Australian view in relation to these things? And unfortunately, we don't have journalists in China at the moment. We had to remove our last one quite recently. How much of a problem is it for us that at the moment, I think, there are no Australian journalists working for Australian media organisations in China as of today? Yeah, no Australian journalists in China. I think this is the first time in as long as I can remember, 30, 40 years or something. And the first thing that tells us is what relations between China and Australia are like, which is not good. The second thing is it makes it harder for the public, I think, to understand what's happening because we don't have anybody on the ground that can report an Australian perspective. And I think there is a unique perspective that Australia has on China, we're a medium power. We want to maintain an open trading system. We want to trade with both of those countries. We understand that our values and our security interests and our alliance lies with the United States. But we don't want to contain or rival China. So we do have a different perspective. And we can't just take our news from American sources. Obviously, we wouldn't want to take our news from Chinese sources, which are barely critical of the regime. Final question, Peter. What about the international economy? Obviously, the outlook depends on the virus as it does for the Australian economy. When we get a vaccine, how quickly other governments open up. But how do you feel about the international economy in the medium term? Well, interestingly, it looks like the Chinese economy is growing again. The US economy is bouncing back. So I would think, you know, absent a big new wave of corona and fatalities in their wake. I think you'd see the global economy starting to edge back next year. But of course, all of this is going to be contingent on what happens with corona. I don't think we're going to have a vaccine anytime soon. But if we can learn to live with it, so-called COVID normal and keep businesses open, we should start to see the international economy coming back. And of course, Australian foreign correspondents will be telling the story, the international story of COVID as they do, as they cover all those international stories so well. Thank you, Peter Costello, for speaking with me today. Great to be with you. Thanks, Michael. If you'd like to see the rest of our conversation, my full interview with Peter Costello is available on the Lowy Institute website. Each year, we appoint a distinguished panel of judges to help decide the winner of the Lowy Institute Media Award. In the past, judges have included former Foreign Minister's DFAT secretaries, diplomats from Australia and abroad, and senior Australian editors and journalists. This year, our judging panel consisted of former Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, the acclaimed SBS journalist Jenny Brocky, academic journalist and podcaster Louisa Lim, one of our board members Mark Ryan, who's also the director of the Judith Nielsen Institute, and me. We spoke with two of these judges, Julie Bishop and Jenny Brocky, about the finalists for the 2020 Media Award. I've judged a lot of awards over the years. I found this one really tricky and very interesting. The discussion was one of the more stimulating discussions I've had in a judging panel, I think because of the varied nature of the works. You're comparing print media stories with television broadcasts. So there were very different contributions from the nominees, and we could understand each other's perspective, but it was a very dynamic and vibrant discussion. Angus Grig and Jemima White's investigation of Horizon was extremely powerful and meticulous, and I thought, you know, a story that doesn't necessarily make headlines here that people wouldn't be aware of dealt with in that amount of detail, and the depth of that investigation I thought was really powerful. I was really impressed by Kate Lyon's work, covering everything from sorcery-related violence and PNG to climate change. When I looked at the breadth of what she'd covered in a region that we need to know a lot more about, I was very impressed with her work. Sophie's stories focused on matters of vital importance. It gave us an insight into the thinking of the Chinese government. The treatment of Uighurs was particularly shocking in terms of the imagery, and then the uprisings in Hong Kong. It's such an important story for Australia, and I think she gave us a very revealing insight into what is going on there. I thought that Hans Van Luen's writing was beautiful, and I thought his elegant prose just made me grateful that we have people of that calibre of foreign correspondence bringing those issues to an Australian audience. Australia's views are better informed by high quality journalism on international affairs, and it is about educating and making the Australian people aware, but also the policy makers, the decision makers, aware of what's going on around the world so that we can be better informed and we can make better judgments, better policy decisions. I do believe that our international journalists have a significant role to play in informing Australian public policy and making our public aware of global issues. Each year, our judges are tasked with deciding who will be the winner of the Lowy Institute Media Award. This is a time-consuming exercise. Luckily, our judges are always very conscientious. Thank you to Julie Bishop, Jenny Brocky, Louisa Lim and Mark Ryan for bringing such rigor and enthusiasm to this task. After a lot of discussion and spirited debate, I'm delighted to announce that the judges have decided to give the 2020 Lowy Institute Media Award to Sophie McNeill, Echo Huay and Genevieve McGregor from the ABC's Four Corners. Congratulations. Earlier, we gave the good news to Sophie McNeill. Oh, congratulations. You are the winner of the Lowy Institute Media Award 2020. Really? You are. Congratulations. Wow. Oh, wow. Are you filming this? Oh, wow. It's funny because I feel like it's the most important thing I've ever done so this is it. So this means a lot. Thank you so much to Michael and the Lowy Institute. This is a huge honour. Quite blown away. Just would like to thank our Four Corners leadership, incredible leadership from Sally Neighbor and Morag Ramsey, their incredible support for these stories, commissioning them, you know, being there every step of the way. Thank you for being such great people to work for. And my producer Genevieve McGregor and co-producer Echo Huay on The Wiga Story, you know, TV is a team job. You know, you're nothing without your colleagues doing this kind of work. Research by Meredith Griffiths and Michael Walsh and Bang Zhao was just really critical to gathering little elements of this story that made it as strong as it was. Just so privileged to work with such amazing people at the ABC. Hong Kong Story, again, Genevieve and Echo, this wouldn't have happened without them. That's why this is a team entry. This is a team, you know, win. Those women are fantastic journalists. Some of the best journalists I've ever worked with and they're an asset to the ABC and it was such a privilege to work on both of these stories with them. But most importantly, you know, this story and this prize and everything is, you know, it's for Saddam and it's for Almas who are still waiting to be reunited with their families and for all the Australian Uighurs who are in the same position. Thank you for trusting us, for letting us tell your story, but we just hope it helped in a little way. We hope it helped you by letting the world know what was happening and we're not going to stop demanding that your families be freed and that Beijing be held responsible for their crimes. And to the incredibly brave people of Hong Kong, every person we met on the streets who gave up their ordinary life to stand up for what they believed in and to ask the world to help them. You know, I'll never forget the bravery I saw on the streets of Hong Kong and that we continue to see and that's who gives me daily inspiration, you know, to keep going. So thank you, yeah, to the people of Hong Kong. Thanks, Louie. Congratulations again to Sophie McNeill, Echo Huay and Genevieve McGregor. China is changing the world and changing Australia's external circumstances more surely and swiftly than any other country. It's important that Australians help tell the story of modern China and these two episodes of Four Corners throw light on two troubling aspects of this story, the future of Hong Kong and the fate of the Uighurs. Congratulations also to our other finalists, Angus Grieg, Jemima White, Kate Lyons, Hans Van Luen and all their colleagues. Finally, well done to all the Australian journalists around the world reporting the news for us. Your work is important and over the coming year we'll be reading, watching and listening to you. Thank you ladies and gentlemen for joining us.