Ben Hills

Award winning author / investigative journalist

Profile

Ben Hills (1942–2018) was one of Australia’s most influential investigative journalists, a foreign correspondent, television producer and the author of six books. He was a Walkley Award winner and in 2014, was inducted into the Australian Media Hall of Fame.

Early life and career

Born in Grassington, Yorkshire, Ben migrated to Australia with his family in 1959. He was educated in England, on the Continent and in Australia, attended Queensland University, and began his journalism career as a cadet reporter on the Stanthorpe Border Post.

He subsequently worked for newspapers in Forbes, Goulburn and Hobart, before joining The Age in Melbourne in 1969, during the editorship of Graham Perkin. Ben later led The Age’s Insight investigative team, delivering major exclusives that exposed corruption in Housing Commission land deals and contributed to the downfall of the Hamer–Thompson Liberal Government, as well as the Loans Affair investigation that led to the dismissal of the Whitlam Labor Government in 1975.

  • Turtle-farming on Badu Island, Torres Strait early 1970s. Photo -Ben Hills
  • Election ’75 -- Malcolm Fraser uses Ben as a lectern to autograph a how-to-vote card on the campaign trail in Warnambool.
  • Teenage militia training during the civil war in Lebanon 1976. Photo - Ben Hills
  • The cannibal king... Jean-Bedel Bokassa crowns himself Emperor of the Central African Republic, Bangui 1977. Photo - Ben Hills
  • Scorcher... it was 54°C the day I visited these Bedouin refugees from a forgotten war in their camp near Tindouf in the Sahara Desert. Photo - Ben Hills

Foreign correspondence

In the mid-1970s, Ben was based in London as a roving foreign correspondent, principally covering the Middle East and Africa. He reported on civil wars in Lebanon, the Sahara, Liberia, Ethiopia and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), as well as Northern Ireland and Iceland.

His reporting ranged from the coronation of Emperor Bokassa in the Central African Empire, to ivory smuggling in Kenya, humanitarian health campaigns in West Africa, oil tanker disasters, political show trials and independence movements across Africa and the Middle East.

In the early 1980s, Ben spent two years in Hong Kong as publisher of Syme Media Enterprises, travelling extensively throughout Asia.

From 1992 to 1995, he was the Japan correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. This period included coverage of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki anniversary commemorations, the Aum Shinrikyo sarin gas attack, the Kobe earthquake and the election of Japan’s first non-LDP government. These experiences formed the basis of his book Japan: Behind the Lines.

  • On the road in Zurich with 60 Minutes, 1983 -- Ben (brandishing gold ingot), Jana Wendt, sound recordist Ross McKay, and cameraman and Jana’s husband-to-be Brendan Ward.
  • Last story for 60 Minutes -- a gold-rush up the Amazon at a place called Serra Palada, 1985. The miners call themselves formigas (ants) and the treacherous ladders they use to scramble into and out of that kilometre-deep pit are known as ‘adios mama.’ Photo -- Ben Hills
  • It’s a tough job -- but someone has to do it. Covering the vintage at Epernay, capital of the Champagne region, 1986.
  • A selection of Press passes from the 1970s (clockwise, from top left) Tasmania, Central African Empire, Scotland Yard, London and Lebanon.

Television and investigative work

Ben spent four years as a producer on Australia’s 60 Minutes, working with the programme’s original team under founding executive producer Gerald Stone. His investigations took him across the globe and included stories on stolen babies in Taiwan, dangerous pharmaceuticals, gold mining in Brazil, the first Australian television reporting on AIDS, Indigenous affairs, live sheep exports and missile defence systems.

Returning to print journalism, Ben specialised in exposing business and political corruption. His Walkley Award was awarded for The Big Steal, a three-continent investigation into a $70 million international banking fraud involving the Swiss Banking Corporation.

For almost two decades, Ben campaigned against the asbestos industry, particularly CSR and James Hardie, documenting corporate attempts to evade responsibility for industrial disease and death. This work formed the basis of his first book and later international research publications.

  • Covering Japan’s greatest disaster since World War II -- the Kobe earthquake of 1995 which killed 6000 and left the city in ruins. Photo - Mayu Kanamori.
  • The hermit kingdom... reporting from a mass rally in Kim Jong-Il’s North Korea, 1996. Photo - Ben Hills.
  • Ben Hills Walkley Award
  • hall of fame ben hills

Awards and recognition

  • Walkley Award for Investigative Journalism (1991)
  • Highly commended, Graham Perkin Journalist of the Year Award
  • Alex Buzo Prize for Breaking News: The Golden Age of Graham Perkin
  • Inducted into the Melbourne Press Club Media Hall of Fame (2014)

Remembering Ben

Ben Hills passed away in June 2018. His work remains a powerful record of journalism in service of the public interest, and this site exists to ensure it remains accessible, relevant and read.