Nick McKenzie


Nick McKenzie is an Australian journalist and author who has won multiple Walkley Awards.
He works for Nine Newspapers, based in Melbourne's The Age newspaper and also appearing in theThe Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian Financial Review. He was also a reporter for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's television program, Four Corners and is also a reporter for Nine's tabloid current affairs programme 60 Minutes.

Life and career

His career began as a cadet journalist at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, later joining Fairfax Media. McKenzie's reporting has led to a number of government inquiries and police investigations, including a federal police probe into political donations given by alleged mafia figures.
McKenzie’s reporting on corruption and organised crime within the Australian Customs service in 2012 was recognised with a Walkley Award. The reporting led to reforms of the Australian customs service announced in 2013 by Home Affairs Minister Jason Clare and overseen by former NSW judge James Wood.
A news story by McKenzie on Four Corners in 2014 into abuse in disability care homes led to a Victorian Ombudsman inquiry and a federal senate inquiry, which recommended a royal commission that was later announced by the Morrison Government.
In 2012, McKenzie obtained confidential Victoria Police files documenting the suicides of at least 40 people sexually abused by Catholic clergy in Victoria. Victorian Premier Ted Baillieu immediately called a parliamentary inquiry into abuse allegations by religious clergy.
McKenzie has been involved in many high profile stories. He interviewed Australian terrorist leader Abdul Nacer Benbrika months before Benbrika was arrested and jailed for leading terror cells in Sydney and Melbourne. During Benbrika’s court case, the public prosecutor told the court that Benbrika was covertly recorded by authorities claiming that he had threatened McKenzie, telling him to “watch yourself” and that he knew how to find the reporter.
An interview McKenzie conducted with sports scientist Steven Dank was used by Australia’s anti-doping agency ASADA in its controversial doping case against the Essendon Football Club.
An report in 2009 by McKenzie and his Nine Newspapers colleague Richard Baker into alleged foreign bribery involving two companies owned by the Reserve Bank of Australia, sparked a national scandal and prompted an investigation by the Australian Federal Police. It ultimately led to Australia's first-ever foreign bribery prosecution in 2011, with the criminal charging of two firms, Securency and Note Printing Australia and several individuals. McKenzie and Baker were awarded a Walkley Award for Investigative Reporting for their investigation, which also led to the governor of the Reserve Bank, Glenn Stevens, testifying before a Senate committee to respond to allegations the bank mishandled the scandal.
In 2014, a report co-authored by McKenzie on an undisclosed multi-million dollar payment to Hong Kong chief executive CY Leung from Australian company UGL, prompted widespread calls for Leung's resignation and sparked an investigation by Hong Kong authorities.
Much of McKenzie's work has been produced with Richard Baker. In 2016, the pair revealed the Unaoil oil industry corruption scandal that implicated some of the world's biggest oil industry firms, including Rolls Royce, ABB, Petrofac and Halliburton in alleged corruption involving a Monaco firm called Unaoil. In 2019, the founders of Unaoil pleaded guilty to bribery and corruption offences in the United States.

Case on database access

In 2010, McKenzie and two colleagues, investigative reporters Ben Schneiders and Royce Millar, wrote a story detailing how political parties were storing personal information about voters, raising privacy concerns. A Greens party candidate in the 2010 state election, Fraser Brindley, had supplied the password to a political party database, which he had obtained unlawfully and the journalists including McKenzie subsequently accessed the ALP Eleczilla database.
The Victorian Electoral Commissioner referred the journalists to Victoria Police, who charged McKenzie with unauthorised access to a restricted database. McKenzie and his co-accused admitted responsibility for the offence as part of a by acknowledging they accessed the database, thereby avoiding a conviction.
The trio’s barrister told the magistrate the journalists believed there was a public interest in whether political parties should maintain such data and that investigative journalists provide “genuine service to this community.” The Age also agreed to publish a news article and editorial acknowledging the unlawful conduct. The Age editor-in-chief Andrew Holden defended the paper's decision to publish the database story, stating that investigative journalists needed to pursue stories in the public interest but said the paper was not mindful enough of the legal issues involved.

Documentaries

McKenzie has been awarded the Graham Perkin Australian Journalist of the Year Award and the Lowy Institute Media Award for his documentary reporting on foreign interference in Australia by the Chinese Communist Party.
His 2017 Four Corners documentary program Power and Influence reported that ASIO had warned Australian political parties about receiving donations from two men, billionaires Huang Xiangmo and Chau Chak Wing. It also reported that former Trade Minister Andrew Robb had been hired on a $880,000 yearly consultancy by a company closely linked to the Chinese government.
The story sparked intense national political debate and was a catalyst for new counter foreign interference laws. Donor Huang Xiangmo was in 2018 expelled from Australia by ASIO on security grounds but maintains the allegations made about him are false. In 2018, Chau Chak Wing commenced defamation proceedings in June 2018 against McKenzie, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Fairfax Media over the joint investigation.
In July 2019, McKenzie presented a report on Nine Network's TV program 60 Minutes titled Crown Unmasked which made allegations that Crown Resorts had violated Chinese law by promoting its casinos to mainland gamblers. The investigation, which was assisted by The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald newspapers and featured comments from former Crown employees, also questioned Crown’s relationships with certain junket operators — the middlemen who help recruit VIP gamblers and act as credit agents to get around China’s capital controls — that have been linked to Hong Kong’s triads. The investigation also revealed the existence of an arrangement with Australia’s Department of Home Affairs to speed up processing of short-stay visa applications by Crown’s VIP gamblers. Crown denied the report's claims, publishing advertisements in local newspapers calling the investigation “a deceitful campaign” that relied on “unsubstantiated allegations, exaggerations, unsupported connections and outright falsehoods.” Federal and state authorities, including the Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity and the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission, have opened probes into the allegations.

Awards and recognition

McKenzie has won Australia's top journalism award, the Walkley Award, on eight occasions.
In 2012, McKenzie and Baker were rated the third most influential journalists or editors in Australia by news website Crikey.
McKenzie won the Graham Perkin Australian Journalist of the Year award with Baker in 2017 for his work on Chinese Communist Party interference in Australia.
In 2010, McKenzie and his colleague Richard Baker were awarded the prestigious George Munster Prize for Independent Journalism by the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism.
McKenzie is the most decorated journalist in the history of the Melbourne Press Club's Quill Awards and has twice won the press club's highest award, the Gold Quill.

Books

In 2012, McKenzie's book The Sting, about one of Australia's biggest organised crime and money laundering investigations, was published by Melbourne University Publishing Victory Books.
McKenzie has also contributed to the Australian journalism textbooks, Australian Journalism Today and The Best Australian Business Writing.