Nick McKenzie investigation leads Age's Kennedy Awards finalists
The awards, named in honour of the late Herald crime reporter Les Kennedy, this year attracted more than 900 entries of exceptional quality, Kennedy Foundation chairperson Carl Dumbrell said.
The Age 's nominations were led by Nick McKenzie's investigative series Building Bad, which looked into allegations of intimidation and corruption in the building industry.
It was nominated for outstanding investigative reporting in a joint Nine Network entry from The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian Financial Review and 60 Minutes.
Senior reporter Sarah Danckert and Carla Jaeger are finalists in the outstanding business reporting category for their story Cash for the Boys, which looked at how underworld figures pulled the strings at ASX-listed technology group Dubber.
Loading
Age senior writer Michael Bachelard and Age investigative reporter Charlotte Grieve were nominated for outstanding environmental reporting for their story on whether carbon offset schemes in the outback are working.
Foreign affairs and national security correspondent Matthew Knott and photographer Kate Geraghty are joint finalists in the outstanding foreign correspondent category for their work on the Israel-Hezbollah war.
Former chief political correspondent, now European correspondent, David Crowe is nominated for outstanding columnist. Travel writer Andrew Bain and the Herald's Kate McClymont and Harriet Alexander were among other finalists.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles

Sky News AU
2 hours ago
- Sky News AU
‘Buffoonery knows no bounds': Pro-Palestine group to march over Sydney Harbour Bridge
Sky News host Danica De Giorgio discusses pro-Palestine activists planning to march over the Sydney Harbour Bridge. 'Well, good luck if you're planning to travel to and from the Sydney CBD on Sunday, the Harbour Bridge is about to be hijacked by anti-Israel activists,' Ms De Giorgio said. 'Do they understand anything about notices and permits? And look, it is not just in Sydney where these people are seeking relevance.'

ABC News
2 hours ago
- ABC News
Photographing famine
And now to a grim tipping point in what has become one of the defining conflicts of our time. With much of Gaza reduced to ruins and estimates courtesy of the Gazan health ministry of 60,000 dead including 17,000 children, the battle for food and water is now a crisis: MAN: I swear, it's been four days since we've eaten and I can't stand, look at my hands shaking. - Deutsche Welle News/SBS, 23 July 2025 Two million people fighting for the pickings delivered by a broken and vastly inadequate aid program. Those convoys that do get through are swamped, while hundreds of the hungry and desperate have been shot dead: CAITRÍONA PERRY: The UN Human Rights Office says more than 500 people have been killed trying to reach those aid points which are now run by the US and Israeli governments. A UN official has described the system as 'an abomination' and 'a death trap'. Israel rejects allegations that it has committed war crimes in Gaza. - BBC News, 25 July 2025 The UN says nearly a quarter of the 2.1 million people in Gaza are now facing famine-like conditions and last week more than 100 aid agencies and NGOs accused the Israeli Government of laying siege to Gaza and restricting the flow of aid, which Israel denies, claiming large volumes of food are being pilfered by Hamas: DAVID MENCER: There is a man-made shortage, but it's been engineered by Hamas. That's the point. That's the end of the sentence, which you don't include. This suffering exists because Hamas made it so. Here are the facts … There is no famine in Gaza. There is a famine of the truth. - Sky News UK, 24 July 2025 There can be little cavilling however that children in Gaza are facing hunger—the disabled and vulnerable among them hardest hit. Powerful evidence emerging in the past week courtesy of Palestinian journalists. But it was the images of one child which stopped the world. And a warning, these are difficult to see. These photographs of 18-month-old Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub al-Matouq whose emaciated body is being denied the baby formula it needs. Captured in the rubble of Gaza City by journalist Ahmed Jihad Ibrahim Al-arini, the shocking photograph spurred one of the world's most proudly conservative newspapers to draw up this extraordinary edition: FOR PITY'S SAKE STOP THIS NOW - Daily Express, 23 July 2025 … and galvanised newspaper editors from Toronto to Sao Paolo to fill page one with similar scenes of agony and deprivation: Forced into Famine - Toronto Star, 24 July 2025 DON'T LOOK AWAY - Daily Mirror, 26 July 2025 By Friday morning, Nine's The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age were following suit. The AFR ran confronting images inside the paper on Saturday, while SBS and the ABC have run similar pictures online and on TV. We spoke to the photographer who took this harrowing image: I saw the tent of the family … and went inside to start taking pictures. It was an incredibly difficult environment in every sense … The woman in the photo is a widow; she lost her husband in the war. She is trying to raise her two children alone … The war has deprived them of everything. - Email, Ahmed Jihad Ibrahim Al-arini, photographer, 26 July 2025 The BBC's International editor Jeremy Bowen, using a Palestinian freelancer, tracked down the boy's mother, Hedaya al-Muta'wi: JEREMY BOWEN: His name is Mohammed, he's 18 months old and he weighs six kilos… HEDAYA AL-MUTA'WI: He can't stand up on his feet or sit because of the fatigue. We can't get baby formula for Mo, because the prices are too high. I go from one hospital to another trying to get him formula. - BBC News, 26 July 2025 There are now also urgent concerns for the people behind the lens. On Friday Agence France-Presse, the Associated Press, the BBC and Reuters warned their journalists were facing the threat of starvation. One of the ABC's own freelancers losing the ability to operate his camera and Al-arini told us he's not immune from the bleak realities either: I fainted three times while taking photos due to hunger and thirst … We lost our home, we are displaced, and the children cry constantly from hunger … The displacement, the fight for survival, and the struggle between life and death experienced by the people here are beyond imagination. - Email, Ahmed Jihad Ibrahim Al-arini, photographer, 26 July 2025 The Sydney Morning Herald's veteran conflict photographer, Kate Geraghty, told us: There are moments in history when an image is so powerful … that it can effect change and sometimes end wars … … The images taken by the incredibly brave Palestinian photographers of children starving in Gaza … are such images. - Email, Kate Geraghty, Photojournalist, The Sydney Morning Herald, 25 July 2025 So consequential, the work of these photographers, on Saturday the Israeli military announced it would allow the resumption of air drops of food and reestablish safe routes for the deployment of aid convoys into the strip. Evidence the right image at the right time can move the world.

The Age
3 hours ago
- The Age
Vilifying art-lovers at the NGV is a step too far
To submit a letter to The Age, email letters@ Please include your home address and telephone number below your letter. No attachments. See here for our rules and tips on getting your letter published. PROTESTS Exiting the NGV on Sunday, I was confronted by women protesting. My first instinct was to think they are women like me. As a teacher and Christian leader I've worked for peace, justice and reconciliation in education, churches and communities creating meaningful ways of offering hopeful transformation. I am a protester. But my instinct was wrong about these women as I don't target individuals and vilify them as they did to hundreds of us. A woman with the megaphone claimed 'anyone entering the NGV was ensuring the NGV thinks it's OK to hang out with fascists. You have blood on your hands and you support Zionism.' She then got personal to one woman saying 'you in the hat, you are supporting genocide entering the NGV'. I was collecting my bike nearby and foolishly engaged suggesting we can protest but it's wrong to target individuals as perpetrators of genocide. She then directed the megaphone at me chanting 'you support genocide'. She's right; we are all complicit in systemic and collective sins of commission and omission. But broad scale public vilification is not protest. It polarises, shuts down empathy and divides us further. Sally Apokis, South Melbourne Albanese should offer more than a gesture Anthony Albanese is correct in that the government should not recognise Palestine as a gesture only. He should do it as a commitment to the people of Palestine (''We won't make a decision as a gesture': Albanese says no imminent move to recognise Palestine ', 28/7). At the moment Albanese is gesturing, not acting. He is unprepared to take a bold stand, whether it be to recognise Palestine or sanction Israel for its blatant crimes. While acknowledging the heartbreak of seeing children starve, he makes no mention of genocide or ethnic cleansing. It's time he be a true leader. Lorel Thomas, Blackburn South Australia must act Sadly it appears the world's leaders are deaf and blind to what has been happening in Gaza. And as Sean Kelly noted (' Mere words won't pass our moral test ', 28/7) only two months after the horrific Hamas attacks on Israelis on October 7, 2023, already 93 per cent of people were in phases 3, 4 or 5 of food insecurity. In May UN experts noted that 'while States debate terminology — is it or is it not genocide? — Israel continues its relentless destruction of life in Gaza, through attacks by land, air and sea, displacing and massacring the surviving population with impunity'. When will the Australian government take action? It's time we say to the US and the UK that we will not proceed with AUKUS unless arms supplies to Israel stop. Where is the power of leaders if they take no action to stop this carnage in Gaza? Peta Colebatch, Hawthorn Blame not so simple Regarding Sean Kelly, the Geneva Conventions allow the blocking of aid if the enemy is stealing or using it. Kelly cites a New York Times story denying Hamas is doing so, but a Washington Post report set out in detail, citing many witnesses including Gazans, how Hamas is in financial crisis because Israel has stopped it taxing aid, or stealing and selling it. Kelly writes about famine starting within months of the war beginning, but those warnings were retracted by the Famine Early Warning System, a US-funded monitoring group. The UN is also culpable. After ending its nine-week blockade in May, after having allowed enough aid into Gaza to last for some months, Israel not only facilitated the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which has distributed around 95 million meals, but also resumed UN access. However, there were recently 900 truckloads of aid inside Gaza checkpoints the UN hadn't collected. As for the suggestion of recognising a Palestinian state, only Palestinian Authority intransigence has prevented such a state. Hamas would say recognition only happened because of the October 7 atrocities. Recognition would simply encourage further Palestinian rejectionism and terrorism. Jamie Hyams, Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council Statehood for Palestine The people of the world claiming statehood for Palestine are living in a world of delusion. There are so many questions that still need to be asked. Some of these are: What are the geographical boundaries that define this state called Palestine? Who are the citizens of Palestine and who makes the decisions as to who becomes a citizen? What are the institutions that govern this state called Palestine? Are Jews allowed to be citizens of this new state called Palestine? These are only a few of the questions that need to be considered. No leader nor a member of the lobby groups that are advocating for statehood have made proposals that define this state. It's disingenuous on all people wishing for a state called Palestine because it's a falsehood. The people who are most vulnerable and exploited are once again being led up a path of others making. Graham Haupt, Glen Waverley Revert to 1947 borders Yes, as several correspondents to this page have stated, there are other serious human massacres also occurring, right now, in Yemen, and in Sudan. The difference is that those wars are not openly supported by a vocal and prominent segment of Australians, or accepted by Australian governments. Injustice for the people of Gaza stings our collective conscience. Here, and around the world. The only fair and long-term solution is to formally recognise those 1947 UN borders and allow the two states to exist as equals — with equal rights to exist, and also equal rights to have the military capability to defend themselves. Geoffrey McNaughton, Glen Huntly