Reportage and Essays

A collaboration between Professor Michael Salter and Jess Hill, this piece called for a fundamental rethink of Australia’s gender-based violence prevention strategy.

Rethinking Primary Prevention

Substack

Apr 2024

The campaign to restore the single parenting payment was a model of how research and advocacy can push government to face the cruel effects of a policy and change course.

How to change a bad law

The Monthly

Dec 2023

During this uneasy pause, as an untreatable pathogen forced us to shelter in place, we had a rare chance to look beyond the hour-to-hour dramas that consume us. On the one hand, everything seemed to be getting worse - more corrupt, more autocratic, more ignorant, more dangerous. But something else held true: we are living through an accelerated period of resistance.

Privilege, power, patriarchy: are these the reasons for the mess we're in?

The Guardian

Oct 2020

This essay examines how the COVID-19 lockdown disproportionately impacted women, partially undoing decades of progress in employment, shared domestic labour, and protection from family violence.

The gendered pandemic

The Monthly

Aug 2020

This Walkley-award winning piece investigated the Family Court's systemic failures to protect children from abuse.

Suffer the children

The Monthly

Nov 2015

Pretty much everything I thought I knew about violence against women and children turned out to be wrong, and I’m not ashamed to admit it. The fact that domestic abuse (and gender-based violence more generally) is so counter-intuitive is exactly why the media needs to keep telling these stories.

What I've learned about domestic violence in my year reporting on it

The Guardian

Sep 2015

For decades, the Family Court has been one of Australia’s most controversial institutions - and one of the least scrutinised, with strict privacy laws making reporting exceptionally difficult. This Background Briefing examines some of the Court’s most complex and troubling cases: those involving allegations of child sexual abuse.

In the child's best interests

ABC Background Briefing

Jun 2015

Two months of research, hundreds of phone calls, trips interstate and an obsessive determination to understand the nature of domestic abuse - this essay was the beginning of an odyssey that continues to this day.

Home truths

The Monthly

Mar 2015

How network companies lined their pockets by ‘gold-plating’ the poles and wires, and drove electricity prices through the roof. The essay became one of the ten all-time most-read articles on the Monthly website, and exposed to the general public one of the most costly and all-pervasive rorts in Australia's history.

Power Corrupts

The Monthly

Jul 2014

In the early 2000s, more than a thousand asylum seekers died trying to get to Australia by boat. But how many of them could have been saved? Australia’s search and rescue authorities stand accused of unnecessary delays, disregarding distress calls and passing responsibility to Indonesia, which was not equipped to carry out rescue operations.

Asylum seekers: drowning on our watch

ABC Background Briefing

Dec 2013

Why is Egypt’s military regime trying to scare journalists away from the factory town of Mahalla? Because its workers inspired last year’s ‘Arab Spring’ — and they have the power to start another one.

Will Egypt’s Workers Rise Up Again?

The Global Mail

Feb 2012

Reporting archive

2025

(x)

Losing It: Can we stop violence against women and children?

Quarterly Essay

Mar 2025

2024

(x)

We won’t stop violence against women with conversations about respect. This is not working. We need to get real.

Apr 2024

Rethinking Primary Prevention

Substack

Apr 2024

Chapter in ‘Not Now, Not Ever’, Edited by Julia Gillard

Penguin

Feb 2024

2023

(x)

How to change a bad law

The Monthly

Dec 2023

Asking For It docuseries

2021

(x)

‘The Reckoning: How #MeToo is changing Australia’

Quarterly Essay

Nov 2021

Submission to the NSW Coercive Control Inquiry

NSW Government

Sep 2021

The Trap podcast series

Victoria Women’s Trust

Aug 2021

Australia’s number-one law and order issue

The Monthly

May 2021

See What You Made Me Do docuseries

SBS

May 2021

Watch

2020

(x)

Is Domestic-Abuse Policing Fit For Purpose?

Meanjin

Dec 2020

Privilege, power, patriarchy: are these the reasons for the mess we're in?

Oct 2020

The gendered pandemic

The Monthly

Aug 2020

Concerns the coronavirus lockdown has created an unsafe environment for women in abusive relationships

ABC 730

May 2020

Coercive control laws in NSW

Saturday Paper

Mar 2020

Children and family law: 'How can you share parenting with an abusive parent?'

Mar 2020

2019

(x)

Family law inquiry is no sop to Hanson. It's a deliberate move to bury previous reviews

Safety Net

I believed the Australian family court system was biased against fathers – then I found the rot at the core of it

Sep 2019

2015

(x)

The big disconnect

Dec 2015

The great energy spend that is costing us billions

Suffer the children

What I've learned about domestic violence in my year reporting on it

Sep 2015

The devil in the trade deal

Jul 2015

In the child's best interests

Jun 2015

A cycle of violence

May 2015

How funding changes in NSW locked women out of domestic violence refuges (with Hagar Cohen)

Home truths

2014

(x)

The high price of gas

Power Corrupts

No journalist's report could damage Egypt as much as the Al-Jazeera verdict

Jun 2014

The price of power

Jun 2014

Death spiral begins for Australian electricity companies

ABC Science Show

May 2014

The Abbot Point gamble

Mar 2014

2013

(x)

Asylum seekers: drowning on our watch

Dec 2013

The Interview: Saleyha Ahsan

ABC Sunday Nights

Oct 2013

Foreign Shia jihadists in Syria

ABC Religion and Ethics

Oct 2013

Bulga vs Rio Tinto

Jul 2013

ABC Correspondents Report

What it’s like to have a seizure

Feb 2013

2012

(x)

Help: Status, Servants and Double Standards

Oct 2012

Going Home, To Aleppo

Oct 2012

Never Talk Back To A Saudi Judge

Blame The Sheikhs

Tomorrow, When The War Began

Aug 2012

The Bold Comedians of Syria Strike Back

Jul 2012

Would You Go To Jail To Save Your Language?

Jul 2012

Greetings From Tripoli

Jul 2012

The Revolution Will Be Politicised

Deal Or No Deal

Crowds in Tahrir Square welcome news of Mubarak demise

Going Rogue In Egypt

Bahrain’s Bloody Stalemate

May 2012

Voting With No Confidence In Egypt

Apr 2012

Rage And Refuge On The Border

Apr 2012

Syria’s Propaganda War

Apr 2012

The Doves Of Damascus

Turkey: The Powerful And Paranoid

Istanbul - Jumping Out Of Its Skin

The Angry Librarians of Alexandria

The Middle East’s Translator

The Growing Rebellion in Saudi Arabia

The Battle for Egyptian Islam

I Am Woman, Watch Me Drive

Baptism by Fire

Egypt’s Trust Deficit

In Baba Amr, Snipers Shoot At Everything That Moves

Will Egypt’s Workers Rise Up Again?

2011

(x)

As doctors jailed, Western nations plan weapons sales to Bahrain

Sep 2011

Bab al Aziziya compound next opposition target

Aug 2011

Google, and The Cloud - A Cautionary Tale

Jul 2011

Program: Egyptian protesters clash with security forces in Cairo

Jun 2011

Tripoli resident says protesters are rising up in Libya's capital

May 2011

More Bahraini human rights activists arrested

Citizen journalists secretly film the conflict in Misurata

Syrian crackdown continues

Italian activist killed in the Gaza Strip

Libyan journalist Nabbous killed in Benghazi

Mar 2011

Syrian forces accused of shooting protesters

Mar 2011

Bahraini opposition leaders taken from their homes

Mar 2011

Fears Mexican drug gang spreading to other countries

Feb 2011

2010

(x)

Questions raised about ExxonMobil partnering the Walkley Foundation

Jul 2010

Geothermal Energy explored

Jan 2010

2009

(x)

Malawi's child tobacco labourers suffering nicotine poisoning

Aug 2009

Victorian energy companies to turn coal into oil

Jul 2009

Renowned Russian activist found dead in Ingushetia

Jul 2009

Shell Pays The Money And Runs

Jun 2009

The WHO That Cried Flu?

May 2009

Thanks For Nothing, Boss

May 2009

Stuck In The Present – Review of ‘The Next 100 Years’

Shell On Trial

Stranded At A West Papuan Airport

Mar 2009

US Election Coverage with David Hollier - Another Hard Day For The Cynics

Jan 2009

2008

(x)

US Election Coverage with David Hollier - In The Park With Obama

Nov 2008

US Election Coverage with David Hollier - The King of Swings

Nov 2008

US Election Coverage with David Hollier - Down and Out in Santa Barbara

US Election Coverage with David Hollier - Get Ready for an October Surprise

US Election Coverage with David Hollier - Tonight We're Gonna Party Like it's 2004

US Election Coverage with David Hollier - With God on His Side

US Election Coverage with David Hollier - It’s Not Easy Being Green In The US

US Election Coverage with David Hollier - America’s Sleeping Giant Speaks Spanish