Year
2024
Category
Gold Walkley
Selected unanimously by the Walkley Judging Board, “Building Bad” is the story of the year. The judges declared it “an incredible, courageous feat of investigative journalism with huge ramifications. A story Australian journalists have been trying to tell for decades.” They added: “Nick McKenzie and his team finally nailed it, in a massive cross-platform, inter-newsroom collaboration.”
The 60 Minutes program came after a months-long investigation, and revealed how bikies, criminals and underworld figures had infiltrated the building industry, including on large publicly funded projects.
The Building Bad Team is Nick McKenzie from The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and 60 Minutes, David Marin-Guzman from The Australian Financial Review, Ben Schneiders from The Age, Garry McNab and Amelia Ballinger from 60 Minutes, and Reid Butler from Nine News.
McKenzie, Schneiders and Marin-Guzman pooled sources in the union, building industry, policing agencies and underworld to kick off the investigation. CFMEU assistant secretary Leo Skourdoumbis blew the whistle on camera, and the Heydon royal commission’s lead investigator gave his first-ever interview. McKenzie got covert recordings of union threats and spent weeks surveilling crime figures, getting critical corroborative video of dealings between the union and gangsters. The team organised a sting to expose a union fixer and bribe taker.
Marin-Guzman used a network of sources and court records to unpack a corrupt Enterprise Bargaining Agreement involving underworld figures, while Schneiders and McKenzie obtained phone and police records that exposed Victorian branch head John Setka’s secret communications. Butler convinced a grieving Indigenous family to go on the record, while Ballinger and McNab helped produce the program.
After “Building Bad” broke, John Setka resigned and the construction branch of the CFMEU was placed in administration. The program sparked major probes and new laws, and led the Albanese government to commit to sweeping root and branch reform of Labor’s biggest donor.
Judges’ comments:
“This was a sustained and surgical journalistic operation on a malignant public scandal. Exhaustive research, trust building and a compelling array of interviews, secret recordings and surveillance recordings were distilled into a startling expo. Few stories have such swift and stunning consequences.”