Guardian Australia reporters Christopher Knaus and Lorena Allam have won an award for a series of stories that revealed the government-run controversial debit pay system was being used as a vehicle for economic abuse.
The reporters won the outstanding consumer affairs category at this year’s Kennedy Foundation awards for excellence in journalism.
The series revealed how the nations most vulnerable had been exploited by businesses through the facilitation of Centrepay, a government service designed to help welfare recipients pay for essentials including rent and power bills via automatic deductions paid directly to providers.
Following the investigative series, the government announced its intention for “fundamental” reform. It said it had been conducting “priority work” on Centrepay reform behind the scenes earlier, but nothing concrete was announced until months after Guardian Australia’s investigation was published.
Knaus and Allam’s series was up against two other finalists, the ABC Four Corners’ Ozempic Underground by Elise Worthington and Lesley Robinson, and the ABC’s Whiff of Robodebt: ATO Revives Old Tax Debts Totaling Billions by Nassim Khadem.
Guardian Australia reporters were also finalists in the Kennedy Awards Indigenous affairs reporting category for Lorena Allam, Sarah Collard and Blake Sharp-Wiggins’ story Buried Lives: Possible Clandestine Burials at an Aboriginal Children’s Home.
The story revealed last September there are at least nine “suspicious” sites of possible graves on the grounds of Kinchela Aboriginal Boys Training Home, one of the most violent and abusive institutions of the stolen generations era.
In July, the New South Wales government announced it would engage a specialist to explore the site of the boys home.
Daniel Clarke, a freelancer for Guardian Australia, won two awards; outstanding reporting on the environment and regional broadcast reporting.
Both awards were won for a body of work on Kangaroo Island, co-published with Guardian Australia, Ad Hoc Docs, Foxtel/Binge, and Network 7.
