The Australian


The Australian, including its Saturday edition The Weekend Australian, is a six-days-a-week broadsheet-format newspaper published by News Corp Australia since 14 July 1964. It is one of two Australian daily newspapers distributed nationally. Its readership as of 2019, of both print and online editions, was 2,394,000. Its editorial line has been self-described over time as centre-right.

Owners

The Australian is published by News Corp Australia, an asset of News Corp, which also owns the sole daily newspapers in Brisbane, Adelaide, Hobart, and Darwin, and the most circulated metropolitan daily newspapers in Sydney and Melbourne. News Corp's chairman and founder is Rupert Murdoch.
The Australian integrates content from overseas newspapers owned by News Corp Australia's international owner News Corp, including The Wall Street Journal and The Times of London.

History

The first edition of The Australian was published by Rupert Murdoch on 15 July 1964, becoming the third national newspaper in Australia following shipping newspaper Daily Commercial News and Australian Financial Review. Unlike other original Murdoch newspapers, it is not in tabloid format. At its inauguration, a national paper was considered commercially unfeasible, since newspapers mostly relied on local advertising for their revenue. The Australian was printed in Canberra, from where plates were flown to other cities for copying. From its inception, the paper struggled for profitability, and ran at a loss for several decades.
A Sunday edition, The Sunday Australian, was established in 1971 but was discontinued the following year because printing-press capacity was insufficient to print it in addition to The Sunday Telegraph and the Sunday Mirror.
The Australian's first editor was Maxwell Newton, who left the newspaper within a year. He was succeeded first by Walter Kommer and then by Adrian Deamer. Under Deamer's editorship, The Australian encouraged female journalists and was the first mainstream daily newspaper to hire an Aboriginal reporter, John Newfong.
During the 1975 election, campaigning against the Whitlam government by owner Rupert Murdoch led to the newspaper's journalists striking over editorial direction.
Editor-in-chief Chris Mitchell was appointed in 2002 and retired on 11 December 2015; he was replaced by Paul Whittaker, formerly the editor-in-chief of Sydney's Daily Telegraph.
In 2010, the newspaper launched the first Australian newspaper iPad application.
In 2011, The Australian launched a paywall with a 2.95/week charge for access to its online content., the subscription was AU$44 every four weeks after a reduced-price 3-month trial.
In September 2017, The Australian launched a Chinese language website.
In October 2018, Chris Dore, former editor of The Daily Telegraph, The Courier-Mail and The Sunday Times, was announced as editor-in-chief. He resigned in November 2022 following what was reported as "lewd comments" towards a woman at an event in the United States.
The following month, the newspaper's editorial board began investigating a senior editor after women employees filed complaints about his physical and verbal conduct at an after-work event.
Michelle Gunn was appointed in January 2023 as editor-in-chief – the first woman to assume that position.
Since 2019, The Australian has published an annual study, called Australia's Richest 250, which ranks the country's wealthiest people from one to 250, in order of their net worth.

Coverage

The Australian is one of only two daily newspapers distributed nationally in Australia, the other being the Australian Financial Review.
Daily sections include national news, world news, sport, and business. Contained within each issue is a prominent opinion/editorial section, including regular columnists and occasional contributors. Other regular sections include technology, media, features, legal affairs, aviation, defence, horse-racing, the arts, health, wealth, and higher education. A Travel + Luxury lift-out magazine is included on Saturdays, along with "Inquirer", an in-depth analysis of major stories of the week, alongside much political commentary. Saturday lift-outs include Culture focusing on books, arts, film, and television, and The Weekend Australian Magazine, the only national weekly glossy insert magazine. A glossy magazine, Wish, is published on the first Friday of the month.
"The Australian has long maintained a focus on issues relating to Aboriginal disadvantage." It also devotes attention to the information technology, defence and mining industries, as well as the science, economics, and politics of climate change. It has also published numerous special reports into Australia's energy policy, legal affairs, and research sector.
The Australian Literary Review was a monthly supplement from September 2006 to October 2011.
The tone and nature of The Australian's coverage has changed over time, but since the late 20th century under the ownership of Rupert Murdoch and with Chris Mitchell as editor-in-chief, it has taken a markedly conservative direction.

Editorial and opinion pages

Former editor Paul Kelly stated in 1991, "The Australian has established itself in the marketplace as a newspaper that supports economic libertarianism". Laurie Clancy asserted in 2004 that the newspaper "is generally conservative in tone and heavily oriented toward business; it has a range of columnists of varying political persuasions, but mostly to the right." Former editor-in-chief Chris Mitchell has said that the editorial and op-ed pages of the newspaper are centre-right but "claims it is down the middle in its news coverage".
In 2007, Crikey described the newspaper as generally in support of the Liberal Party of Australia and the then-Coalition government, but has pragmatically supported Labor governments in the past as well. In 2007, The Australian announced their support for Kevin Rudd of the Australian Labor Party in the Federal election. Along with other Australian papers owned by News Ltd, The Australian has been highly and repeatedly critical of the Labor Party.
The Australian has presented varying views on climate change, such as those of Ian Plimer, Tim Flannery and Bjørn Lomborg. A 2011 study of the previous seven years of articles claimed that four out of every five articles were opposed to taking action on climate change.
In 2010, ABC's Media Watch presenter Paul Barry accused The Australian of waging a campaign against the Australian Greens, and the Greens' federal leader Bob Brown wrote that The Australian has "stepped out of the fourth estate by seeing itself as a determinant of democracy in Australia". In response, The Australian opined that "Greens leader Bob Brown has accused The Australian of trying to wreck the alliance between the Greens and Labor. We wear Senator Brown's criticism with pride. We believe he and his Green colleagues are hypocrites; that they are bad for the nation; and that they should be destroyed at the ballot box."
In late 2022, editor-in-chief Chris Dore resigned from The Australian citing health issues. After acting as editor-in-chief following the departure of Dore, Michelle Gunn become the first female editor-in-chief at the newspaper in January 2023. Gunn was replaced as editor by Kelvin Healey.

Notable stories

AWB kickback scandal

, a senior journalist writing for The Australian, reported in 2005 about the Australian Wheat Board funneling hundreds of millions of dollars to Iraq and the government of Saddam Hussein before the start of the Iraq War. This story became known as the AWB oil-for-wheat scandal, and resulted in a commission of inquiry into the matter. Overington received a Walkley Award for her coverage.

Stimulus Watch

In 2009, The Australian ran a large number of articles about the Rudd government's Building the Education Revolution policy, which uncovered purported evidence of overpricing, financial waste, and mismanagement of the building of improvements to schools such as halls, gymnasia, and libraries. On the newspaper's website, a section named "Stimulus Watch", subtitled "How your Billions Are Being Spent", contained a large collection of such articles.
The following year, other media outlets also reported these issues and the policy turned into a political embarrassment for the government, which until then had been able to ignore The Australians reports. Along with the government's insulation stimulus policy, it contributed to criticisms, perceptions of incompetence, and general dissatisfaction with the government's performance.
On 16 July 2010, Julia Gillard was reported to have admitted that the school-building program was flawed and that errors had been made because the program was designed in haste to protect jobs during the Great Recession.

AWU Affair

In 2011, Glenn Milne reported on the allegations against Prime Minister Julia Gillard concerning the AWU affair, including a claim regarding Gillard's living arrangements with Australian Workers' Union official Bruce Wilson. Gillard contacted the chief executive of The Australian, resulting in the story being removed and an apology and retraction posted in its place.
On 18 August 2012, Hedley Thomas reported that Gillard had left her job as a partner with law firm Slater & Gordon as a direct result of a secret internal investigation in 1995 into corrupt conduct on behalf of her then-boyfriend Ralph Blewett. The story was ignored for a long time by other media outlets until after Gillard held a press conference to respond to the allegations against her. In 2013, the Fair Work Commission commenced initial inquiries into allegations of improper union financial conduct, and the government initiated a judicial inquiry into the AWU affair in December of that year as part of a royal commission into trade unions.