Central Coast journalist Joanne McCarthy has been recognised with an Outstanding Contribution to Journalism award at the annual Walkley Awards for Excellence in Journalism and dedicated her win to young climate change activists.
“The great moral challenge of our time is climate change,” McCarthy said.
“The point of view should (come from) the young – not bloody baby boomer politicians and the vested interests,” she said to applause at the awards ceremony in Sydney on November 23.
“So I dedicate this to those young activists out there.
“I also dedicate it to them because they are standing up for my grandchildren.”
The Walkley is the latest in a series of accolades for the journalist whose two main bodies of work with the Newcastle Herald led to an inquiry into women’s health and a Royal Commission into child sexual abuse.
McCarthy wrote more than 1,000 articles on Catholic Church child sex abuse cases from 2006 and won the Gold Walkley in 2013.
The Royal Commission ran for five years from 2012 and heard from 6,875 survivors of abuse, conducted 57 public hearings and held 444 hearing days.
McCarthy said that every day was a moral decision about what to do and as a journalist she loved that, but when there was no morality from the people who really should be doing things, that was corrosive.
“It was systems and institutions that failed, men of a certain ilk, who liked making decisions and calling the shots but weren’t crash hot on transparency and accountability,” she said.
“Systems don’t fail, institutions don’t fail because of one decision maker.
“They fail because of tons and tons, hundreds and thousands of bad decisions; people who could make decisions in the public interest – to do the right thing, to look after the vulnerable – don’t.
“They make excuses and that is the easiest way to explain it.
“They prioritise things that should not be prioritised like the reputation of the institution, their own personal ambitions, or they just don’t want to be involved.
“If I had a dollar for every person who said they didn’t want to be involved – we all know them.”
McCarthy joked that she used to write about coal mining in the Hunter as light relief.
“There’s nothing like having a blue with a multi-national mining company to put a zip in your step,” she joked.
In 2017, McCarthy received the inaugural Walkley Public Service Journalism award for three years of work investigating the pelvic mesh scandal which led to an Australian Senate Inquiry into the devices and an apology to the women from the then Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt in 2017.
McCarthy was one of eight women who received the award which the Walkley Foundation said was to redress the lack of honours given in the past to high-achieving women in the industry.
A life-long resident of the Central Coast, McCarthy began her career at the Gosford Star and then the Central Coast Express before working for the Newcastle Herald.