I covered the protester aspect of the 2007 Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) summit in Sydney for the Sydney Morning Herald. Using direct reporting and a series of Freedom-of-Information requests I found that police were forced to make a payout for wrongly arresting a protester, spent $2 million on a…
Dead at 19: killed by a drug cocktail in his cell
JOSHUA CAMERON was 19 when he overdosed on a cocktail of prescription drugs in his cell at the maximum security Long Bay Correctional Complex. Tests would later show he had four drugs – the painkillers codeine, morphine, paracetamol and tramadol – in his system, any one of which could have…
Captive State: A Special Investigation
I was part of a team of reporters at The Sydney Morning Herald who looked at the state’s prison system. We found that inmate numbers in the state have exceeded 10,000 a year and are forecast to reach 12,300 by 2015, with predictions that a new prison will be required every…
The murder of Jody Galante
On January 7, 2006, pregnant mother-of-one Jody Galante was reported missing by her husband Mark. A week later Jody’s body was found in bushland at Bilpin, in the Blue Mountains. She had died of a single gunshot wound to the head. Police investigated the murder and made an arrest…
Whistleblower Gillian Sneddon
Gillian Sneddon told the police about child sex allegations involving former NSW minister Milton Orkopoulos in late 2006. This led to her being ostracised by her party and the NSW Government. She was fired by the NSW Parliament on same day she took the stand in Orkopoulos’s trial and is…