Eureka Democracy Award: 2018 - Adele Ferguson
Adele Ferguson won the 2018 Eureka Democracy Award for her courage and leadership in investigating and exposing corrupt and predatory practices among a number of Australia’s best known corporate businesses affecting staff and customers, for her strong advocacy to improve whistleblower protections which encourage people to speak out about corporate wrongdoing, for expressing her deep distaste for the dishonesty and avarice she has encountered during her career reporting on business – however most of all for giving vulnerable people a voice as the diggers did at Eureka in 1854.
Adele Ferguson’s many forceful features in the Fairfax Media and the ABC’s Four Corners program into banking and other financial institutions helped bring about the explosive Royal Commission into that sector and her exposure of the insidious wage fraud affecting workers helped trigger a Parliamentary Inquiry into the Australian franchise industry and lead to more than $150 million in compensation payments to the victims of those frauds.
Adele Ferguson’s many forceful features in the Fairfax Media and the ABC’s Four Corners program into banking and other financial institutions helped bring about the explosive Royal Commission into that sector and her exposure of the insidious wage fraud affecting workers helped trigger a Parliamentary Inquiry into the Australian franchise industry and lead to more than $150 million in compensation payments to the victims of those frauds.
2018 Eureka Democracy Award Winner: Adele Ferguson