Ms Annika Smethurst

Ms Annika Smethurst is the state political editor at The Age newspaper in Melbourne. She is a double Walkley award winner and has two Melbourne Quill awards for political reporting.

She studied a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism) at Monash University from 2006 to 2009 and completed her honours thesis researching the impact of the internet on regional newspapers.

Ms Smethurst began her media career at The Bendigo Weekly and ABC Bendigo before gaining a traineeship at The Herald and Weekly Times in 2011. She worked in the Victorian parliamentary press gallery before moving to Canberra to take up a position as National political reporter for The Herald Sun.

In 2015 she won her first Walkley Award for the ‘Choppergate’ scandal which saw then-Speaker Bronwyn Bishop resign over her use of parliamentary expenses. In 2017 she won her second Walkley Awards for a series of articles which revealed former Health Minister Sussan Ley had charged taxpayers for a series of trips to Queensland, including one trip when she purchased a holiday home of the Gold Coast.

Ms Smethurst was the 2016 Young Press Gallery Journalist of the Year and the 2017 Press Gallery journalist of the year.

In 2019 Ms Smethurst became the accidental poster woman for press freedom when her house was raided by the Australian Federal Police over a story she wrote revealing a government plan to allow the Australian Signals Directorate to spy on Australians. In her 2020 essay On Secrets, she explored the impact of the raids and examined the importance of press freedom. She is also the author of the definitive biography of Australia's thirtieth prime minister, Scott Morrison, titled The Accidental Prime Minister.

She is the former national political editor of the Sunday Telegraph and Sunday Herald Sun and a regular on ABC's Insiders program, The Drum and Sky News. Ms Smethurst was awarded the 2021 Distinguished Alumni Award for the Faculty of Arts. In her rare spare time, she likes to garden, walk her dog and spend time with her husband and baby daughter.