ABC has tapped veteran journalist and broadcaster Geraldine Doogue AO to headline this year’s Andrew Olle Media Lecture, continuing the public broadcaster’s long-running tradition of spotlighting heavyweight voices in the national media conversation.
The 2025 lecture is locked in for Friday, July 25, at Sydney’s W Hotel in Darling Harbour, with Brain Cancer Australia returning as the charity partner.
Doogue’s selection is a strategic choice — both legacy and current. She’s been a mainstay in Australian journalism for more than five decades across print, TV and radio, and currently co-hosts ABC Radio National’s Global Roaming alongside Hamish Macdonald. That show launched in 2024 and is part of the network’s expanding editorial slate around geopolitics and foreign affairs.
The Olle Lecture, established in 1996, is one of ABC’s few remaining legacy media-facing events with genuine industry weight, named after the late Andrew Olle, who died from a brain tumour in 1995. This year’s event also maintains its dual mandate: intellectual platform and philanthropic engine, with funds raised directed to Brain Cancer Australia for research and advocacy.
Doogue and Olle were inducted together into the Australian Media Hall of Fame in 2018 — a detail that adds both symmetry and sentiment to this year’s selection. Past Olle lecturers have included Leigh Sales, Fran Kelly, and Ita Buttrose AC OBE, and the 2025 installment is expected to draw the usual mix of journalists, execs, students, and public figures tied to the Australian media sector.
Tickets are now on sale, you can find details here.
