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Margot O'Neill

Biographical Notes from The Walkley Awards website for 2005

All Media: Investigative Journalism Winners

Margot O'Neill, Hamish Fitzsimmons, Tom Iggulden and Lisa Millar , Lateline, ABC TV, "Vivian Solon"

In this series of news-breaking reports, the Lateline team unravelled the tragic story of Vivian Solon, an Australian mother of two wrongfully deported by the federal government. The team was the first to uncover Ms Solon's identity and, one week after the first story, they discovered her location in the Philippines, after a priest recognised her in a Lateline broadcast. The investigation raised serious questions about the competence of the Australian government's search for Ms Solon and helped find a woman who had been lost to her children for four years.

Margot O'Neill is a senior investigative reporter with Lateline. She has been a journalist for 20 years, working in television, radio and newspapers. She is a past Walkley winner for her television current affairs reporting.

Hamish Fitzsimmons began at the ABC as a cadet, and also worked at The Age for three years. He won a Walkley in 2000 with Mark Forbes for online news.

Tom Iggulden was a print journalist in Hong Kong and Sydney for eight years before joining the ABC four years ago.

Lisa Millar is a radio and television reporter with the ABC in Queensland. Most recently she was the ABC's North America correspondent for three years.

Judges' comments

The team led the media coverage of the Vivian Solon story when it was discovered that an Australian citizen had been wrongfully deported. Their work was instrumental in locating her in the Philippines. Lateline painstakingly investigated the events that led to her deportation, unveiling a disturbing picture of a bureaucracy out of control.