Stan Grant is joining the ABC to front a new Friday night current affairs program and lead Indigenous affairs coverage across ABC news.
The ABC’s director of news, Gaven Morris, said Grant was one of the leading voices in the area of Indigenous affairs.
“As such, he is ideally suited for both of these key roles and we are thrilled he has agreed to take them on,” he said.
“Indigenous affairs is an area of great importance to our nation and one ABC news has always comprehensively covered. Stan will lead the way in extending and better structuring our reporting on it throughout our news and current affairs coverage.”
The new program – which is yet to be named – will replace 7.30 on Friday nights and Grant will also fill in for the 7.30 host, Leigh Sales, when she is away.
The ABC has had plans to reinvent the 7.30 slot on Fridays since the eight state-based 7.30 programs – from Tasmania, South Australia, Western Australia, New South Wales, the Australian Capital Territory, Victoria, the Northern Territory and Queensland – were axed in December 2014.
Grant, a Wiradjuri man who was previously Guardian Australia’s Indigenous affairs editor, will quit his current roles at Sky News Australia and NITV to concentrate on his new role at the ABC.
The 53-year-old has had a long and varied career in Australian television, winning a Logie award for most popular current affairs program in 1994 as host of tabloid TV show Real Life on Channel Seven.
He moved to Hong Kong with his second wife, Tracey Holmes, in 2000, where he was an anchor for CNN and then a correspondent for the 24-hour news network in Beijing.
Since returning to Australia in late 2012, he has made some landmark speeches on Indigenous affairs and in 2015 his searing commentary for Guardian Australia was recognised with a Walkley award for coverage of Indigenous affairs.
“This role and other plans still to be announced are about the ABC engaging in a more structured way with Indigenous issues,” Grant said. “These issues go to the heart of the country – to who we are as Australians – and these initiatives will put the ABC at the heart of the conversation.
“It is significant and appropriate for the national broadcaster to lead this discussion among all Australians and I am excited to be a part of it.”
Grant now hosts a daily Indigenous current affairs show, The Point, for NITV, which is part of SBS.
Grant’s appointment was announced by the ABC managing director, Michelle Guthrie, in a keynote address at the New News conference at the University of Melbourne.
Guthrie said Grant’s appointment came about after a staff Indigenous affairs summit recommended the ABC establish a dedicated Indigenous reporting team, led by a dedicated Indigenous affairs editor.
“Stan is a Wiradjuri man with a tremendous ability to articulate his experiences and those of his people,” Guthrie said on Friday night.
“As a Walkley-winning journalist, he has reported from around the world, including as a correspondent with CNN International in Hong Kong and Beijing.
“His books, The Tears of Strangers and Talking to My People, are the work of a journalist and writer who is acutely aware of where he has come from as an Indigenous Australian and what the challenges are for his fellow Indigenous Australians.
“He is unrivalled for communicating the plight of those communities, as was evidenced earlier this year when he delivered an impassioned speech in the wake of ABC reporting on the Don Dale Youth Detention Centre.
“He described his reaction to that story as ‘an anger that comes from the certainty of being … an anger that speaks to my soul’.”
It’s not Grant’s first stint at Aunty. He was a federal political correspondent for ABC TV in Canberra in 1987.
