Ross Coulthart

Since 2009, Ross has brought his talents to the Seven Network’s flagship program for news and public affairs, Sunday Night. His role on the show is primarily as ‘the investigator’, researching and presenting often hard-hitting investigative stories from across the country and the globe.

In the first year of the show, Ross’ story on the disappearance of young Australian backpacker Britt Lapthorne in Dubrovnik, Croatia, raised evidence of rogue elements in local Police attacking young travellers. His expose of how easy it is for criminals to make ‘ice’ – illegal methamphetamine drugs – from cough medicine, with the insights of a former bikie insider and drugs cook, revealed shocking weaknesses in much vaunted Government and industry efforts to stem extensive abuse of over-the-counter medications. Another investigation into the disappearance of a Queensland boy Daniel Morcombe pointed the finger at a likely suspect, revealing new evidence that a known paedophile was in the exact area where Daniel disappeared.

In 2010 a love of military history mysteries led Ross and team to PNG, where a former Japanese soldier revealed the gravesite of one of Australia’s military heroes lost on the Kokoda track, Captain Sam Templeton. Another story revealed how DNA tests on Aborigines in North West Australia may soon reveal that marooned Dutch sailors were Australia’s first European settlers, not the British.

In another major investigation during 2010, Ross and producer Mick O’Donnell revisited the murder of two young Australians Nick Spanos and Stephan Melrose in 1990. Twenty years after their deaths at the hands of an IRA terrorist hit-team in Roermond in Holland, the story revealed shocking new evidence showing that British intelligence and Sinn Fein boss Gerry Adams both had blood on their hands over the deaths.

This year, 2011, in a major discovery, Ross’ story The lost diggers uncovered a hitherto unknown treasure trove of World War One pictures of ANZAC and other allied soldiers, which had lain undisturbed in a French farmhouse attic for nearly a century. The story has become a social media phenomenon, with people from all over the world viewing the pictures and story on Facebook and the SN website to see if their loved ones are among these extraordinary images.

49-year-old Ross has previously worked on the iconic but now defunct Sunday Program on the Nine Network for 14 years and previous to that he also reported for the ABC TV Four Corners program.

In 2008, he uncovered one of the biggest ever medical scandals in Australia – the story of the so-called Butcher of Bega. The doctor at the centre of the scandal is now facing criminal charges as a result of his investigation. It won Ross not only the Gold Walkley but also the Walkley for Best Investigative Report.

Ross is also the co-author of two best-seller books ‘Dead Man Running’ and 'Above The Law’ – both exposes of organised crime in Australian and international outlaw motorcycle gangs. Using biker and Police informants, the books reveal massive failures in both Government and law enforcement to adequately address the scale of outlaw motorcycle gang organised crime both here in Australia and overseas.

He has also previously been a guest reporter for the Nine Network’s Sixty Minutes program, including an exclusive series of groundbreaking interviews with Special Air Service soldiers who served in Afghanistan and Iraq. As a reporter with Four Corners, Ross’ investigations also prompted Special Government Commissions of Inquiry into Australia’s spy service ASIS and also into corruption in the Australian soccer/football industry.

As a younger journalist Ross researched and produced the Penguin-award winning investigation by Jana Wendt’s then ‘A Current Affair’ program into bribes paid by then Queensland businessman Sir Leslie Thiess to the then Premier Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen. Another investigation ‘Black and White Justice’, into hit-and-run killings of young aborigines in Townsville, presented strong evidence that at least one young victim’s death was racially motivated and amounted to homicide. Another expose of cronyism and impropriety in Australian Aboriginal Legal Services won Ross the 1996 Logie Award for Most Outstanding Achievement in Public Affairs.

Ross has reported extensively from often hostile and war-zone environments – including several reports from the front lines in Iraq and Afghanistan. His special on the Asian Tsunami in 2005 ‘The Day The Wave Came’, saw him visit all the disaster zones within days of the tragedy, and aired internationally.

In 2002, Ross won the Gold Medal at the New York Film Festival for Best International Report – with renowned film-maker Max Stahl – for an investigation into how Indonesian and militia killers in East Timor had gone unpunished for their crimes.

Over nearly three decades, Ross’ investigations have covered a huge range of issues: dirty tricks inside the meat industry, where violent thugs were hired to break a Union; how close Australian soldiers came to disaster in the counter-insurgent clashes with Indonesian military sponsored militia troops in East Timor; how Australia’s military training links with Indonesia mean human rights abusers are receiving Australian assistance and support.

One of his most well known investigations internationally is ‘Big Brother Is Watching’, which officially revealed for the first time anywhere the existence of the Echelon communications spy network operated by the UK, USA, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

Ross is a law graduate. He has previously worked for the Sydney Morning Herald, the New Zealand Herald, ABC TV and the Nine Network in Australia. He is married with two daughters.

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Watch Ross's latest stories:

Murder and cowardice
Inside Downton Abbey
Exclusive: Ex-Beatle Paul McCartney
Malcolm Webster: Fatal attraction
Australia's prime suspect Tobias Suckfuell
The Lost Diggers come home
An evening with John Cleese
Daryn Cresswell's sporting shame

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