IPSWICH Tribune editor Brian Bennion has been named a finalist in the Queensland Clarion Awards for his reporting on development around the former Deebing Creek Aboriginal Mission.
Mr Bennion is one of three finalists announced this week in the prestigious state media awards for the All Media category for Indigenous Issues Reporting.
The Queensland Clarion awards recognise the State’s most outstanding reporting over the past year.
Other finalists in the category are Ben Smee from the Guardian Australia and Michael McKenna from The Australian.
Mr Bennion’s reporting on the Mission site since 2015 has revealed findings from ground penetrating radar studies describing anomalies such as suspected burials, the oral history of a massacre, bones found on the development site and studies describing a fossilised coral reef and a tribal meeting place pre-dating European settlement and attracted a groundswell of community support for the indigenous protectors of the site.
Member for Ipswich Jennifer Howard attempted to discredit Mr Bennion’s reporting on Deebing Creek in an address in Parliament late last year, a move that was condemned by indigenous Elders and journalists’ union the MEAA as “an abuse of power to use parliamentary privilege to attack the work of journalists”.
Ipswich City Councillors opposed a childcare centre proposed for the site in March urging the State Government to look further into cultural issues, for more detailed investigations into the bones found on the site and further investigation into the anomalies identified in the GPR studies.
Developers acknowledged the cultural significance of the site in April with an agreement to hand over a parcel of land for a cultural centre.
The Clarion Awards will be presented at an event at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre on October 21.
Mr Bennion won the Clarion Award for Indigenous Issues Reporting in 2016, was named a finalist for a Clarion Award last year for Regional and Community News Report and in 2015 for Social Issues Reporting and has won the Journalistic Excellence Award for an Individual Journalist for the past two years at the Queensland Country Press Association awards.
