Hamish Macdonald
Interviewing Hamish Macdonald is like duelling a samurai with a switchblade. As a journalist he’s the complete package – writer, reporter, producer and host, deep researcher, courageous chaser, master interrogator and crusader for truth.
At 39, he’s flash as a rat with a gold tooth – smart, driven, fit, stylish, funny, kind. His multitasking is legendary. He talks to GQ as he walks, texts us while he reads, eats while he interviews. But he can’t sing a jot and admits he cries “all the time”.
So shiny is he that few at the ABC will talk on the record. He’s very private, they say, I cherish his friendship too much. One colleague confides that “women swoon over him, they don’t care it won’t go anywhere”. His comedian friend Tommy Little sums him up: “The funniest bloke in the room… also the most intellectual.”
The Sunday Project co-host Lisa Wilkinson admires his “raw honesty, intellectual rigour and forensic focus on uncovering truth – all wrapped up in genuine humility and a whole lot of heart.”
“He seemed knowledgeable about and interested in whatever issue in the world I could imagine talking about,” says The Project co-host Waleed Aly, when asked of his first impressions of Macdonald.
“In some ways I feel short-changed that I so rarely get to see him, but I still felt bonded to his work and he always supported me at really crucial times. He did a piece to camera in my defence in the aftermath of the Christchurch attacks. I didn’t ask him to do that –I didn’t even
