Derryn Hinch, a fearless interrogator, remained candid and controversial as a journalist and senator – obituary

With a timeline that featured imprisonment, politics, a rags-to-riches twist, multiple marriages and several serious health challenges, all played out in the public sphere, the Australian journalist, broadcaster and former senator Derryn Hinch embodied his nickname: the human headline.

Hinch, who has died in 2026 aged 82, gained the epithet, of which he was not a fan, for his strident opinions delivered in a bombastic manner over radio and television airwaves and later, aged 72, in the halls of parliament, where he claimed to be “the oldest person ever elected to the Senate”.

In his 1980s heyday, Hinch was one of the most powerful broadcasters in Australia, ruling the Melbourne radio airwaves and drawing record ratings for 3AW with his gregarious personality and candid and controversial commentary on every subject.

Hinch was also a star of network television, as the face of the Midday Show for 13 years and host of multiple current affairs programs, including Hinch from 1988 to 1994, which resulted in him being lampooned by the comedy show Fast Forward.

He lived by the words of William Randolph Hearst, believing that “news is something somebody doesn’t want published; all the rest is unpaid advertising”. As a result, Hinch became known as a fearless interrogator and dogged in his quest for perceived justice.

“For six decades, Derryn Hinch has been a colourful, megaphone-campaigning, groundbreaking journalist,” wrote fellow journalist Ray Martin, referring to him as a “legend of Australian journalism”.

One of Hinch’s most passionate subjects was that of sex offenders and it was for naming them that he was twice jailed and found in contempt of court on multiple occasions. In 2014, Hinch spent 50 days in jail rather than pay a $100,000 fine for breaching a suppression order. In 1987 he named a paedophile priest and served 12 days in jail, and in 2011 he was sentenced to five months of home detention after publishing names that had been suppressed.

Hinch revealed in a 2017 television interview that he had been sexually molested by a family friend as a nine-year-old, but insisted it was not the reason for his relentless pursuit of sex offenders.

In 2015, he formed the Justice party on a platform of law-and-order issues that included a public register for convicted sex offenders, and in 2016 he secured a Victorian Senate seat.

He used his 45-minute rambling maiden speech to parliament – breaking the 20-minute time limit – to name several convicted sex offenders.

“I will not be a cowboy. But if it is necessary to protect a child’s wellbeing then damn right, I’ll name the human vermin and I will tonight,” he said.

Derryn Nigel Hinch was born in New Plymouth, New Zealand, on 9 February 1944, to second world war veteran Reginald (Dick) and his wife, Betty (née Hood). He had an older brother, Desmond, and two sisters, Barbara and Sandra.

At age 11, he learned to drive his father’s milk truck, helping with deliveries when not at New Plymouth Boys’ high school, where he admitted to being a “very competitive” rugby player. A self-confessed “smart arse”, Derryn failed to apply himself and left school at 15, commencing his meteoric rise to prominence as a cadet journalist at the Taranaki Herald covering flower shows and court cases.

In 1963, Hinch moved to Australia and by the age of 21, he was a Fairfax correspondent in their New York bureau calling the moon landing from Cape Canaveral and covering the assassination of Martin Luther King.

He joined 3AW in 1979, quickly establishing himself as the star of Melbourne radio. After wrapping his morning show, Hinch would go to lunch, often drinking several bottles of wine, and would be chauffeured home by the woman he had hired to drive his Rolls-Royce.

He admitted that his heavy drinking affected his life and his four, or possibly five, marriages to Lana Wells, Eve Carpenter, Jackie Weaver (whom he considered he had married twice) and Chanel Haydon, whom he divorced in 2012. In 2016, he rekindled a romance with Lynda Stoner and the pair remained close friends.

“I’m a bit of a mush bucket and I like being in love, I like committing to somebody,” he told journalist Benjamin Law. “People seem to enjoy my kisses.”

During the 1990s, Hinch hit rock bottom, personally and professionally. He was sacked several times and made a series of poor financial choices that left him with less than $10 in his bank account.

Offered a fresh start by 3AW in 2003, Hinch became their afternoon drive host, but in 2006 he became critically ill with cirrhosis of the liver and septicaemia. In 2010, with a 60 Minutes camera crew capturing the moment, Hinch received a diagnosis of inoperable liver cancer.

He underwent a life-saving liver transplant in 2011, blogging his experience but also garnering hate mail from those who accused him of grandstanding.

Hinch was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 2010 and has written several books on a wide range of subjects from diets, Scrabble and Aids to the pleasure and pain of relationships.

In 2017, the Turnbull government reached a deal with Hinch in the Senate to cancel passports of convicted paedophiles. However, Hinch lost his seat in 2019, and in 2023 the Justice party was dissolved.

Asked in 2025 what words he would like inscribed on his tombstone, Hinch’s reply was uncharacteristically brief: He tried.