Biography

Leigh Sales AM is one of Australia's most high-profile and respected journalists and has been the anchor of Australian Story since 2023. Previously, she was at the helm of 7.30 for 12 years. She was awarded an Order of Australia in 2019 for her services to journalism.

She has interviewed every living Australian Prime Minister, innumerable world leaders and celebrities including Hillary Clinton, Boris Johnson, David Cameron, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Dalai Lama, Aung San Suu Kyi, Paul McCartney, Elton John, Harrison Ford, Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood and many more.

From 2008-2010, Leigh anchored the ABC's prestigious Lateline program and before that was the ABC's National Security Correspondent. From 2001 to 2006, she was the network's Washington Correspondent, covering stories including the aftermath of September 11, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the 2004 Presidential election and Hurricane Katrina. She grew up in Brisbane and started her reporting career in Queensland in 1993 with Channel Nine.

She has three Walkley awards, Australia's highest journalism honour, for radio current affairs reporting, broadcast interviewing and for her best-selling 2018 book, Any Ordinary Day. She is the author of four other books, Storytellers (2023), Detainee 002: the Case of David Hicks (2007), On Doubt (2009) and Well, Hello (2021), co-written with journalist Annabel Crabb. Leigh's writing has appeared in numerous publications including The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Spectator, The Monthly and The Australian Literary Review.
- IMDb mini biography by: Karen

Gave birth to her 1st child at age 38, a son Daniel Oscar Willis on January 20, 2012. Child's father is her former husband, Phil Willis.

Gave birth to her 2nd child at age 40, a son James Christopher Willis on February 27, 2014. Child's father is her former husband, Phil Willis.

Narrowly avoided being hit by a tub of yoghurt thrown at her by an anarchist during a speech promoting her book 'Any Ordinary Day,' at the 2019 Disrupted Festival of Ideas in Perth.

[on Daniel Andrews] How is it the case the government still lacks such confidence in the hotel quarantine systems and contact tracing that you currently can't manage two or three cases a day? If you have confidence in the system, which your own bureaucrat said was working quite well, why do you need a lockdown?

It is overwhelmingly left-leaning Twitter users who are targeting ABC journalists for abuse.

In the Australian corner of Twitter, the space is dominated by views that are militantly pro-lockdown, pro-Covid zero and pro-Labor premiers, and even the tamest of questions in those directions prompts an onslaught. It is non-stop, personal, often vile, frequently unhinged and regularly based on fabrications.

[on ABC journalism] People rightly don't always trust us anymore.