Former Fairfax Media photographer Andrew Quilty has been awarded the Gold Walkley award for excellence in Australian journalism, for a striking photograph taken in the aftermath of a US airstrike in Afghanistan.
Quilty, 34, now a freelancer who moved to Afghanistan in 2013, was the first journalist to capture the devastation at the Medecins Sans Frontieres hospital in Kunduz in 2015 where 42 people were killed.
One of those people was Baynazar Mohammad Nazar, a husband and father of four who died on the operating table.
Quilty photographed Nazar where he died, with the photograph and his report published in Foreign Policy magazine.
As well as being awarded the Gold Walkley, the former Australian Financial Review photographer won Nikon-Walkley photo of the year for the same image, and the Nikon-Walkley award for news photography.
Fellow photographer David Maurice Smith won a Walkley for his photographic essay "Refugee Crisis in the Balkans", commissioned by the Sydney Morning Herald and published internationally.
In the awards ceremony held in Brisbane on Friday night, Fairfax journalists were recognised in six categories: for social equity journalism, coverage of community and regional affairs, sports journalism, artwork, business journalism and investigative journalism.
Staff reporters at the Newcastle Herald were awarded for their series "The Foam and the Fury", which examined the impact on residents of chemical contamination from the RAAF base at Williamtown. Residents are currently suing the Defence force in a class action after firefighting foam leached into groundwater.
Ben Schneiders, Royce Millar and Nick Toscano from The Age were awarded for their investigation "Sold Out: Australia's biggest wages scandal" which examined the underpayment of fast food employees by more than $300 million a year. Sydney Morning Herald chief rugby league reporter Adrian Proszenko was recognised for sports journalism for his reporting on the Parramatta Eels salary cap scandal. It is his second Walkley award.
David Rowe, an illustrator for the Australian Financial Review and the Sun-Herald, was recognised for his intricate artworks "New clothes", "Malcolm X and Ali" and "White ribbon".
An investigative partnership between Fairfax Media and the ABC's Four Corners was also awarded, with the team of Adele Ferguson, Klaus Toft and Mario Christodoulou taking out two Walkleys for business journalism and investigative journalism.
Both awards were for "Money for Nothing", an investigation into the Commmonwealth Bank's insurance arm CommInsure.
The night had an emotional moment when sports journalist Rebecca Wilson - who died in October - was posthumously awarded the Walkley Award for Journalistic Leadership. It was accepted by her son Tom Sacre, who is also a journalist.
