Multi-Walkley Award winner, Virginia Trioli is one of Australia’s best-known journalists, with a formidable reputation as a television anchor, radio presenter, writer and commentator. She is much sought-after as a speaker and MC and combines a rigorous interviewing style with a wicked sense of humour.
Virginia, is an honours graduate in Fine Arts from the University of Melbourne and La Trobe University, and in 1996 published “Generation F”, her celebrated response to Helen Garner’s ‘First Stone’.
In 1995 she won Australian journalism’s highest honour, the Walkley Award for her business reporting and in 2001 Virginia won a second Walkley for her landmark interview with the former Defence Minister, Peter Reith, over the notorious Children Overboard issue. In 1999 she won the Melbourne Press Club’s Best Columnist award, The Quill. In 2006 she won Broadcaster of the Year at the ABC Local Radio Awards.
Virginia has held senior positions at the Age newspaper and the Bulletin magazine. For four years she hosted the Drive Program on 774 ABC Melbourne, and the Morning Program on 702 ABC Sydney for three years.
She has been the host of ABC TV’s premiere news and current affairs programs, The 7.30 Report and Lateline; also Artscape and Sunday Arts.
She was the founding anchor of ABC News Breakfast on ABC TV, which she co-hosted for 11 years and was the alternative host of ABC TV’s Q&A since its inception in 2008.
Virginia presented Mornings on ABC Radio Melbourne for the four years of the Black Summer bushfires, the Covid19 pandemic, the 2022 flood emergency and the cost of living crisis.
Virginia hosted the Prime Time ABC TV Creative Types with Virginia Trioli and the podcast, You Don’t Know Me and wrote her Weekend Reads column for ABC News online each Saturday.
Talking Points
How to be a Creative Type: What Australia's boldest minds teach us about connection, meaning – and staying human in a fractured world
Virginia Trioli draws on three decades at the centre of Australia’s national conversations—and her acclaimed ABC series Creative Types—to distil what our most distinctive artists reveal about how we live now. With insight, wit and hard-earned perspective, she explores creativity as a shared human instinct rather than a rare gift, and shows how it fuels connection, collaboration and resilience.How to be a Creative Type: What Australia's boldest minds teach us about connection, meaning – and staying human in a fractured world
From intimate encounters with Jimmy Barnes, who turns his trauma into our national soundtrack, to writer Trent Dalton who finds joy in the hardest of circumstances, this keynote offers a compelling case for curiosity, community and cultural understanding as essential tools for navigating uncertainty—and finding meaning—even as the world grows more complex.
MC & Host
Virginia Trioli brings something most MCs cannot: the calm authority of someone who has held the most demanding live formats in Australian broadcasting. Eleven years anchoring ABC News Breakfast, Q&A host since 2008, and the national voice through the Black Summer bushfires, the pandemic and the 2022 flood emergency. In a room, she reads the temperature quickly, redirects a conversation without losing the thread, and holds attention without needing to fill silence. Her interviewing instincts translate directly to panel facilitation. Sharp enough to push back when the moment calls for it, and warm enough to put every speaker at ease.
MC & Host
Very professional, made the event seem seamless, great Q&A, read the audience well. ... keep reading Moonee Valley City Council
