When Liz Hayes began her television career, as a woman, she assumed she wouldn’t work past 40. Now celebrating her 70th birthday in 2026, she reflects on the challenges that have shaped her, telling The Weekly she is only growing stronger.
Liz Hayes smiles and waves as I approach her at a sunny corner cafe in Sydney’s Kirribilli, where we’re having lunch. I’ve watched Liz on the Nine Network’s 60 Minutes for years but have never met her, and as she invites me to sit, I instantly see how the veteran interviewer establishes such a quick rapport with her subjects.
For decades, she has sat opposite the remarkable and notorious, the courageous and the cowardly, and prised their secrets free. In person, Liz is inquisitive, candid and warm. She mentions that she’s been at a weightlifting class earlier in the day. Health and longevity are the subjects of an upcoming episode of Spotlight she has been working on for Channel 7, and she’s been immersing herself in the research. She speaks about the importance of bone density and the systemic misogyny that meant medical research did not properly account for women until recently.
“Not maliciously,” Liz adds, “but because health and science and research have been based on men, and there was a reason for that.” Nobody wanted to expose “the fairer sex” to science and research, she says. Longevity, of the professional sort, is among the topics we’re discussing today, because Liz is about to celebrate her 70th birthday (on 23 May 2026).
It’s embarrassing, in 2026, to sit opposite one of our nation’s most accomplished journalists and ask how she survived in the merciless commercial TV industry for so many years. Her reputation speaks for itself, but just as medical research overlooked women, TV executives have for decades done the same. In her memoir, I’m Liz Hayes, Liz writes of a time when she didn’t think her career would last past the age of 40. That culture, however, has changed, and that change is thanks in no small part to women like Liz.
“I haven’t thought I should disappear,” Liz says. “I’ve not felt the pressure to go away because I’m an older woman. If anything, I’ve been welcomed by various people to do more things than I thought I would be doing. America, for years, has had older women on air.”
She names journalists Diane Sawyer and Lesley Stahl, who are 80 and 84, respectively, both still broadcasting and highly respected.
“As a woman ageing before everybody’s eyes, it’s really a challenge for yourself, but I think the audience is okay with it,” Liz says.
Women in the public eye have always had to contend with judgment and commentary on their appearance. Throughout her career, Liz has been subject to rude comments and worse. It’s the price she has accepted for a life fulfilling her purpose as a journalist. Liz has always been drawn to storytelling that makes a difference. She is utterly disinterested in celebrity, both being one and interviewing them (with the notable exception of George Clooney). Instead, she prefers speaking with regular people whose deeds are significant or those fighting injustice. This was her core purpose as she was rising through the television ranks when women were a rarity on screen and did not command the same respect or salaries as their male colleagues.
Asked how she endured, she says simply: “I was up for it.”
Liz grew up on a dairy farm on NSW’s mid-north coast. She was born the same year that television came to Australia, but for much of her childhood, she didn’t have a TV set in her house. When her parents did get a television, her father Bryan’s insistence that everybody be quiet during the news opened Liz’s eyes to a career in journalism.
“The only channel we could get was the ABC,” she says. “I was intrigued by telling stories based on what I was seeing on television.”
Her parents were community people. Bryan was a loving family man, but he would have preferred that Liz’s mother, Patricia, stay home rather than join the workforce. In her early 40s, however, with her five children out of nappies, Patty wanted a job.
“Women have always had to negotiate men,” Liz says. “Whether that be at the home front, or in the jobs that they are able to do, they’ve always had to negotiate with men. I come from a family of four brothers. My dad’s a conservative man, and he came from a family of eight – mostly men. I could smell testosterone a mile away. I always knew what my mother was doing, too. She was negotiating.”
Patricia’s work, in a jewellery shop and a chemist in town, led to a regular spot on local radio, where she revealed herself to be a natural raconteur.
“There was something about Mum that people were drawn to,” Liz says. “She was a wonderful presence and told great stories. I could hear her, and I knew why she was popular.” Liz pauses. “Maybe I just wanted to be like my mum and didn’t realise it,” she says with a laugh. “My mum was constantly a beacon for the future, for what I could do. I was incredibly blessed.”
She recalls one day, when she and Patricia were hanging the washing on the Hills Hoist, and Patty surprised Liz. “She was saying, ‘You know you can do what you want to do. You don’t have to do what I did.’
“I remember not being shocked, but thinking, ‘Oh!’ Because in a country town, there are certain expectations about the way your life will roll out. It was she who really gave me the bravery to try something. To go for it.”
Liz did go for it. When an opportunity arose, she left her Forestry Commission job that paid $40 a week to work at the local paper for 75 per cent of the salary.
On her first day, she sensed she was in the right place. “I knew this was probably something I would really soak up and enjoy.”
She married a local man named Brian Hayes (Liz’s maiden name is Ryan), and when he was offered work in Sydney, she followed. In fact, she applied for a job at The Weekly and received a short but polite rejection telegram from Ita Buttrose. Instead, a rival magazine hired Liz.
From magazines, she moved to publicity at Channel 10, then to news at Channel 10, and finally to Channel 9. The mercurial and short-tempered Kerry Packer presided over her new network. Casual sexism was rife. Rather than her team lauding her for the skills she had developed as a journalist, they praised Liz for her “nice pins”. She doesn’t dwell on the daily indignities women would have had to endure. She doesn’t condone it, but she is a realist.
“I knew how the world worked,” she says. “I always felt like I could persist.”
Her marriage to Brian Hayes ended, and for a time, Liz was in a relationship with advertising mogul and close friend of Kerry, John Singleton. For 10 years, she co-hosted Today before being tapped to join the team at Nine’s flagship current affairs program, 60 Minutes.
Liz developed a tough skin when it came to coping with audience comments – from people of all genders – about her appearance, and had the gumption to pick herself up after a tough day.
“I wanted to do it,” she says. “I was a hard worker. My work ethic was pretty bloody good. I guess they’re the qualities that got me through.”
“Judgment’s always been there,” she adds. But the comments didn’t matter. The work was too important.
One story that stands out in her memory for sheer impact was when, in 1997, the 60 Minutes crew tracked down the notorious paedophile, Robert ‘Dolly’ Dunn, who had fled Australia and was enjoying his freedom in Honduras, out of the NSW and Federal Police’s jurisdiction.
The former teacher was wanted on 91 child sex offences. He had been on the run for two years. 60 Minutes sent a producer to the city of Tegucigalpa to track Dunn. The program then coordinated with the NSW Police and the Federal Police to lay a trap for the child abuser. Liz flew to Honduras with the crew and waited. When the time came, she confronted the criminal in a hotel room, camera rolling.
It was a long assignment, but one that delivered what The Sydney Morning Herald called “one of the great scoops of journalism”, not to mention justice for Dunn’s victims.
“I thought, ‘Wow, that’s quite an achievement.’ Great journalism brings about revelations and changes. And changes that mean something,” Liz says.
Another story that has stayed with her is that of Clare Oliver, a 26-year-old who died from melanoma in 2007 and used the final days of her life to warn against the dangers of commercial solariums. Liz conducted the bedside interview that delivered Clare’s final message.
“There are stories where I find myself struggling,” Liz says. “My heart breaks. Clare knew that she was about to die. I can’t begin to tell you what that’s like, to see in her eyes the strength and determination to tell this story, as hard as it was. She’d already been told she was going to be lucky to make it another day or two.
“I can only imagine how sad that is. She didn’t want to die. And why would she? She’d just started life.”
Clare’s campaign led to immediate, massive reform of commercial tanning beds. In 2015, the government banned them completely. With her dying breaths, Clare had eradicated the thing that contributed to her death.
Liz was learning that good journalism can change policy and save lives. And when an unjust tragedy struck her own family, and she needed those advocacy skills most, she knew how to wield them.
In 2019, Liz found herself in a different hospital room, near where she’d grown up along the Manning River. Her much-loved father, Bryan, had been undergoing treatment for pneumonia for more than a week when Liz and her family learned that he had not received his stroke medication for eight days. He had had a catastrophic stroke, and he was going to die.
Distraught and angry, Liz picked up her phone and recorded a message. In the footage, her face is pale and taut. You can hear the effort required to control her voice. “I felt anger, and I felt passionate about what had gone wrong,” Liz says. “Here was Dad, dying, because of what were admitted mistakes, and it’s a really tough thing to accept. I think I knew that I wouldn’t be the only person with that story.”
During Bryan Ryan’s last days, nurses approached Liz and told her a similar thing had happened to their friend or family member.
“They really wanted me to know that they understood,” Liz explains. “They were in nursing to try and make a difference, but then found themselves caught in that terribleness of the rural health system, which never is going to be able, for a variety of reasons, to cater for people in rural and regional health at the level that you might hope. They’re all stretched. There are not enough people.
“I guess, like them, I thought I’d been let down. No, Dad had been let down. No one was more let down than Dad. I was told very quickly that Dad shouldn’t have died by people who knew.”
Liz says doctors, paramedics and nurses all urged her to tell this story.
“The first reaction I got was from doctors saying: I knew something like this would happen, because the system is such that we can’t have one person in charge of 80-odd beds.”
Liz’s hospital-room clip featured in her 60 Minutes report that went to air a year later. That investigation into rural and regional healthcare has meant the most to her. And it has done the most to create change.
“Without doubt, the greatest impact from a story I did was Dad’s story.”
“It unleashed voices that had not been heard before,” says Liz. “[Voices] that didn’t feel like they could speak up, or didn’t feel like anybody was listening. I don’t think I’ve ever had a story that’s had such a response. I still get queries. It’s heartbreaking because you know the system is way off being fixed.”
As a result of the 60 Minutes investigation, the NSW Government conducted an inquiry into health outcomes and access in rural, regional and remote hospitals. Both Liz and ABC journalist Jamelle Wells, whose own father had died in a rural hospital, fronted the inquiry. The subsequent report confirmed that residents of rural, regional and remote NSW had “poorer health outcomes and inferior access to health and hospital services”. The committee made 44 recommendations for improving care.
Looking back, Liz says, it did give her solace to know that telling her father’s story had made a difference. “It felt like the subject had been raised. The conversations were now taking place. There seemed to be an intention to try to make things better. Australians, no matter where they are, should be able to get good basic healthcare.”
In 2025, after 44 years, Liz left Nine and is now freelancing at Channel 7, where her latest report for 7News Spotlight is on living better for longer.
“Women live longer than men, but those extra years aren’t necessarily lived well,” Liz says. She wanted to show women how to continue to enjoy life, while being independent, capable and engaged.
“I’m really happy to say to women, in particular, that there are so many good things out there that can change and save your life.”
For example, it is now possible to reverse osteoporosis. “That’s the other fabulous thing about getting older. You don’t stop learning,” Liz says. “The real value now is for bone density and … what I’ve learnt on this story is about weight and strength.
“I’m loving that,” she says of her weightlifting classes. “There I am, and there are women of more senior years than me lifting 40 to 50kg. That’s pretty impressive. For the story I did, there was an 87-year-old woman, and she said, ‘I’ve had to knock it back to about 40kgs.’”
It’s not the only thing Liz is loving about her 70th year.
“At this point in my life, I have great clarity around who I want in my life and how I want to spend my time,” she says. “You arrive at these ages based on life experience. You have some hurdles along the way, but actually, I’m in a really good spot.”
This article originally appeared in the June 2026 issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly. Subscribe so you never miss an issue.
