Senior Age and Australian Financial Review journalist Adele Ferguson won Australia’s richest journalism prize for her outstanding coverage of a series of corporate scandals including wage fraud in the 7-Eleven retail chain.

Ferguson was named the Graham Perkin Australian Journalist of the Year for 2015 at the Melbourne Press Club’s Quill Awards dinner in Melbourne on Friday 18 March. She also won the Gold Quill Award – the first journalist to do so in consecutive years.

The award judges praised Ferguson’s work of the 7-Eleven story, in print and with the ABC Four Corners program, her coverage of misconduct in the National Bank’s financial planning arm and insider trading at IOOF.

“Adele Ferguson holds the torch to the belly of the big end of town,” the judges said. “Her fearless accounting of financial malpractice delivers us journalism equal to the power of the regulators she often leads to the scene of the crime.”