Eight major investigations spanning corporate misconduct, worker exploitation, aged care failures, and patient harm. Stories that triggered Royal Commissions, changed Australian law, and held power to account.
The investigation that triggered the Banking Royal Commission
The landmark investigation into the Commonwealth Bank's financial planning division that exposed a culture of profit at all cost — forged signatures, churned accounts, and destroyed lives.
Triggered 2018–2019 Banking Royal Commission
The Age / SMH & ABC Four Corners
Systematic wage theft across a franchise empire
Exposing how 7-Eleven franchisees systematically underpaid workers — many of them international students — while falsifying payroll records to conceal the fraud.
$173M compensation fund established
The Age / SMH & ABC Four Corners
CommInsure's systematic denial of insurance claims
Revealing how the Commonwealth Bank's life insurance arm used outdated medical definitions to deny claims to seriously ill Australians.
ASIC investigation & claims review
The Age / SMH & Nine 60 Minutes
Retirement villages exploiting Australia's elderly
Exposing AVEO retirement village contracts designed to extract maximum wealth from elderly residents through exit fees, capital gains clauses, and delayed settlements.
$75M ACCC settlement
The Age / Sydney Morning Herald
Australia's unregulated $1.4B cosmetic surgery industry
A three-part investigation exposing botched procedures, permanent disfigurement, and a regulatory grey zone allowing any GP to perform invasive cosmetic surgery.
Senate inquiry & Medical Board guidelines
ABC Four Corners
The exploitation of chronic pain patients
Exposing unnecessary and harmful procedures performed on chronic pain patients — procedures that left many in worse condition, with practitioners prioritising profit over patient welfare.
Medical Board review announced
ABC Four Corners
Systemic failures in Australia's childcare sector
The most decorated journalism of 2025 — exposing shocking cases of child abuse, neglect, and injury in Australian childcare centres, and the systemic failures that allowed them.
Emergency regulatory reviews nationwide
ABC Four Corners & 7.30
The crisis deepens — childcare failures continue
The follow-up investigation revealing that the childcare crisis had deepened rather than abated — despite the earlier exposure and promised reforms.
Follow-up to Betrayal of Trust
ABC Four Corners
Each investigation draws on hundreds of documents, internal communications, and interviews with whistleblowers, victims, and industry insiders.
Stories are published simultaneously across print and broadcast — maximising reach and making it impossible for the subjects to quietly manage the fallout.
A single broadcast is rarely enough. These investigations include sustained follow-up reporting that tracks whether promised reforms actually happen.
The goal is not just to expose — but to change. These investigations have triggered Royal Commissions, Senate inquiries, regulatory action, and legislative reform.
“The most decorated journalist of her generation — whose investigations have changed Australian law and held the country's most powerful institutions to account.”
These eight major investigations represent the core of Adele Ferguson's work. The full journalism archive includes additional stories, commentary, and analysis.