Derryn Hinch (Victoria, Derryn Hinch's Justice Party) Share this | Hansard source

Rebecca Wilson, who was Bec to her friends, was a trailblazer for female journalists—and not only sports journalists—where those early female reporters were regarded as interlopers in a predominantly male and often chauvinistic world. To Rebecca Wilson that just added another challenge. And it was fitting that her namesake, Caroline Wilson, another fearless female sports commentator, would pay tribute to her on radio 774 in Melbourne.

Rebecca Wilson came from a classy media family. You would watch her and her brother Jim, often in a war of words on Channel Seven, on the Sky News sports panel or on radio, and they gave sibling rivalry a new meaning. And their father, Bruce Wilson, was a renowned foreign correspondent for the Murdoch papers, especially the old Sun News-Pictorial in Melbourne. His kids, with ink in their veins, would lap up his war stories and big sports events like Wimbledon.

Now Bruce Wilson is gone and Rebecca has tragically gone at 54 years of age. Our thoughts are with her sons; her husband, John Hartigan—Harto, who is himself a legendary newspaper editor—and Jim, who lost his own little boy, Sam, to cancer. (Time expired)

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