Ben Silvester
Ben Silvester examines how transport, infrastructure and health policies affect people on the ground. As a reporter at The Standard he focuses on road safety, vehicle-related programs and the local impacts of major projects, rather than on cars themselves. His coverage tracks what public spending, planning decisions and corporate claims mean for safety, services and trust.
Road safety funding and crash prevention
Silvester’s reporting on road safety looks at whether high-cost programs deliver the promised reduction in deaths and serious injuries.
In his coverage of a $150 million initiative framed around “one death every two days”, he uses crash statistics to establish the stakes and then tests the program against its outcomes and design. He examines how money is allocated, which interventions are prioritised, and where gaps remain in enforcement, engineering and education. The focus is on accountability: whether headline figures and political commitments translate into fewer fatalities on the roads people use every day.
Wind farms, planning and community burden
A large part of Silvester’s work follows the expansion of wind farms and the strain that multiple projects place on local councils and communities. He reports on Moyne Shire Council’s description of an “unprecedented” burden of wind farms and the need for that load to be dealt with, capturing how councillors weigh renewable energy targets against planning, amenity and service pressures.
In Garvoc he covers residents’ criticism of a wind farm application alongside the developer’s defence of its process, setting out both the procedural detail and the lived experience of people who feel overrun by major infrastructure.
His story on the approval of the Ryan Corner wind farm traces how a planning permit is amended and granted, showing the regulatory steps that move a project from proposal to reality. He also follows Moyne Shire officers as they recommend objecting to the proposed Willatook wind farm, documenting the technical concerns they raise and the formal mechanisms available to push back. Across these pieces he returns to the same councils, developers and communities over time, building a layered picture of how cumulative projects change a region’s landscape, politics and sense of fairness.
Aged care staffing and health misinformation
Silvester extends the same scrutiny to health and care services.
His Lyndoch aged care coverage, including a story headlined “Daughter reduced to tears. Why have 200 staff left?”, looks at the human toll of a staffing exodus and the governance issues behind it. He traces how workforce departures affect residents and families, and how management decisions and oversight structures are questioned when an essential service falters. In health reporting he tackles misinformation around COVID-19 vaccines, covering claims made by businesses and setting them against expert evidence.
In one piece he highlights a specialist’s blunt dismissal of false assertions about spike proteins, fertility and organ damage, and gives space to clear explanations that distinguish credible risk from “crap” circulating online. These stories share a pattern: he isolates a contested claim or troubling trend, then methodically walks through what clinicians, regulators and affected people say about it.
Approach to coverage and format
Across beats, Silvester favours detailed, source-rich reporting that sits between straight news and policy analysis.
His wind farm work draws heavily on council papers, planning processes and on-the-record statements from councillors, residents and developers, showing how formal decisions intersect with local sentiment. His health and aged care pieces use quotations from specialists and families to ground complex issues in everyday consequences, while still keeping the focus on systems and accountability rather than personal opinion.
In road safety he uses simple metrics such as deaths per time period to make large programs legible, then questions whether program design, administration and evaluation match the urgency implied by the numbers. Across these subjects he tends to follow stories over multiple instalments, returning to the same institutions and projects as new decisions, complaints or data emerge.
The result is coverage that is most useful when a story involves vehicles, infrastructure or health services intersecting with public policy, and when a clear account of who is responsible for what is required.
4 more automobile journalists.
Aditya Nadkarni
Aditya Nadkarni turns new model launches and first drive reviews into clear, buyer-facing information, with a strong focus on detail and incremental updates. He is principal correspondent at CarWale, where he covers passenger vehicles with an emphasis on launch news, facelifts and road-test impressions for mainstream and premium cars. His core news work tracks new introductions and lifecycle updates, explaining what changes, when the car goes on sale, and how each variant is configured. He writes “variants explained” pieces and structured first drive reviews that link driving impressions to a model’s place in the market and its recent update or launch. His reporting is factual, methodical and model-specific, avoiding broad commentary and treating even minor tweaks and new features as news. His bylines also appear at Mobility Outlook and CarTrade, with the same detail-first style.
Alexis Hooi
Alexis Hooi reports on how China’s partnerships in electric vehicles, green technology, tourism and agriculture reshape markets and communities, with a focus on Australia and the wider Asia-Pacific. He writes for China Daily, drawing on experience as a national news page editor, columnist and long-form reporter, and earlier work in other media and organizations. His beat covers Chinese EVs in Australia, green transition projects, innovation hubs, wine, geothermal energy and agricultural cooperation, treating each sector as a lens on China–Oceania economic ties and sustainable growth. He follows concrete outcomes like shifts in car choices, visitor numbers, exports and investment, and reports through project-focused stories and personality-driven features. He also covers culture and identity, diaspora roots, tourism flows, animal attractions and commentary on perception and language, grounding China–Australia relations in everyday experiences.
Antonina Joson
Antonina Joson covers how Southeast Asia’s car markets and fleet decisions respond to new technologies, environmental pressures, and policy shifts. She writes for AfMA, focusing on the automobile sector and its implications for fleets and mobility services, and works as a communications officer with a background in writing, digital marketing, and content creation. Her reporting tracks month‑to‑month changes in car sales in Indonesia, Thailand, and Singapore, linking sales data, segment performance, and national policy to corporate strategy. She reports on electric vehicles as strategic assets tied to air quality, energy policy, and industrial ambitions, and follows regional moves such as XPENG’s entry into Indonesia and calls for Toyota to shift production. She also covers safety campaigns, mobility platforms, online marketplaces, book recommendations for fleet professionals, and contributes to FleetDrive advertising and content planning, bringing a commercial, cross‑industry perspective to fleet‑focused coverage.
Aranya Mondal
Aranya Mondal is a business and technical writer who edits and writes analytical coverage of the global aluminium industry for AL Circle, with a through-line of connecting trade patterns and supply risks to aluminium competitiveness. She focuses on aluminium trade flows, bauxite diplomacy, tariffs, scrap imports and strategic materials adjacent to aluminium such as gallium. Her beat spans scrap, recycling and the shift from linear to circular aluminium markets, alumina and aluminium production trends, regional vulnerabilities and project developments, as well as automotive and mobility uses of aluminium including product launches like the Anytec A28-T boat. She works mainly on long-form explainers and recurring formats such as weekly sustainability recaps, using clear language, trade data and value-chain context to unpack production, policy and energy trends for an industry audience.