Christopher Knaus
Christopher Knaus uses investigations into institutions, assets and regulation to show how power is exercised over vulnerable people. He reports for Guardian Australia on public interest stories that sit at the intersection of property, finance and law. On the real estate beat, he treats land, housing and institutional property holdings as a way to understand how organisations protect themselves and how that shapes people’s lives. His work is driven by documents, court records and whistleblower testimony rather than market coverage or lifestyle real estate content.
Church assets, abuse survivors and $1 property deals
A recurring strand in Knaus’s reporting is the use of real estate and asset transfers to interrogate how powerful institutions respond to abuse claims.
In his investigation into the Christian Brothers, he reported that the Catholic order sold real estate worth millions of dollars for $1 while telling a court it lacked the money to compensate abuse survivors and seeking a halt to civil claims. The story set out, in precise detail, the transfer of valuable properties for nominal sums and juxtaposed those transactions against the institution’s pleas of financial distress in litigation.
It shows his habit of following paperwork, title records and corporate structures to expose how organisations move assets when liability is looming. On this beat he treats property stories as accountability stories, using the language of contracts and valuations to test claims made in court and in public.
Whistleblowers, Robodebt and government accountability
Knaus’s work on government accountability is anchored in long-running coverage of whistleblowers and the unlawful welfare debt recovery scheme known as Robodebt. He began reporting on the automated system used by the welfare ministry in 2016, documenting how it generated false debts and drove vulnerable people into financial and psychological crisis.
His stories drew heavily on victims and whistleblowers inside the department, tracing how concerns were raised and then ignored as the scheme continued for years until a legal challenge forced it to stop.
That coverage turned a technical policy mechanism into a human story of harm and institutional failure, and it ultimately fed into a landmark inquiry that found the scheme contributed to suicides. Beyond Robodebt, he has reported consistently on whistleblowers involved in national security, intelligence and tax enforcement cases, including figures such as Bernard Collaery, Witness K and Richard Boyle, documenting the personal and legal risks they face when speaking out.
His role as a key voice in a docu‑drama about Robodebt underscores how closely he stays with a story from first leak through to public reckoning.
Corporate campaigns, regulators and energy interests
Knaus also covers the ways corporate campaigns and political consultancies seek to shape regulation, particularly in energy and housing‑related fields. His reporting on Glencore and CT Group detailed a covert campaign bankrolled by the coal company to support pro‑coal messaging and influence public debate.
In that investigation he followed money flows, campaign documents and strategic planning to show how a consultancy’s work extended beyond traditional lobbying into orchestrated media efforts.
The same material revealed attempts by a real estate division executive to commission favourable coverage of the Building Safety Regulator, with an angle sympathetic to housing industry concerns about regulation after a major fire disaster. This kind of story shows his method on the corporate side of the real estate beat: tracking who pays for campaigns, how they target regulators and how those efforts intersect with public safety and housing policy. He uses investigative techniques to pull back the curtain on relationships between companies, consultants and the state, rather than treating business and property issues as purely commercial news.
Document‑heavy reporting and sustained coverage
Knaus’s reporting style is defined by sustained attention to a small number of public interest themes and a heavy reliance on official records. Correspondence with oversight bodies shows him working through formal information requests, reinforcing his habit of building stories from FOI material, internal emails and legal filings.
Directory data credits him with thousands of published articles, indicating a high output across years of reporting while staying within a consistent public interest frame. His bylines cluster around investigations, court cases and regulatory disputes rather than quick political reaction pieces, and he often returns to the same story over multiple years as inquiries, trials and settlements unfold.
Across real estate, welfare, energy and whistleblower cases, he writes in a measured, document‑driven style that foregrounds primary evidence and lets institutional behaviour speak for itself.
4 more real estate journalists.
Aleisha Dawson
Aleisha Dawson covers property where prestige deals, hard market data and lifestyle stories meet, with a particular focus on high-profile apartments and new projects in South East Queensland. She is a regional real estate editor within News Corp’s property network, overseeing property coverage for the Gold Coast Bulletin and contributing to Realestate.com.au’s property news. Her beat spans record-setting penthouse sales, off-market prestige deals, new apartment releases in landmark projects, and one-off high-value homes used as case studies in buyer behaviour. She tracks land and apartment markets with a data-led approach, using specific price points, volume figures and suburb lists. Dawson also reports on quirky homes, celebrity property, pop culture-linked locations and technology-shaped renovations, and her stories are widely republished by developers, agents and project marketers.
Blair Jackson
Blair Jackson explains housing through money: how prices, policy and banks shape the way people buy, sell and live. He is a reporter with the national wire service NewsWire, covering real estate and household finance across Australia. His work follows housing downturns, price movements, negative equity, mortgages, first-home buyers and existing borrowers. He reports on renters, poor housing conditions, high rents, repairs, affordability and housing inequality. He examines zoning, supply targets, tax changes, construction limits, development decisions and efforts to fix housing shortages. His finance coverage includes mortgage fraud, bank risk, interest rates, household costs and windfalls used to pay off property. He also covers auctions, listings, luxury homes, renovations and major developments. Jackson combines data, policy analysis, expert warnings, open-home and auction detail, and personal examples to show how financial decisions affect households and communities.
Bonnie Campbell
Bonnie Campbell is a luxury property reporter for The Australian Financial Review who focuses on the very top of the residential market, where big-ticket homes, mega-mansions and high-profile sales set and test price records. She covers trophy properties, record-breaking deals and prestige streets, using individual sales as case studies in how wealth, status and grand houses move through the market. Her stories track extreme price movements, large-scale renovations, unusual features and multi-million dollar listings, and link them to high-net-worth buyers, business leaders and public figures. She repeatedly returns to prestige coastal, resort and lifestyle markets, explaining how scarcity, views and amenity support multi-million dollar valuations. Alongside single-property features, she produces roundups of major luxury deals to show patterns in where the biggest money flows and which houses define the top end.
Caroline Delaney
Caroline Delaney is a senior property and features journalist at the Irish Examiner whose work links individual homes, damaged houses and outdoor spaces to the wider housing landscape. She covers residential listings with clear, price‑led pieces on specific homes coming to market, highlighting core details such as guide price, size, house type and a plain sense of location. Her property features look at fire damage and repair, treating house fires as a structural issue for the housing market and following cases through court proceedings and the process of putting homes right. She also reports on outdoor spaces and synthetic lawns, including environmental experts’ views on plastic turf in domestic gardens. Her news and features background keeps the tone fact‑led rather than promotional and gives her coverage a practical focus on aspiration, risk and everyday use of housing.