Katrina Beavan

Katrina Beavan reports for the ABC, focusing on how economic decisions, public systems and policy play out in the lives of ordinary people. Her coverage blends business-focused reporting with human-centred stories, often using regional case studies to show the consequences of legal, health and infrastructure decisions.

Business and property stories with legal stakes

Beavan’s business coverage frequently centres on how commercial decisions and legal processes reshape local assets and livelihoods. In her report on a rundown Rockhampton hotel that sold for millions at a court-ordered auction, she focuses on a distressed property put under judicial oversight, highlighting the financial and legal dimensions of a high-value sale. That kind of story anchors business news in concrete outcomes, showing how court actions, valuations and investor appetite collide around a single commercial asset.

Her work also extends to the practical economics of rural enterprise and infrastructure. In a co-bylined piece with Carl Curtain, she reports on a cattle producer’s experience with an NBN satellite internet installer, documenting how connectivity and service quality affect the operations of agricultural businesses. By treating telecommunications as a business-critical issue rather than a purely technical one, she connects national infrastructure policy to the day-to-day viability of regional producers. Across these stories, she consistently frames business topics through specific examples, rather than abstract market commentary, grounding economic themes in the detail of individual transactions, contracts and services.

Health systems, hospitals and access to treatment

Alongside business stories, Beavan devotes substantial reporting to the performance of health systems and the impact of policy on patients and families. Her coverage of an 80-year-old dementia patient who walked out of a hospital and was never seen again examines hospital practices and supervision failures, drawing on right to information documents to show that supervisors were not always told when the patient left his ward. The story sits at the intersection of clinical care, risk management and institutional accountability, focusing on how system-level gaps translate into life-or-death consequences for vulnerable people.

She returns to access-to-treatment questions in her reporting on a mother’s fight for cystic fibrosis medication, a piece recognised in a roundup of notable Queensland journalism. In another feature, she profiles a mother with terminal breast cancer who writes a children’s book, Pink Punk Mum, to help explain her illness to her child, documenting both the emotional labour and the health journey. These articles share a clear through-line: they treat health policy, pharmaceutical access and hospital procedures as stories about families navigating complex systems, not just clinical or regulatory news. For communications around health, regulation or patient advocacy, her work shows an interest in detailed case studies, official documents and the voices of those directly affected.

Community impact, environment and public policy

Beavan’s reporting often broadens from individual cases to the wider community and policy settings, especially where law and government decisions intersect with everyday life. Her coverage of the Biloela Tamil asylum seeker family’s tearful return home after a four-year struggle against deportation traces a long-running immigration case, focusing on what a complex legal and political battle means for one family and their town. The story illustrates her willingness to follow drawn-out policy disputes and to capture the emotional and social dimensions of high-profile decisions.

She also reports on grassroots environmental and waste initiatives, including a story highlighting a primary school running its own “war on waste”, where students and staff work to reduce rubbish and model recycling behaviour. In that piece, she uses a local project to illuminate broader conversations about sustainability and responsibility, showing how environmental policy themes emerge inside schools and communities. Across her community and policy reporting, she tends to anchor national debates—on immigration, environment, health or infrastructure—in specific local examples, documenting both the official decisions and the informal efforts people make to adapt.

Broadcast reporting and long tenure at the ABC

Beavan has worked with the ABC since she began covering the 2010–11 floods in her hometown while still at university, giving her a long perspective on how major events affect communities over time. Her experience spans digital and broadcast formats; she has appeared as a reporter on ABC News Breakfast, bringing her field reporting and regional stories into a national television context. She is also present on the ABC’s audio platforms, reflecting a cross-medium role that moves between written pieces, radio and video. That breadth of formats aligns with the substance of her beat: detailed, document-based reporting on business, health and policy that is then translated into accessible narratives for different audiences.