Stephen Drill
Stephen Drill is a business-focused journalist at Herald Sun whose work follows how money, power and risk move through defence technology, illicit markets and generational shifts in public attitudes. He reports across print, audio and broadcast formats, often taking complex security and crime stories and presenting them through a clear commercial and societal lens. His coverage combines straightforward explanatory writing with data-led reporting and long-form narratives.
Defence technology and strategic industries
Drill’s recent work includes reporting on Australia’s development of groundbreaking defence technology, treating the story as both a national security milestone and a significant moment for the defence sector and its suppliers.[anchor] In that piece he focuses on the capabilities of the new system and the way it fits into broader investment in military hardware and technology. The coverage reflects a recurring interest in the business of defence and the companies and partnerships behind new systems, rather than treating technology as an isolated technical achievement.
This focus on defence is mirrored in his reporting on national preparedness and willingness to serve, where he uses survey data to test how different generations respond to questions of conflict and sacrifice. In World war? We’d go AWOL he reports on exclusive polling around Anzac Day, highlighting Gen Z attitudes to remembrance and service and presenting the findings in sharp, accessible language.
The combination of industry-focused technology coverage and survey-led stories about national occasions positions him as a reporter who connects defence capability with the people and attitudes that sit behind it.[anchor]
Cocaine Inc and the economics of illicit trade
Alongside his print reporting, Drill extends his work into audio through his Cocaine Inc podcast, which examines the global cocaine trade.
The series is built around the idea that the drug trade is an industry, tracing organisations, routes and markets as a system of money flows and risk. By framing organised crime and trafficking in business terms, he brings the tools of commercial reporting - structure, incentives, profits - into stories that might otherwise sit purely on the crime or policing beat.
This gives his coverage of illicit markets a distinct tone: sober, transactional and focused on how the trade operates rather than on sensational detail.
Surveys, generational trends and national occasions
Drill regularly uses commissioned polling and survey data to underpin his stories, particularly when writing about major national occasions and public sentiment. In his Anzac Day attitudes piece he reports on exclusive research that finds troubling trends among younger cohorts, breaking down the numbers to show differences between generations. The article leans on statistics but is written in plain, direct prose, connecting percentages and survey questions to everyday choices and attitudes.
Across this type of coverage he tends to build stories from a central data point or headline finding, then layer short case studies or examples around it. The result is reporting that can move quickly from numbers to narrative while keeping the focus on what the data says about future behaviour - whether that is willingness to fight, participate in ceremonies or engage with national traditions.
Cross-masthead reporting and commentary
Drill’s work is published not only in Herald Sun but also across other major News Corp mastheads, including titles such as the Daily Telegraph, Courier Mail and Adelaide Advertiser. This cross-masthead role means his stories are often written to travel, with angles that can be reframed for different audiences while keeping the core reporting intact. His portfolio spans business, sport and broader national stories, demonstrating range across multiple beats while maintaining a consistent interest in how institutions and markets operate.
He has produced prominent long-form features, including front-page and double-page treatments such as Hotel of Secrets for the Sunday edition of the masthead. These pieces show a capacity for extended narrative reporting, drawing on multiple sources and documents to reconstruct events in detail. In addition to his written work, he appears as a panellist on television news talk shows, where he discusses current stories from Herald Sun and related mastheads, reinforcing his role as a reporter who can move between reporting and on-air explanation.
Taken together, his print, podcast and broadcast work mark him out as a journalist who approaches business and security stories with a focus on systems - defence industries, illicit markets, survey-backed public opinion - and presents them in clear, compact stories that can run across platforms.
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