Laura Margaret Tingle is an Australian journalist and author. She is currently the chief political correspondent of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's 7.30 current affairs television program and was previously the political editor of The Australian Financial Review.
Career
Tingle began her career in Sydney as a cadet journalist with Fairfax Media's Australian Financial Review and Business Review Weekly in the early 1980s, reporting on financial deregulation and the floating of the dollar. In 1987, she moved to News Limited's The Australian newspaper as an economics correspondent. She was appointed chief political correspondent in 1992 and national affairs correspondent from 1994. In 1996, she returned to Fairfax as a political correspondent for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. In 2002, she returned to The Australian Financial Review as political correspondent and was subsequently appointed chief political correspondent and Canberra bureau chief from 2003, then political editor in 2008. Tingle's book, Chasing the Future: Recession, Recovery and the New Politics in Australia—documenting the recession of the early 1990s—was published in 1994. She has written three issues of Quarterly Essay: "Great Expectations – government, entitlement and an angry nation" in June 2012, "Political Amnesia – how we forgot to govern" in November 2015, and "Follow the Leader: Democracy and the Rise of the Strongman" in September 2018. Her book In Search of Good Government was published by Black Inc in 2017. Tingle won Walkley Awards in 2005 and 2011 and has also been highly commended in the Walkley Awards for her investigative journalism. She also won the Paul Lyneham Award for Press Gallery Journalism in 2004 and was shortlisted for the John Button Prize for political writing in 2010. In 2017 she won the Qantas-European Union journalism prize. She makes regular appearances on Radio National's Late Night Live and Insiders on ABC TV. In February 2018, Tingle left the Australian Financial Review and joined the Australian Broadcasting Corporation as chief political correspondent of the 7.30 program.
Political views
Tingle is a regular political commentator on the ABC's Insiders program and a columnist. She described the victory of Tony Abbott over Malcolm Turnbull for the opposition leadership in a 2009 party room ballot as "a disaster of epic proportions for a party in the race to remain competitive at the next election". In 2010, in the days after the federal election when both major parties were negotiating with the House of Representativescrossbench about who would form government, she wrote a scathing criticism of the Coalition's election costings, based on the Treasury assessment of them. The piece was headlined "Liars and Clunkheads Fail Budget Test". A supporter of carbon pricing, and a critic of the Coalition's Operation Sovereign Borders, she predicted that these border security plans would be "impossible to implement". Tingle has subsequently described Abbott as an "oaf", an "utter destructive force" and a "waste of space". When Malcolm Turnbull challenged and won the Liberal leadership and prime ministership from Abbott in an internal party ballot in 2015, Tingle described it as "the end of a particularly poisonous period in Australian politics", saying that "Australia has been pushed sharply to the right" and that Abbott's government was "unlamented... except at News Corporation". She denounced Abbott's focus on "the Daesh death cult, the ABC, the Ice Epidemic, Labor-appointed boards and public servants". When Turnbull subsequently resigned as Liberal prime minister ahead of a similar internal party leadership ballot in 2018, Tingle described the replacement of Turnbull with Scott Morrison as "utterly pointless". She judged that the move to oust Turnbull was driven by "pure spite and collective madness". On the day he resigned, Turnbull chose Tingle as the first of a small number of reporters permitted to question him at his final press conference. She asked if he regretted making too many concessions to conservatives.
Personal life
Tingle was born in Sydney, the youngest daughter of Pam Chivers and journalist John Tingle who, after a long career in journalism with the ABC and commercial radio, founded the Shooters Party in 1992 and was elected to the New South Wales Legislative Council in 1995. Tingle was educated at Turramurra High School and at the Australian International Independent School. She married fellow journalist Alan Ramsey in 1995. Tingle has one daughter. Tingle started dating actor Sam Neill in 2017.
