Indira Naidoo builds rich/varied national media profile since her news reading start with ABC-TV in Adelaide
Indira Naidoo explored a wide range of interests and concerns since her time with ABC television in Adelaide.
Image courtesy sbs.com.au
Indira Naidoo’s rich and varied national media profile started when she joined the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) in Adelaide in 1990 as a news cadet, having completed a journalism degree at the South Australian College of Advanced Education (now University of South Australia).
South African-born Naidoo also brought a background of being educated in England, Zimbabwe and Launceston, Tasmania before graduating as dux of Naracoorte High School in South Australia’s southeast.
After several years as an ABC political and industrial reporter, she anchored ABC weekend television news and the state edition of The 7.30 Report. Naidoo won the South Australian justice administration award for television in 1993.
Naidoo moved to the ABC's National Late Edition News in Sydney where she developed a cult following as the network’s youngest national news host. In 1997, Naidoo was headhunted to present SBS television’s inaugural late news for three years. Naidoo had a float dedicated to her in the 1997 Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras.
Naidoo became the media manager and spokeswoman for Australian independent consumer watchdog CHOICE in 2006. She started the Shonky Awards for the worst consumer products, bringing her appearances on shows such as A Current Affair and The 7.30 Report.
She made guest appearances on Good News Week, Race Around the World, The New Inventors, The Glass House, Roy & H.G.’s Club Buggery and was on the first series of Celebrity MasterChef on Network Ten. Naidoo has written extensively for food and travel magazines including Australian Gourmet Traveller. Through her TV company FitzGerald Productions, she has been a consumer communications consultant to the United Nations trade arm in Geneva—the International Trade Centre—and environmental and community organisations.
In 2009, Naidoo was one of 261 trained in Melbourne by former US vice president Al Gore to conduct presentations about the impacts of anthropogenic climate change.
The Edible Balcony, her urban farming cookbook, went into four reprints. In 2017, Naidoo was a guest presenter on ABC TV’s Gardening Australia on urban gardening initiatives, and later that year she hosted SBS TV series Filthy, Rich and Homeless.
Naidoo hosted the national Nightlife programme on ABC Local Radio from 2000 and the Compass programme on ABC television in 2023. She began talking publicly about navigating grief after the suicide death of her sister, Walkley-award-winning journalist Manika, who was afflicted by mental health problems.
