Liz Hayes leaves Nine after 44-year career

Star reporter Liz Hayes is leaving Nine after a remarkable 44-year career at the network. The shock departure comes amid a “standoff” with an exec.

Liz Hayes’ four-decade-long association with Nine is at an end with Hayes today announcing she is leaving the media company to pursue new opportunities.

The news caps Hayes’ remarkable 44-year career at Nine, where in the eighties she became a household name hosting breakfast show Today before securing a coveted role on the network’s benchmark current affairs program 60 Minutes.

Hayes’s contract, put at $600,000, is expected to lapse mid year.

“When I arrived at Nine I had little more than a notebook and a typewriter, but like my new and far more experienced colleagues, I carried with me an enormous passion for telling stories,” Hayes said on Wednesday.

“I was blessed. I had found my tribe. Even Nine’s owner at the time, Kerry Packer, seemed to carry the same passionate story telling gene.

“Of course since then much has changed. The media world has evolved as have I. What hasn’t changed is the need for good stories to be told, and I will continue to tell them.

“I leave Nine grateful for the decades of experience, the wonderful friendships that have endured and deeply appreciative to the many people who trusted me to tell their stories.”

Liz Hayes has left Nine after a remarkable 44-year career with the network. Picture: 60 Minutes

‘Standoff’: Hayes’ feud with 60 Minutes exec

The veteran journalist’s future at Nine has been under a cloud in recent months following Nine’s mid 2024 decision to rest the program Under Investigation with Liz Hayes.

Network insiders this month told news.com.au Hayes had been embroiled in a long-running “standoff” with the executive producer of 60 Minutes Kirsty Thomson over Hayes’ “years old” frustration over production standards on the show, which the veteran reporter felt had been in decline.

Network sources said Hayes had repeatedly expressed her concerns to Ms Thomson that the program’s new breed of producers lacked sufficient experience.

She also is said to have questioned the program’s lighter content and Nine programmers’ new habit of pushing the 60 Minutes’ traditional start-time out to accommodate Married at First Sight running until 9pm.

“Simply put, the two women, who once got on famously when Thomson was chief-of-staff, didn’t agree on the direction of the show,” said one insider.

To try and resolve the impasse, in 2021 Nine bosses launched the 60 Minutes’ spin-off program Under Investigation with Liz Hayes with veteran producer Gareth Harvey at the helm as supervising producer.

That program was shelved last year by Nine’s bean counters in an attempt to find $30 million in budgetary cuts.

The move left Hayes without a gig.

Last month, the question of Hayes’ ongoing role at Nine boiled over into the public domain when she was not featured in the 2025 station promo for 60 Minutes.

Network insiders said Hayes had been embroiled in a long-running ‘standoff’ with the executive producer of 60 Minutes over standards at the show. Picture: Supplied

44-year career with Nine

Hayes joined Nine in 1981 as a reporter and was soon appointed to host Sydney station TCN’s morning news bulletin.

A favourite of then Nine managing director Sam Chisholm and proprietor Packer, in 1986 she became co-host of Today with Steve Liebmann, a role she held for the next decade.

In 1996, her on-the-road reporting style was put to the test when she moved to 60 Minutes alongside reporters Charles Wooley, Richard Carleton and Jeff McMullen.

In the years that followed Hayes covered US presidential elections, the Syrian refugee crisis and natural disasters across the globe. She also interviewed prime ministers and politicians, influential business people, Hollywood actors, music legends, and world-class athletes.

Hayes, 68, is the recipient of a Logie Award for producing and presenting acclaimed documentary The Greatest Gift.

In 2024, she also collected the Media Diversity Australia Award for Under Investigation with Liz Hayes.

Nine director of television, Michael Healy paid tribute to the star upon her departure: “Liz Hayes is an Australian television legend and has dedicated most of her career to Nine, she will leave an undeniable legacy”.

“Her many accomplishments speak volumes about the type of journalist she is – tenacious, a truth seeker, and above all, a storyteller. I’d like to recognise Liz for the impact she has had on Australian journalism and thank her for all she has done for Nine over the past 44 years.

“We know Liz’s next chapter will be just as successful as her last, and she has our full support.”

On Wednesday, Nine maintained Hayes will remain part of the Nine family adding viewers “can expect to see her on their screens for special stories and events broadcast on the 9Network.”