Helen Wellings

Helen Wellings is an Australian journalist and consumer advocate. She has been a senior reporter for the Seven Network for 20 years and is the national Consumer Editor for Seven News. From 1986 to 1995, Helen was the presenter and chief reporter of the renowned ABC consumer affairs series The Investigators. Helen has been on the Board of the Australian Museum and is currently a Trustee of the Lizard Island Reef Research Foundation.

Education and teaching career

Wellings studied a Bachelor of Arts (majoring in Russian history) and a teaching diploma at Monash University. She worked as a secondary school teaching in Victoria for two years, teaching senior history and English.[1]

Consumer advocacy and television career

In 1973, Wellings moved to Sydney, but was unable to work as a teacher as her files were lost by the Department of Education.[2] Instead, she joined the New South Wales Department of Consumer Affairs to implement information programs on consumer rights as head of the department's education and publicity unit. In this role, she made numerous media appearances as a consumer expert on radio and television, including on ABC's This Day Tonight, The 7.30 Report and 2BL; Willesee and 11AM on Seven; The Midday Show and What'll They Think of Next? on the Nine Network; and 2GB radio.[3]

In 1986, she was appointed by the ABC as the host of The Investigators, a new factual television series focused on consumer affairs and rights. The series was one of the ABC's highest-rating programs in its history, and ran for eleven years from 1985 to 1995, when it was cancelled.[4]

After the cancellation of The Investigators, Wellings moved to the Seven Network where she was appointed host of Today Tonight, going on the work as the senior consumer affairs reporter for the program. For the past two years, she has been the national Consumer Editor for Seven News.

Personal life

Wellings is married to barrister Rod Weaver, with whom she has one child.[2] She is the sister-in-law of actress Jacki Weaver.[5]

References

  1. ↑ Who's Who Australian Women 2015, ConnectWeb, 2015.
  2. 1 2 Freeman, Jane: "The Selling of Helen Wellings", The Sydney Morning Herald, 8 January 1996.
  3. ↑ "Helen Wellings". 7 News/Today Tonight. Seven Network. Retrieved 19 January 2016.
  4. ↑ 'We’re all shell shocked!', TV Week, 14–20 October 1995.
  5. ↑ "Consuming interests of Helen Wellings". The Age. 3 February 1988. Retrieved 19 January 2016.
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