Tracey Spicer is a multiple Walkley Award winning author, journalist and broadcaster who has anchored national programs for ABC TV and radio, Network Ten and Sky News.
Tracey was born in Brisbane, and from 1980 to 1984, attended Soubirous and Frawley Colleges in Scarborough.
In 1987, Spicer graduated from the Queensland Institute of Technology with a Bachelor of Business (Communications) with a major in journalism.
Spicer began her career at Macquarie National News providing reports to the Brisbane station 4BH, before moving to Melbourne radio station 3AW as morning news editor. Spicer moved on to television: first for the rural network, Southern Cross Television, and the Nine Network. The Network Ten station in Melbourne later hired Spicer as a local correspondent and then co-host of the First at Five News in Brisbane (with Glenn Taylor and Geoff Mullins). In 1995 she moved to Sydney to present the National Weekend News bulletins, and late night news until it was taken off air in 2005. Spicer remained with Network Ten until the end of 2006.
In late 2006, after 14 years with the network, Spicer was dismissed after returning from maternity leave when her second child was two months old. In a 10-page letter of demand served to Network Ten, Spicer claimed she had been discriminated against since giving birth to her first child in 2004. The case garnered attention in the media, with speculation she was fired because of her age; Network Ten strongly denied allegations of discrimination and said it was related to ongoing restructuring of the news division and related cost efficiencies. Spicer threatened to take the case to the Federal Court, but eventually settled with the network. She signed off for the final time on New Year's Eve 2006, beginning work with Sky News Australia four days later. Spicer worked as a Sky News presenter until leaving in 2015.
Spicer has hosted the Ethnic Business Awards, which is a national business award that highlights and celebrates migrant and Indigenous excellence in business, for 11 years in a row (2008-2018).
Spicer writes the Mama Holiday column for Traveller Magazine’s Sunday edition, focusing on family holidays.Spicer was previously a weekly op ed columnist with Wendy Harmer’s The Hoopla from 2011 to 2015 and travel writer and ambassador for Holiday with Kids Magazine from 2009 to 2014.She was a columnist with the Daily Telegraph newspaper.
Since August 2015, Spicer has been an occasional contributor to ABC TV’s The Drum and currently works as a freelance writer, speaker, media trainer and broadcaster through her two media companies, Spicer Communications and Outspoken Women.
In 2017, Spicer released her autobiography,"The Good Girl Stripped Bare", and it became a bestseller within weeks of publication, while her TEDx Talk, The Lady Stripped Bare, has attracted more than six million views worldwide. Tracey’s essays have appeared in dozens of books including Women of Letters, She’s Having a Laugh, Father Figures, Unbreakable, and Bewitched & Bedevilled: Women Write the Gillard Years.
In 2019 she was named the NSW Premier’s Woman of the Year, accepted the Sydney Peace Prize alongside Tarana Burke for the Me Too movement, and won the national award for Excellence in Women’s Leadership through Women & Leadership Australia.
In 2018, Tracey was chosen as one of the Australian Financial Review’s 100 Women of Influence, winning the Social Enterprise and Not-For-Profit category. She was also named Agenda Setter of the Year by the website Women’s Agenda. For her 30 years of media and charity work, Tracey has been awarded the Member of the Order of Australia.
Highlights of her outstanding career include writing, producing and presenting documentaries on women and girls in Bangladesh, Kenya, Uganda, Papua New Guinea and India. She is an Ambassador for ActionAid, the Ethnic Business Awards and Purple Our World, and Patron of the Pancreatic Cancer Alliance.
The ABC highlighted Tracey’s #metoo work in the three part documentary series Silent No More, which featured the stories of hidden survivors.
In 2023 Tracey published “Man Made”
about how the bias of the past is being built into the machines that will run our futures.
Tracey Spicer’s official website is at: https://traceyspicer.com.au
Tracey Spicer is listed on the wall of the Redcliffe Wall of Fame:
A collection of portrait and information honouring the achievements of individuals who have influenced and shaped Redcliffe. The collection is in the Jetty Arcade at 139-141 Redcliffe Parade.
For a complete list of people who appear on the wall click on the following blog post: