2016 news highlights: Luke McIlveen

Belinda Cleary’s compelling series of exclusives on Melbourne’s Apex gang shone a light on the feared criminal outfit for the first time. Over months she cultivated contacts inside the gang responsible for carjackings, home invasions, rapes and assaults across Melbourne. Her interviews with long-serving gang members were brave and insightful and highlighted real problems the Sudanese community had assimilating into Australian society – particularly young people. Belinda sat down with gang members, their parents, victims and senior police to expose the extent of the gang’s reign of terror – and the monumental task law enforcement faced in stopping them. Until Daily Mail Australia took this issue head on, Melbourne readers were given meek, politically correct coverage of the Apex gang’s horrific crimes by the city’s notoriously squeamish newspapers and websites.

- Luke McIlveen, editor, Daily Mail Australia