Peter Luck


PETER LUCK is one of Australia’s most respected media personalities. He has presented and produced most of Australia’s major current affairs programs, including This Day Tonight, Four Corners, Sunday, Hinch, Today Tonight and Inside Edition as well as creating enduring TV series like This Fabulous Century.

Producer/presenter of Bicentennial Minutes…A Time to Remember,  The Australians,  Where Are They Now? and This Fabulous Century he has been a familiar figure in press, radio, television and magazines for 30 years in a wide variety of roles including executive producer, producer, reporter, columnist, photographer and cartoonist.  His Bicentennial Minutes series was unique in Australian TV history – 266 separate mini documentaries shot on 350 locations which ran throughout 1988 on the Seven Network.  In 1995 Peter produced for Nine the stunningly successful 50 Fantastic Years Specials and Salute to Australians At War minutes to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II.  In 1996 he rejoined the Seven Network to help create and present Where Are they Now? which became one of the big successes of the 1996 television season. In 1998, while also hosting Today Tonight,  Peter re-made This Fabulous Century which ran head to head with Hey Hey It’s Saturday until the latter show was cancelled. His most recent production was a documentary/concert with Nelson Mandela.

The books which Peter produced to accompany This Fabulous Century and Bicentennial Minutes – A Time to Remember have sold more than 250,000 copies.  Luck is also the author of seven other books, including Australian Icons which was accompanied by a popular exhibition at Sydney’s Hyde Park Barracks. Peter’s most recent book is a photographic essay on the theme of Rust launched by the Premier of NSW, The Hon. R.J.Carr along with an exhibition of Peter’s photographs at the Michael Nagy Gallery of Fine Art in Potts Point, Sydney,  In 2003 he joined an illustrious group of Australian photographers whose works were hung in the inaugural Citicorp Private Bank Australian Photographic Prize held in conjunction with the New South Wales Art Gallery’s famous Archibald Prize.

Luck was a member of the original This Day Tonight team in the 60s, which included Bill Peach, Gerald Stone and Mike Willesee.  He helped set the pattern for the nightly current affairs shows which Australians now regard as part of their way of life.  He has also been a reporter on ABC TV’s Four Corners and for two years, was Executive Producer of Channel Nine’s Sunday Programme.  He has compered The Hinch Summer Series and Newsworld for Channel Seven, as well as Good Morning Australia for the Ten Network.  Among his ouput for the Ten network was a documentary about the life and times of John F. Kennedy.

In 1972, Peter was awarded a Churchill Fellowship to study film techniques in England, France, Sweden and the United States.  His documentaries on Joern Utzon, designer of Sydney’s Opera House, and the Aboriginal murderer and author, Kevin Gilbert, were both highly commended at the Cannes Film Festival.

Peter is best known, however, as a popular historian.  In 1979, he was executive producer, co-writer and presenter of This Fabulous Century a 36-part television series, which told the story of Australia in the 20th century using archival film and interviews with 300 significant Australians.  The series topped the ratings for nearly a near, and won a Logie in 1980.  Peter also produced and presented the opening night block-buster for Australia’s multicultural television network, SBS.  The program, Who Are We? traced the history of immigration in Australia.

Peter Luck Productions (Australia) Pty. Ltd. has made numerous short films, including A Salute to Australian Television, produced for screening at the Bicentennial conference of the Federation of Australian Commercial Television Stations held in Los Angeles, two films on the role of Australia’s National Film and Sound Archive and a film about the role of the National Maritime Museum which was presented to American President, Ronald Reagan, in 1988.

There are few jobs in the media that Peter has not done.  His radio recollections range from being news editor of 5AD on the morning President Kennedy was shot, to hosting the popular “PL on BL” for ABC radio 2BL (702) in 1989-90.  During 1989 he also made daily news commentaries for radio 2SM.  For seven years Luck wrote the popular TV critique Fifth Column for the Pink Guide in The Sydney Morning Herald.  As well as his serious works, Peter has written and produced, with Michael Carlton, an LP record And The Word Was Gough which satirised the political history of modern Australia.  Peter Luck is 59 and lives with his wife Penny, and children Anthony and Anna, in the Sydney suburb of Balmain.

Visit Peter's website at www.peterluck.com.au