Phil Wallington

Veteran Australian-born producer Phil Wallington had 50 plus years of screen credits. A 1989 shift to New Zealand, following 23 years at Australia’s ABC news, saw him take on a run of executive producer roles on current affairs shows. He helped produce the controversial 1990 Frontline report on Labour Party campaign funding. The Top Shelf producer was also a regular media commentator. Wallington died on 11 September 2020.

I am lucky to be still employable and still to be working in an industry which I love. I must have some good qualities — but one of them … is definitely not 'resignation'. I have never resigned willingly, from any role I have played or post I have held. It has always been either a case of being fired or else promoted … Sometimes both in pretty quick succession. Phil Wallington, in his keynote speech to the 2015 SPADA Conference