The ABC has appointed business journalist David Chau to take over its nightly finance segment, ending an era defined by one of Australian television’s most recognisable economic commentators, Alan Kohler.
The move, reported by the Guardian, hands Chau one of the most watched and most scrutinised slots in Australian broadcasting: the few minutes at the end of the ABC’s evening news bulletin devoted to markets, interest rates and the state of the household budget.
The end of a long run
Kohler’s tenure as the ABC’s finance presenter stretched across two decades, making him a nightly fixture in living rooms around the country. His style combined plain-English explanation with a willingness to editorialise gently deliver a verdict on what the day’s numbers actually meant. The charts he built his segments around, often annotated to make a single point about wages, inflation or housing affordability, became something of a signature, widely shared well beyond the broadcast itself.
Kohler came to the ABC with a long career already behind him, including editorships in the financial press and a significant role in building subscription-based financial media in Australia. That background gave his commentary an authority that extended past the markets wrap: in recent years he has been one of the more prominent mainstream voices arguing that housing costs are the central economic problem facing younger Australians.
Replacing a presenter with that kind of profile is never a simple personnel decision. Audiences form attachments to the people who explain money to them, particularly in a period when mortgage repayments, grocery prices and superannuation balances dominate household conversation.
Who is David Chau?
Chau is a familiar face and byline within the ABC’s business coverage, having reported on markets, the economy and corporate affairs for the broadcaster across television, radio and online. His work has included the daily rhythm of market reporting as well as longer explanatory pieces aimed at general readers rather than finance professionals.
That grounding in the ABC’s own business desk suggests continuity rather than reinvention. The finance segment’s value to the broadcaster has always rested on translation turning bond yields, producer price indices and central bank language into something a viewer can use. Chau inherits that brief.
He also inherits a changed media environment. When Kohler began presenting, the evening bulletin was still the default place most Australians encountered the day’s economic news. Today that audience is split across streaming, podcasts, newsletters and social video, and the ABC has been steadily pushing its business journalism into those formats. A new presenter is likely to be expected to work across them.
What it signals
The appointment lands at a moment when economic coverage carries unusual political weight. Cost-of-living pressure, interest rate settings and housing supply have been central to recent political debate in Australia, and the ABC’s finance segment sits awkwardly but usefully at the intersection of market reporting and public interest journalism.
For the national broadcaster, the challenge will be preserving the trust the slot has built while allowing a new presenter to find his own voice rather than imitate a predecessor’s. For viewers, the test will be simpler and more immediate: whether the nightly explanation of what the economy did today still makes sense by the time the credits roll.
Kohler’s future plans beyond the ABC’s evening bulletin have not been detailed in the reporting of the appointment. Read More
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