Mary Kostakidis (born 1954) is an Australian journalist and political commentator. She is the former prime time weeknight SBS World News Australia presenter and was the face of SBS over two decades.Her journalism spans geopolitical issues, democracy and press freedom. Her commentary covers areas including the Middle East, national security, AUKUS, China and the failings of mainstream media. Her work is published by independent media including public policy journal Pearls and Irritations and has used Twitter/X extensively to contemporaneously report court proceedings in great detail, including the four week UK evidentiary Extradition hearing of Julian Assange and subsequent appeals.
She was born in Veria, Greece, and her family migrated to Australia two years later. Kostakidis attended Fort Street Girls' High School, and the University of Sydney, where she studied Modern Greek, philosophy, French, German and Italian. She was a founding member and first president of the university's Greek Society SUGS. She completed a Diploma of Education. Kostakidis was awarded a post-graduate scholarship to study at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece.
Before joining SBS, Kostakidis worked as a tutor at the University of Sydney, as a research officer for the Departments of Health and Youth and Community Services in New South Wales and as a court interpreter and a translations editor. She has also hosted programmes on ABC Radio stations 2BL and Classic FM.
During her assignment as an interpreter on the so-called "Greek Conspiracy Case" in the late 1970s, she organised a conversion course for Greek interpreters at the NSW Ethnic Affairs Commission in conjunction with Sydney University's Modern Greek Department, to facilitate a conversion from the formal Katharevousa to demotic or vernacular Greek so that the defendants in the case would be able to understand the language being used. Some years later, Greece also adopted the vernacular as the language of all official documents.
Kostakidis acted in a children's television series called Five Times Dizzy in 1986 with Rebekah Elmaloglou. She has also appeared in the movies Jindabyne and Look Both Ways as a newsreader.
Kostakidis was a member of the management team that set up and developed SBS Television in 1980 and presented its flagship World News for 20 years, resigning in 2007. Her board and committee appointments during nearly 3 decades at SBS and subsequently reflect a strong commitment to social justice and the arts.
She has served as a member of the Fred Hollows Foundation Board, the Sydney Theatre Board, the National Library of Australia Council, the ResMed Foundation Board, the Advisory Panel of the Sydney Peace Foundation, University of Sydney, the ANU's Freilich Foundation, and The Privacy Foundation. She is a former Chair of the Sydney Peace Foundation.
In 2009, Kostakidis was appointed by the Rudd government to the National Human Rights Consultation Committee chaired by Frank Brennan. The Committee inquired into the adequacy of the protection and promotion of human rights in Australia, holding consultations in metropolitan, rural and remote areas across the country, and receiving over 35,000 written submissions. The Committee recommended a raft of measures, the most contentious of which was a Human Rights Act. Human rights education was the measure that had the greatest support of those that took part in the consultation, but an overwhelming majority supported human rights legislation. The four member Committee also included Mick Palmer and Tammy Williams.
From 1997 to 2003, she served on the Advertising Standards Board; in 1993 she was appointed by then Prime Minister Paul Keating to Republic Advisory Committee chaired by Malcolm Turnbull; in the early nineties she also served on the Council for the Order of Australia and in 1992 was a founding member of the James Joyce Foundation Board along with Ed Campion and Don Anderson. She has also been an active member of the Kazantzaki society.
Kostakidis has served as an Ambassador for Beyond Blue and was also a member of the Drug and Alcohol Council, the Breast Cancer Council and Advisory Committee and the Constitutional Centenary Foundation.
In 1989, Kostakidis hosted the Ethnic Business Awards, which highlighted migrant and Indigenous excellence in business. She went on to host the awards again from 1991 to 1994 as well as from 1996 to 1997.[1]
Kostakidis joined SBS as part of the original management team in September 1980 and worked on the development of the Subtitling Unit, its policy, recruitment and training programme.[2] She went on to become Director of Programme Preparation overseeing Subtitling, Censorship and Classification, and a Post Production Unit. In this role she was responsible for the development of censorship and classification and children's programming policies.[2]
Kostakidis moved from Management to anchor SBS's flagship evening news in 1988 after presenting the weekend bulletin for 18 months.[3]
In 1994, she hosted the prime time interview program, The Talk Show. Her guests included Paul Keating, John Laws, Cheryl Kernot, Imran Khan, Betty Friedan and Don Dunstan.[2]
After being known as "the face of SBS News" for many years, in her final year she co-hosted the main SBS World News at weekdays with Stan Grant.
In August 2007, Kostakidis walked out of the SBS newsroom over changes she believed undermined SBS standards and over what she claimed was a breach of contract.[4] According to authors Ien Ang, Gay Hawkins and Lamia Dabboussy, Kostakidis was unhappy with "the introduction of advertisements within [news] programs," and her departure "was clearly a big blow to SBS, and signalled for many that the multicultural broadcaster had lost its way."[5]
On 5 October 2007, Kostakidis lodged a statement of claim in the Federal Court of Australia, alleging a breach of contract and contravention of the Trade Practices Act 1975 on the part of SBS. She alleged that she had been bullied by fellow presenter Stan Grant and had been "intimidated and bullied" by SBS managing director Shaun Brown, who was driving change at SBS he believed would result in a wider audience reach and increased revenue. She was represented in court by prominent Melbourne lawyer, Julian Burnside.[6] [7] [8]
The matter was settled out of court. On 23 November 2007, SBS and Kostakidis were reported to have reached an "amicable settlement". The financial details of the settlement were not disclosed.[9]
Kostakidis has a long-standing interest in social justice and continues to engage in public discourse, delivering lectures, chairing public forums and contributing editorial opinion articles in the mainstream press and independent online media.
Kostakidis has supported Julian Assange. In 2011, she presented Assange with the Sydney Peace Foundation's Gold Medal for peace with justice. She described WikiLeaks as an "ingenious website that has shifted the power balance between citizen and the state by exposing what governments really get up to in our name". She said the treatment of Assange by the US was intended to "shut down WikiLeaks and criminalise the activity of this publisher". She has criticised Assange's extradition trial in the UK and the media for a lack of interest in the case.[10]
In July 2024, the Zionist Federation of Australia said it would lodge a complaint with the Australian Human Rights Commission alleging that Kostakidis breached racial discrimination laws by posting on X a link to a speech by Hezbollah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah. Kostakidis said "The point of that tweet was to say that Israel is inviting an escalation, it’s inviting retribution because it is conducting a genocide".[11] [12]
Her second husband is Professor Ian Wilcox, a cardiologist.