Terry Plane

Terry Plane has wide experience at executive level in media and government, and as a Board member in diverse organisations, among them SA Tourism, Sky News Australia and Connecting Foster & Kinship Carers. He’s been the senior News & Current Affairs executive at a major television network, adviser to a State Premier and the Media & Publicity director for the inaugural Australian Formula 1 Grand Prix, as well as head of strategic communications at the South Australian Department of Child Protection and Administrator of the South Australian Film & Television Financing Fund. He’s advised corporations and a major trade union, was the founding editor at a number of specialist publications and worked as a feature writer at Reuters Economic Services. He’s worked in London, Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide and in newspapers, television, radio, magazines and wire services. 

In television, where success is based on a combination of research and instinct, he’s overseen production of market-leading news bulletins in Sydney and Adelaide over a period of almost two decades. In both markets bulletins under his stewardship achieved market leadership after long periods of under-achievement. 

At the F1 GP, he oversaw an encompassing city-wide festival promotional approach and a community engagement program based on political campaign tactics, including street corner meetings, leaflet drops and regular speeches to community groups. The success of the program might be measured by Adelaide winning both the GP event of the year and best media centre of the year - in its first year on the F1 circuit - thereby establishing Adelaide as one of the most attractive races for another 10 years, for fans, drivers, teams and sponsors.

Chris Willis has decades of experience of high level media and political strategic management in Australia. 

He served as a senior strategic advisor in two of the longest serving Labor governments in Australian history. In 2016 he was appointed Chief of Staff for the NSW Leader of the Opposition. In that role he was responsible for overseeing policy formulation, communications execution and stakeholder management. In all roles Willis was involved in the formulation of strategy and crisis management. 

Willis was also news director for Seven News Sydney during its most sustained period of success - 6 years at number one in what is considered Australia’s toughest media market. He was instrumental in developing the strategy, which saw Seven rise from number 3 to number 1 in that market. 

At Sky News Australia he was responsible for the local and international news operations for Australia’s longest running 24-hour news channel. 

During his time at Seven and Sky News, he worked extensively with international partners and represented both organisations at conferences in Europe and USA. In 2020 he was chosen to be part of the Senior Editors exchange of the Australia-Indonesia Institute, which involved high-level meetings in Jakarta with government, corporate and religious leaders. 

In 2000 Willis was senior Chief of Staff at the Seven Network at the Sydney Olympics, which involved daily operational responsibility for over 200 staff. Willis has been a board member of Sky News Australia.