Ian Leslie

In 2005 he anchored Fox Television's award-winning documentary series Running On Empty.

In 1990, Ian Leslie formed a production company specialising in corporate communications.

In 1989, he re-joined the Ten Network to manage and produce primetime documentaries and special projects, becoming the Ten Evening News anchor.

In 1979, the Australian edition of 60 Minutes was launched on the Nine Network, with Ian Leslie, Ray Martin and George Negus as the original reporting team. He remained in that role for the next 11 years, until 1989.

In 1966, Leslie married Jan Penhaligon. They have two children—Jayne and Peter—and three grandchildren: Zavia, Tahlia, and Sienna. Jan was educated at PGC College, Warwick. She has a degree in Music, A Mus A and ATCL (Associate Trinity College London), having topped the State’s music exams. Daughter Jayne has a degree in Drama from the West Australian Academy of Dramatic Arts. She runs her own business coaching company. Son Peter is an accomplished television cameraman, covering major sporting events in Australia and overseas, including the Sydney 2000 Olympics and Beijing 2008 Olympics.

Leslie became a cadet journalist in Toowoomba in 1962 with the local newspaper/television group, rising to News Editor. He moved to Sydney in 1972 as a senior reporter with the Ten Network. In 1977, he transferred to the Nine Network to join A Current Affair.

In 1947, William Leslie took his family back to Indonesia to resume life and career. What they saw was a very different country to the one they had left three years earlier. Nationalism had replaced Dutch-Anglo colonial rule. Communist insurgents under President Sukarno waged a war of independence. Indonesia was no longer a safe place to raise a family, with politically motivated attacks on Europeans becoming a daily occurrence. In 1950, they moved to Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia. Ian Leslie is a member of the Australian branch of Clan Leslie.

Ian Craig Leslie OAM (born 6 July 1942) is an Indonesian-born Australian television journalist and corporate communicator.

They raised their four children in Java, where William Leslie was a manager for a large Anglo-Dutch export company. An idyllic life ended abruptly with the Japanese Imperial Army’s invasion in February 1942. For his first three years, Ian and his family spent life behind bamboo as POWs in a separate camp to his father. Despite the ravages of prison life and starvation, disease, and lack of medical aid, the Leslies survived. In August 1945, at the end of the Pacific War, the Leslies were evacuated back to Scotland.