For more than 30 years, including seven and a half leading ABC Television's Four Corners, Sue Spencer has held politicians and corporate leaders to account and tackled issues such as immigration, sexual abuse, Aboriginal deaths in custody and the live cattle trade.

Spencer, 66, received the Walkley Award for Most Outstanding Contribution To Journalism earlier this month.

While visiting her mother Gloria, 94, in Albury this week, Spencer said she had been "gobsmacked" by the honour.

"I'm always behind the scenes and I kept on thinking there are a lot of people who should have got it before me," she said.

"In a way, you're only as ever as good as your team.

"The team was really driven to produce really good stories and I think we actually worked really well."

Educated at Albury Public School and Albury High School, Spencer, who now lives in Sydney, remembers the influence of her secondary school English teacher Mrs Mulheron.

"She was someone who really encouraged all of us," the journalist said.

"And that love of reading and just the written word and also thinking about being able to visualise that, she was a terrific teacher."

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After finishing her HSC in 1971, Spencer travelled, worked in community radio and politics, then became a Four Corners researcher in 1985.

"The '80s, you used to have lots of long lunches and lots of booze and lots of cigarettes," she recalled.

"Also it was much more male-dominated. When they hired me, that was just starting to change a bit."

In 1988 as a producer she worked with reporter Paul Barry on Blue Death about Wittenoom residents' battle for asbestos compensation.

"The kids would be playing in the dirt and they would be inhaling the deadly dust as well as the workers," she said.

"And then the poor wives would be washing their husbands' overalls and all the fibres would come out, so the whole community was completely decimated."

Spencer said getting the show to air - after initial legal advice seemed to rule that out - was a relief.

"It was for that community, the fact is they had been fighting so hard and finally they were getting a broader recognition of what had happened to them, and it was quite a significant turning point," she said.

The 1993 ABC series Labor in Power with Philip Chubb, which Spencer produced and directed, won the Gold Walkley while her other projects included The Howard Years, The Killing Season and last year's Exposed: The Case of Keli Lane.

As Four Corners executive producer between 2007 and 2015, Spencer oversaw what The Walkley Foundation described as "a golden period of investigative journalism", recognised with 15 Walkley Awards, three of them Gold, and five Logie Awards.

"Sue Spencer's career embodies an enduring commitment to truth, rigour, integrity and fairness over a lifetime in journalism," the foundation said.

"Spencer has been a tenacious leader but also an inspiring mentor.

"She has been a talent-spotter, building the careers of young journalists and supporting the transition of print journalists to television.

"As a woman in a world once dominated by male producers, Sue Spencer has broken through every barrier while maintaining the highest ethics as a leader and program maker."

Spencer noted the ongoing reluctance of political and corporate figures to be openly and fairly scrutinised.

"A free press is such an important part of having an open and transparent democracy and government and that's what we have to really always fight for and the last few years have been particularly difficult," she said.