Media giant and former senator Derryn Hinch has died.

The death of Hinch, who was 82, was confirmed on Melbourne radio station 3AW, where he worked for a long stint.

The ABC reports it has also confirmed the former senator died in his sleep on Friday morning.

New Zealand-born Hinch began his long media career at The Taranaki Herald in 1960, aged just 15. A few years later, he moved to Australia, taking on the police round at The Sun newspaper in Sydney.

In Australia, he became known as the “Human Headline” for his distinctive broadcast style.

He also had a long campaign against sex offenders, starting Derryn Hinch’s Justice Party specifically to stop paedophiles. He was famously jailed for revealing the prior convictions of a paedophile priest who, at the time of Hinch’s 1985 broadcast, was still working with children at a youth camp.

Hinch was elected as a senator for Victoria in 2016. While in federal parliament, he was credited with the introduction of a law restricting the overseas travel of convicted paedophiles.

He was not re-elected in 2019.

“A bit of me died when I didn’t get re-elected,” Hinch told the Ten Newtwork last year.

Over the decades, Hinch worked in talkback radio in Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide. He was a panellist on numerous TV shows and, more recently, a commentator for news programs on Seven and Sky News.

But it was his eponymous current affairs shows on Seven and Ten that made Hinch one of the most recognisable faces on television in the late 1980s and 1990s.

In 2006, Hinch rapidly began to lose weight. The cause was later revealed a tumour on his liver that would eventually be revealed as inoperable liver cancer.

Doctors gave him a 60 per cent chance to survive surgery in 2010 that would result in the removal of one-third of his liver.

On a radio broadcast, he told listeners he only had a year to live without the operation.

In July 2011, he had successful liver transplant surgery.

Hinch was married five times, including twice to Academy Award-nominated actress Jacki Weaver. They are said to have remained friends.

His most recent marriage was to Chanel Hayton from 2006 to 2012.

-more to come