Updated August 03, 2017 14:36:46

Photo: Award-winning journalist Laurie Oakes will retire at close of business on August 18. (Joe Castro: AAP)

Map: Australia

Veteran Channel Nine political editor Laurie Oakes will retire later this month.

The network has announced the 73-year-old's last day will be on August 18.

Oakes graduated from Sydney University in 1964 with a Bachelor of Arts. He joined the Daily Mirror in Sydney before moving to television reporting with Channel 10 in 1975.

The three-time Walkley Award-winner joined Channel Nine five years later and has become a Canberra bureau institution.

He said covering politics was "an addiction".

"But now I'll be able to devote more time to reading crime fiction," Nine quoted Oakes as saying.

"That will be my equivalent of a methadone program."

More to come.

Photo: Laurie Oakes has a track record of exclusive political stories. (AAP: News Limited/Lyndon Mechielsen)

Topics: journalism, information-and-communication, government-and-politics, federal-government, australia

First posted August 03, 2017 14:27:59