He became chief clerk of the Queensland Supreme Court in 1871 but resigned in November 1873 after purchasing a third share in the Brisbane Newspaper company.

Although Lukin took on the position as editor-in-chief of the Brisbane Courier, he was in fact working as the journal's 'managing editor', only occasionally being engaged in the practical editing and writing.

Yet Lukin was instrumental in consolidating the company's assets, the Brisbane Courier and its weekly The Queenslander, following a period of great and devastating turmoil in this journal's history.

Lukin left Queensland but returned briefly in the late 1880s purchasing and afterwards editing William Lane's old journal The Boomerang from 1890 to its closure in 1892.

Lukin gained an additional lasting reputation as a Queensland pioneer of compassion following his commissioning of Carl Feilberg to run a nine-month-long newspaper campaign for Aboriginal rights and against the colony's frontier policy and native police system in the Queenslander from March to December 1880, a campaign the key articles of which was turned into a famous pamphlet entitled 'The Way We Civilise; Black and White' in December 1880, as one of Lukin's last acts as managing editor of the Brisbane Newspaper Co.