Laurie Oakes (born 14 August 1943 in Newcastle, New South Wales) is an Australian former journalist.

He worked in the Canberra Press Gallery from 1969 to 2017, covering the Parliament of Australia and federal elections for print, radio, and television.

At the age of 25 he was the Melbourne Sun's Canberra Bureau Chief and while working for that paper he began providing political commentaries for the TV program, Willesee at Seven.

[6] In 1997, Oakes used leaked documents to report on abuse of parliamentary travel expenses, which ended the careers of three ministers, several other politicians and some of their staff.

[5] More recently he used leaked documents showing the Rudd Government ignored warnings from four key departments about its Fuelwatch scheme.

[7] Oakes has been a weekly contributor to various Publishing and Broadcasting Limited (PBL) owned media outlets, including the former Channel 9 television program, Sunday.