She was appointed as a Member of the Order of Australia "For significant service to the broadcast media as a journalist and television presenter, and as an ambassador for social welfare and charitable groups".
[citation needed] From 1980 to 1984, Spicer attended the private Soubirous and Frawley Colleges in bayside Scarborough, 30 km (19 mi) north of Brisbane.
The Network Ten station in Melbourne later hired Spicer as a local correspondent and then co-host of the First at Five News in Brisbane (with Glenn Taylor and Geoff Mullins).
[10] Spicer was previously a weekly op ed columnist with Wendy Harmer's The Hoopla from 2011 to 2015 and travel writer and ambassador for Holiday with Kids Magazine from 2009 to 2014.
Citing an editorial in the British Medical Journal which confirmed there was now ‘clear evidence’ that the now discredited research linking autism with the MMR vaccine, undertaken by Andrew Wakefield, was conducted unethically and based on falsified data, Spicer asked Dorey to concede the AVN's "scare campaign" was based on "fraudulent and misleading information".
And in December 2011, in an article for the Daily Telegraph, Spicer became a public advocate for childhood vaccination when she wrote of her frustration with the growing anti-vaccination lobby.
[citation needed] In 2015, she became an ambassador for KidsMatter, an Australian mental health and wellbeing initiative focused on primary schools and early childhood.
[24] In October 2017 after the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse allegations made news, Spicer announced that she was investigating powerful Australian men in the media.[25].
She became a vocal #MeToo campaigner on Twitter and encouraged people involved in the Australian entertainment industry to share their stories of sexual harassment in the workplace.
"In the wake of the Weinstein scandal I put out a very small tweet saying I was investigating … people in the Australian media(...)I'd expected to get perhaps a handful, a couple of dozen women responding.
"[28] Spicer, Kate McClymont, Lorna Knowles and Alison Branley, won the 2018 Walkley Awards in the print/text journalism and Television/Video Current Affairs Short (less than 20 minutes) categories, for their investigation into Don Burke, who was the first to be exposed by the company.
Spicer reflected, "While conditions have improved in the TV business since I initiated legal action against Network Ten, more subtle forms of pregnancy discrimination permeate many workplaces.
[32] NOW Australia enlisted thirty Australian celebrities including Tina Arena, Deborah Mailman, Abby Earl and Missy Higgins to act as ambassadors.
[34] The controversy further intensified when Spicer's lawyer sent defamation warning letters to those who spoke out online about these privacy breach concerns.