About Pakenham Officer Star News

Pakenham Officer Star News

Overview

The Pakenham Officer Star News is the free weekly newspaper of the Star News Group for Pakenham and Officer, the adjoining growth suburbs in Cardinia Shire in Melbourne's outer south-east. Where the group's paid Gazette is sold on Wednesdays, the Star News is the letterbox paper: Star's free Pakenham title has long been described in community reference material as dropped into mailboxes free every Thursday, and the Star News carries that role today for the estates of Pakenham and the newer suburb of Officer.

Its current operation is confirmed by the governing registers. The Australian Communications and Media Authority's Register of Eligible News Businesses, in the Star News Group Pty Ltd entry registered on 6 January 2026, lists Pakenham Officer Star News among the group's seventeen registered mastheads, with its news source link at pakenhamnews.starcommunity.com.au. The Australian Press Council's September 2026 list of constituent publications includes the title. Data supplied to the Australian Parliament's inquiry into regional newspapers, derived from the Public Interest Journalism Initiative, records it as a print title of the Star News Group serving Cardinia Shire. And its reporting is current: bylined stories by its journalists appear through 2025 and into 2026, including coverage dated 20 March 2026 of the dispute over naming the new suburb carved from Pakenham East.

The paper is produced from the Star News Group's headquarters at the corner of Princes Highway and Army Road in Pakenham, the centre from which the Thomas family's company has published since its early decades.

History

The Star News belongs to the second arm of the Star business: the free distribution titles that the group — for most of the twentieth century South East Newspapers, renamed the Star News Group in August 2005 — built alongside its original paid Gazette. The free Pakenham paper has been documented under successive names as the district and the group evolved. Community reference material for Pakenham describes Star's widely distributed Pakenham News as the town's free Thursday paper, and in the Country Press Australia material filed with the ACCC's newspaper association authorisation application in April 2021 the title at the pakenhamnews.starcommunity.com.au address was listed as Officer News — reflecting the rise of Officer, the new suburb east of Pakenham that became one of the municipality's main growth fronts. The ACMA register's January 2026 entry records the combined name the paper now carries, Pakenham Officer Star News, uniting the established town and the new suburb in a single masthead.

No separate founding date for this title is asserted in this profile: the sources consulted document the free paper's continuous presence in Pakenham under its successive names rather than a single launch, and the group's own history begins with the paid Gazette founded by Albert Edward Thomas in 1909. What the record does show is a title repeatedly renamed to follow its readership — from Pakenham News, through the Officer News of the 2021 filing, to today's Pakenham Officer Star News — as farmland around the old township gave way to housing estates.

Programming and Content

The Star News is a community newspaper in the classic free-weekly mould: council and community news first, with the schools, clubs, volunteers and local traders of Pakenham and Officer as its staple subjects. Its council coverage is substantive. The paper's reporter Corey Everitt has followed the Pakenham East suburb naming dispute across three years of bylined stories — the attempt by a councillor to reverse the adopted name in September 2024, the issue still unresolved in June 2025, and the matter heading to Supreme Court review in March 2026 — the kind of sustained municipal reporting that growth-area papers exist to provide.

Media-monitoring service Muck Rack profiles the paper's journalists and their stories. Matthew Sims's bylines under the title include a Carers Victoria morning tea at Outlook Community Centre held in National Carers Week in October 2024, the relief of Main Street traders when a council revitalisation tender was paused, and a feature on a Pakenham signwriting team's award-winning wrap on a 1955 Ford F100 — a cross-section of community event coverage, local business news and colour. Sport, family notices, real estate and local advertising round out the paper, which shares its newsroom resources with the group's paid Gazette: Muck Rack's profile of reporter Matt Male, for example, lists the Star News among the Cardinia titles he files for, alongside the Gazette.

The paper's territory has a civic anchor in its own patch: Cardinia Shire Council's Civic Centre stands at 20 Siding Avenue in Officer, placing the shire's administration inside the Star News's namesake suburb, and the council's planning and consultation advertising is directed to the local newspaper as one of its formal notification channels.

Audience and Reach

The Star News is delivered free to households in Pakenham and Officer, in the heart of Cardinia Shire — described by its own council's Advocacy Agenda 2025–29, published in February 2026, as one of Victoria's fastest growing communities. Its distribution model is the letterbox drop rather than the newsagent sale, and its readership is the growth corridor itself: established Pakenham households and the new estates of Officer, where schools, sporting clubs and council services are being built as the population climbs.

No audited readership figure specific to this masthead is published in the sources consulted, and none is claimed here. At group level, the Star News Group describes itself as producing more than 500,000 copies a week across its stable of titles; that is a publisher's group-level claim, not a measure of this paper's own reach. The title's role is instead documented structurally: it is one of seventeen mastheads the group registered with the ACMA in January 2026, and one of the pair of Star papers — paid Gazette and free Star News — through which the company covers Cardinia Shire.

Digital Presence

The Star News publishes online through the Star News Group's Star Community platform, at pakenhamnews.starcommunity.com.au — the address the ACMA register records as the title's news source link, and the same address carried for the paper in the Country Press Australia material of April 2021. Its stories surface beyond the platform: journalists' articles under the masthead are indexed by Muck Rack, and its reporting on Cardinia affairs is cited in reference works documenting the municipality's suburbs, including the contested creation of the new suburb from Pakenham East between 2024 and 2026.

Ownership and Organisation

The Pakenham Officer Star News is owned and published by Star News Group Pty Ltd (ABN 98 238 557 339), the Pakenham-based company founded by Albert Edward Thomas in 1909 and still controlled by his descendants. The ACMA register records the company's headquarters at the corner of Princes Highway and Army Road, Pakenham, names managing director Paul Thomas — the fourth generation of the family — as its registered contact, and lists this title among its seventeen registered mastheads. The paper is produced from the Pakenham headquarters alongside the paid Pakenham Berwick Gazette, with reporting staff shared across the group's Cardinia titles.

Contact and Availability

The Pakenham Officer Star News is distributed free to letterboxes in Pakenham and Officer each week and publishes online through the Star Community platform at pakenhamnews.starcommunity.com.au. The Star News Group's headquarters is at the corner of Princes Highway and Army Road, Pakenham, Victoria 3810, and the group's published telephone number is 03 5945 0666. The ACMA register names the group's managing director, Paul Thomas, as its contact, at paul.thomas@starnewsgroup.com.au. Community news contributions, notices and advertising enquiries are handled through the Pakenham office.