Before taking on the ABC/Australia Network Pacific Correspondent's job in June, 2006, Sean was the ABC/Radio Australia Pacific Correspondent based in Brisbane. He took up that job in February 1999 after having served for many years as the ABC's Papua New Guinea Correspondent.

Born in Townsville in 1951, Sean first went to PNG in 1974 on secondment to the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) of Papua New Guinea. During his first three years in PNG Sean was better known as a footballer that a journalist. He played for and then captained the national Rugby League team, the Kumuls. In 1976 Sean married Pauline Nare, a broadcaster from Manus Island in PNG. They moved to Australia at the end of 1976 where their two children were born. From 1977 to 1979 Sean was the ABC's Journalist in Charge in Mackay.

In 1979 the ABC appointed Sean to be its PNG Correspondent, a job he did for five years until being deported in 1984 following a dispute between the ABC and the then Somare Government over the broadcast of a Four Corners television interview with an Irian Jayan rebel leader. Back in Australia the Dorneys went to Darwin where Sean was for 18 months chief press secretary to the Northern Territory Chief Minister. In 1987 he rejoined the ABC and was posted back to Port Moresby and served for another 12 years as the ABC's PNG Correspondent.

For 18 months in the early 1990's Sean was the In-Country Manager of an Australian aid funded assistance program that the ABC provided to the NBC of PNG. That program included a major structural overhaul of the NBC; the introduction of simplified, streamlined job classifications; extensive training conducted by more than 30 ABC personnel; and the preparation of a 10-year capital redevelopment plan.

Sean has written two books - Papua New Guinea: People, Politics and History since 1975 (Random House, Australia, 1990); and The Sandline Affair – Politics and Mercenaries and the Bougainville Crisis (ABC Books 1998). ABC Books published an updated and thoroughly revised version of Papua New Guinea: People, Politics and History since 1975 in 2000 to coincide with the broadcast of Sean's two hour television documentary series, Paradise Imperfect, on PNG's first quarter century of independence.

Sean won a Walkley Award in 1998 for his coverage of the Aitape Tsunami disaster in PNG and in the same year the Pacific Islands News Association honoured him with PINA's Pacific Media Freedom Award. In 1999, the Queensland Branch of the Media Arts and Etertainment Alliance (MEAA) honoured Sean with its “Most Outstanding Contribution of Journalism Award”. The PNG Government awarded Sean an MBE 1991 and he received an AM in 2000 in recognition for his service to Australia as a foreign correspondent.