Derryn Hinch, the broadcaster and former senator who was jailed for defying court orders that told him to keep sex offenders' names to himself, died at his Melbourne home on Friday morning. He was 82.

His death was announced by Annette Philpott, his executive assistant, who said he "passed away in his sleep this morning" and "got his wish and passed away in his own bed". No cause has been released. He had spoken publicly for years about his health.

3AW, the Melbourne station where he spent most of his radio career, announced the death on air on Friday. Its owner, Tapt Media, called him "a titan of Australian broadcasting" whose voice "defined the morning and drive slots" at the station.

The convictions came first, and the Senate seat came out of them. Hinch was convicted of contempt of court for naming sex offenders in breach of suppression orders. He served five months of home detention over one breach. Over another, after he published the criminal history of Adrian Bayley, the man who murdered Melbourne woman Jill Meagher, he refused on principle to pay the fine and served 50 days in prison instead.

In 2016 he put that record on a ballot paper. Hinch was elected a senator for Victoria at the double dissolution election on 2 July 2016, under a party carrying his own name, Derryn Hinch's Justice Party. It ran on a public register of sex offenders, tougher sentences for violent and sexual crimes, and reform of bail and parole. He served a single term, from 2 July 2016 to 30 June 2019, and was defeated at the 2019 election.

The parliamentary work that matched the campaign arrived in that term. From June 2017 until April 2019 he chaired the Joint Select Committee on the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. He left the Senate without the public register his party had been built around.

He was diagnosed with liver cancer in 2007 and had a liver transplant in 2011. He talked about both on air, and used his own case to argue for organ donation.

Anthony Albanese paid tribute on Friday. "As an interviewer, investigator and presenter he was much more than 'the Human Headline', he had a sense of the deeper story and the courage to cover it, come what may," the Prime Minister said.

Angus Taylor, the Opposition Leader, described him as "a man who stood by his opinions with conviction and was never afraid to court controversy".

Peter Ford, the entertainment reporter who broke the news on radio, said Hinch "knew how to write a story, how to present a story; he knew a good yarn when he heard it". Ford added: "Now that wasn't to say, of course, that he wasn't provocative; he stirred the pot a lot."

Emma Husar, the former federal Labor MP, called him "a crusader for justice and things which were never spoken about but needed to be".

Philpott ended her announcement with the line Hinch used to close his broadcasts. "As he would say," she wrote, "'That's Life.'"