In the end, the Rooster defeated Squizzy.

Canberra writer Felicity Packard was on Friday night in the enjoyable position of being nominated for two AWGIES - an Australian Writers Guild award - in the best original television mini-series category for her work on Underbelly: Badness and Underbelly: Squizzy.

At an awards ceremony at the Plaza Ballroom in Melbourne, Underbelly: Badness triumphed, Packard sharing the honour with her collaborators on the series, Niki Aken, Peter Gawler and Jeffrey Truman. It was her third AWGIE, having won in 2008 and 2010, for penning other instalments of the Underbelly franchise.

Before the announcement, Packard professed to not having a preference for whether Squizzy or Badness came up trumps.

''I think they both have their particular charms and strengths,'' she said. ''I'm very proud of different aspects of both of them.''

A creative writing lecturer at the University of Canberra, Packard did joke that writing Squizzy, about Melbourne gangster Squizzy Taylor, was a lot easier because all the main characters were dead.

By comparison, Badness which went deep into legally sensitive material, focusing on how the NSW Police Strike Force Tuno finally nabbed murderer Anthony ''Rooster'' Perish in 2008 after years of investigation.

''We met all sorts of people for Badness, protected witnesses and lots of cops and people who had shared jail cells with some of the main players. It was a very tricky story to tell,'' she said.

Packard couldn't make the awards ceremony in Melbourne, opting instead to celebrate her postponed birthday party down at the coast.

She was thrilled just to be nominated for this year's AWGIES.

''The wonderful thing about the AWGIE is it's based on the script, not what goes to air. So it's actually about the writer's vision and how that is expressed on the page,'' she said.

''It's judged by the writers, people who know the industry and know how to read a script. It's a tremendously exciting thing to receive because there's a lot of good writing on Australian television at the moment.''

While her co-writers live interstate, Packard regularly meets with them at a central location to workshop ideas.

''We'll read and talk and figure out what's going on and how we're going to shape this mismash into narrative that's going to be comprehensible.''

Packard's next project is a six-part drama for the ABC, Anzac Girls, based on Australia and New Zealand military nurses in World War One.

''It's fantastic. Based on real events and real people's diaries. My partner reckons I need frequent flyer points at the war memorial,'' she said, laughing.

Former Duffy girl Cate Shortland won the AWGIE feature film: adaptation category for Lore, with Robin Mukherjee.