Journalist, writer, filmmaker and former Labor speechwriter Bob Ellis has died at the age of 73 after a long battle with liver cancer.

Ellis spent his final moments at his Palm Beach home in Sydney, surrounded by wife Anne Brooksbank and their three children Jack, Tom and Jennifer.

According to the Independent Australia website – to which Ellis contributed regularly – he was pronounced dead at 4.15pm on Sunday.

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Independent Australia founder and Ellis’ friend David Donovan paid tribute to the writer, calling him a “true genius and an Australian icon”.

“Often controversial, frequently confronting and always brilliant, Bob was simply unable to turn a dull phrase. He wrote movies and plays and books and articles and appeared on stage and gave speeches and was, in short, a brilliant, bubbling spring of creativity.”

Ellis’ long-time blog Table Top was updated at 7.30pm on Sunday by his son Jack, who promised to inform the former writer’s devoted readers about his funeral.

Bob Ellis was close to many Labor heavyweights, including former ALP president Barry Jones. Photo: AAP

“The camaraderie of his regular readers has been a source of tremendous joy to him these past few years. Thank you all,” he wrote, signing off with his father’s customary phrase: “And so it goes.”

Ellis used the popular blog to not only discuss his love of theatre and film, but also to chronicle his fight with cancer.

“The news is very bad and I may have months to live but it is more like weeks,” he posted last July.

Tributes have already begun flooding social media, with politicians, writers, journalists and the wider Australian public eager to commemorate the extraordinary life of an extraordinary person.

“Vale Bob Ellis. A brilliant writer, a wicked wit, a true believer with every fibre of his being. And so it goes,” wrote Opposition Leader Bill Shorten.

South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill said: “We will miss his penetrating prose, his lacerating wit – a great friend of SA – farewell Bob Ellis”, while his predecessor Mike Rann reminisced about a man who “charted his own course”.

“He didn’t obey the ‘rules’. He sailed against the currents. Deepest sympathy to Annie, Jack, Kenny and Tom,” Mr Rann said.

Ellis is famous for his political challenge against Bronwyn Bishop in a 1994 by-election as an independent, and has been credited with helping end the former speaker’s push to become prime minister.

Ellis was raised as a Seventh-Day Adventist and was a loyal supporter of the Labor Party, writing speeches for many Labor leaders, including Bob Carr and Paul Keating. He wrote six novels, most of them reworkings of films, and 13 volumes of non-fiction.

Two of his books, Good Babylon and Goodbye Jerusalem, were based on his experiences as a Labor Party insider. The latter was pulped after Tony Abbott and Peter Costello and their wives successfully sued for defamation.

Despite the legal action (and his connection to Labor), he regarded Mr Abbott as having a first-class mind, while he thought Julia Gillard ill-informed. In other writings, he said Mr Turnbull had “joined the Dark Side” and coined ‘Darth Dutton’ for the immigration minister.

Vale Bob Ellis. A brilliant writer, a wicked wit, a true believer with every fibre of his being. And so it goes.

— Bill Shorten (@billshortenmp) April 3, 2016

He could write like an angel. At times outrageous and iconoclastic but also insightful, caring, poetic, sweet and melancholic. Naughty. — Mike Rann (@Mike_Rann) April 3, 2016

-with Caroline Zielinski and agencies