Buttrose could be exactly the right kind of person to lead the ABC

If the whispers from Canberra are accurate, the next chairperson of the ABC will be decided and announced this week. And in a surprise, former magazine editor and 2013 Australian of the Year Ita Buttrose is firming as the favourite.

Federal Cabinet is expected to consider at a meeting in Sydney tomorrow who will replace Justin Milne in one of the highest profile positions in Australian media.

Ita Buttrose is firming to take over as ABC chair.Credit: Steven Siewert

Buttrose would be a left-field choice, but she's exactly the kind of appointment that would appeal to the Prime Minister, Scott Morrison. And Buttrose (who earlier this month denied being in contention) is arguably the kind of outsider the ABC needs after a period of turmoil.

Other rumoured candidates include Greg Hywood, former CEO of Fairfax Media, former Foxtel boss Kim Williams and a group of high-powered lawyers including Danny Gilbert of Gilbert + Tobin, Holding Redlich partner Ian Robertson, and former Allens boss Michael Rose.

Greg Hywood was one of the names put forward.Credit: Christopher Pearce

Milne, you may recall, resigned as ABC chair after revelations in this newspaper he had attempted to pressure management to sack high profile presenters who had criticised the government.

With staff morale low, and criticism of the ABC unrelenting, whoever gets the position will have a lot of work to do.

Choose a top lieutenant

On a practical level, the first priority of the new chair will be, together with the rest of the board, to pick a new managing director. The managing director job is arguably a bigger one than the chair role itself, and getting the right person will be critical for the future of the ABC.

No matter what you think of former managing director Michelle Guthrie's dismissal by Milne, the ex Google and Foxtel executive was a contentious choice for the role. She was openly criticised by senior, high profile figures at the ABC for her management style (Melbourne radio presenter Jon Faine said she was "obsessed with platforms, structures, flowcharts").

Her immediate predecessor, Mark Scott, who had extensive journalism experience, faced no such resistance, and was also widely viewed as a champion of the public broadcaster in Canberra. That should be the template.

Stick to the remit

The job of the chair is to steer the board, whose main duties, according to the ABC Act, include:

• (a) to ensure that the functions of the Corporation are performed efficiently and with the maximum benefit to the people of Australia;
• (b) to maintain the independence and integrity of the Corporation;
• (c) to ensure that the gathering and presentation by the Corporation of news and information is accurate and impartial according to the recognised standards of objective journalism; and

Critics of the ABC will argue - not entirely without merit - that it has actually been failing on all three of these fronts. So, for the new chair, fixing those perceptions must be a priority.

The new chair should be sceptical of grandiose and unrealistic initiatives such as Project Jetstream, the $500 million project to digitise the ABC's archives, which Milne had championed. The ABC needs a digital strategy, but this should be the purview of the new managing director.

The new chair should be sceptical of grandiose and unrealistic initiatives.

The new chair should absorb criticism that will invariably come from Canberra (from both sides of politics), and where necessary stand up to it, rather than succumb to it.

At the same time, the new chair should try to understand the outright hostility towards the ABC that has built up on one side of politics.

Know your enemies – and your friends

Another imperative will be to repair relationships with the commercial media sector.

Sections of Australia's for-profit media will always be hostile towards the public broadcaster (just as sections of the ABC's audience think it can do no wrong). That's what happens when you have a $1.2 billion annual budget, funded by the public purse.

But in its misguided digital expansion of recent times, the ABC somehow managed to upset its natural allies, including the current and former owners of this newspaper.

Fairfax Media, prior to its merger with Nine Entertainment Co in December, was deeply annoyed by the ABC's push into online news and clickbait entertainment, which it saw as not adhering to its charter.

The ABC practice of buying up search terms on Google for events such as the Royal Wedding to drive online traffic also created frustration.

Nine as recently as last September, has called on the ABC to "work in coordination with the commercial sector. Not against it". That would be a sensible approach.

Don't take anything for granted

The ABC remains more trusted than its commercial media peers, as repeated polling shows. But with trust in all media declining, it must not rest on its laurels.

The ABC has scored a number of own goals over recent months.Credit: Christopher Pearce

In a recent speech, ACCC chairman Rod Sims (who is investigating the impact of Google and Facebook on media) noted that news and journalism play an important role in society, and we cannot rely on the market alone to provide it.

A public broadcaster that sticks to a sensible remit, can absolutely fill this void. For the ABC to achieve that, it starts at the very top.