Now when she talks, countries listen

IN A way, Tracee Hutchison has been preparing for her radio gig for almost 30 years.

As the host of a groundbreaking evening news program that combines the domestic resources of ABC NewsRadio with the overseas expertise of Radio Australia, Hutchison knows that at any moment her words are being absorbed by listeners from Melbourne to Manila.

Tracee Hutchison's evening ABC radio news program attracts listeners from Melbourne to Manila.Credit: Eddie Jim

That's far from a simple broadcasting task, but as Hutchison tells Green Guide, she's had plenty of practice at honing her craft for diverse audiences since she started on community radio in the 1980s.

''I've had an incredibly diverse career … and I think it's meant that I've kept looking for new stories, and new ways to tell them,'' she says. ''I'm just as comfortable talking Australian politics or Indonesian politics or Thai politics as I am talking sport or music. It's hopefully made me a really well-rounded broadcaster.''

She's well-rounded, all right, possessing a CV that includes stints at Triple J, Today Tonight, Getaway and The 7.30 Report. ''One great big adventure,'' she calls it.

''It's taken me to incredible places and amazing experiences and it's certainly had its share of ups and downs like any colourful career would, but I've always been looking for the new thing, the thing that will challenge me to make good radio or television, and if I'm challenged, hopefully I'm finding great ways to tell stories.''

Early last year, that new thing was a radio program that would attempt to interpret Australia to the Asia-Pacific region, and at the same time interpret the region for the ABC's domestic audience. Hutchison jumped at it.

''It felt like a really good opportunity to do something between the two networks that hadn't been done before, in a high-end news and current-affairs format,'' she says.

''I was just fortunate to be in the right place at the right time to be given the opportunity to get it up and running … It's about being really aware of what kind of Australia we are now; we're not an Australia that is insular and inward-looking and constantly preoccupied within our own shoreline. We are increasingly an outward-looking country and that's the litmus test we apply to our story judgments.

''If I'm listening in Melbourne, if I'm listening in Broome, if I'm listening in Dili, if I'm listening in Deniliquin, or in Phnom Penh, the question is, 'Is this going to have the same universal appeal?'''

Hutchison says she pictures her listeners from seven to 10pm every night in all their far-flung diversity, all while talking to them from a studio in Melbourne. ''I spend a lot of time in my head travelling around; I am trying to take myself there. I'm in the Asia-Pacific every night, we're thinking about it, we're talking about it, I'm learning about it, and I'm trying to tell those stories and I'm trying to tell them in a way that our entire audience is going to respond to.''

She calls it the ''best job at the ABC'', and declares that after three decades in the business she's learnt to appreciate what she's got.

''I was 23 and I thought that was the best job in the world, I was getting paid to play records on Triple J. At 23, I don't know that you think about much beyond being in the moment. But the woman today totally understands.

''I didn't have any idea of where I'd end up or what I was going to do. I was just passionate about music and politics and I wanted to change the world … I don't think I'm changing the world so much now, but I'm hopefully being part of reflecting the changing world.''