Ita Buttrose: Media too white and politically correct.

Ita Buttrose suggests the ABC might introduce quotas for Asian and Middle East staff.

Ita Buttrose has suggested quotas for Asian and Middle Eastern staff could be brought in at the ABC. Picture: Adam Yip.

ABC chairwoman Ita Buttrose has criticised Australian media for being too white, and lamented a loss of Aussie larrikinism which she said used to pervade Australian workplaces.

Speaking on ABC News on Tuesday, Ms Buttrose called for greater diversity at the national broadcaster, declaring staffing needs to be more representative of Australia’s multicultural population.

She said the broadcaster might need to introduce quotas for Asian or Middle Eastern staff members, and called on Australian media organisations to take note of the lack of diversity among its ranks.

“We’re made up of many different cultures and nationalities and at the end of the day, most of us call ourselves Australians,” Ms Buttrose told the ABC. “And we have to reflect that and we don’t always do that”.

The ABC last month held a two-day news brain-storming session in Sydney’s southwestern Bankstown, with a focus on bolstering its audience across television, radio and online outside the major cities.

Mr Buttrose and managing director David Anderson are on the same page about improving the ABC’s diversity, she said.

“We think we do have to better reflect the culture of Australia.”

The ABC’s plans are well under way, said Ms Buttrose, who is speaking on several ABC radio stations on Tuesday to promote its Australia Talks national survey.

“You could say that much of the media is white and we’re not all white,” she said, opening the door to an examination of the broadcaster’s staffing levels.

“Do we have enough Asian representation? Should we have more? Should we have some Asians on the board? Do we have enough Middle Eastern representation? Should we have some Middle Eastern representatives on the board?

“You know, all of these things. I think the issues not just for the ABC, these issues for everybody in any corporate leadership role in Australia.”

Ms Buttrose said ABC management and the leadership team were drawing up a five-year plan which will be released publicly and to the staff next year.

“And that will include some of the thinking that we’ve got on this issue. And you just keep looking at staffing levels, and you look at who we employ and what we’re trying to achieve. It’s a slow process, we know what we have to do.”

Ms Buttrose also bemoaned the loss of Australian “larrikinism”, telling ABC Breakfast political correctness had gone too far and a sense of humour was missing from the modern workplace.

“I agree 100 per cent that we don’t talk to each other the way we used to,” Ms Buttrose said. “Even in the workplace, the way men and women used to talk to one another, which was quite fun, I think doesn’t exist today. When I think of some of the conversations I used to have with Sir Frank Packer, for instance, they simply wouldn’t happen today.

“I think Australians are especially good-humoured people, and we like to josh each other in the workplace, and we should be able to do that without anyone being offended or sensitive about it. We’re far too sensitive.

“We’ve sort of suppressed that side of our character. I think we need to bring back the larrikin element of Australia and be very proud of it, because it’s very unique to us,” Ms Buttrose said. “Our larrikins are pretty special.”

The ABC’s Australia Talks project, in partnership with the University of Melbourne and Vox Pop Labs, wsurveyed more than 50,000 people to track the opinions of Australians.

Ms Buttrose said the findings from the study were a “goldmine” that would allow the broadcaster to tailor its coverage better to appeal to its national audience.

Liberal Senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells said the ABC and SBS in response to Ms Buttrose’s criticisms of the Australian media.

Senator Fierravanti-Wells told Sky News on Tuesday it was time for the ABC to be merged with Australia’s multicultural and multilingual broadcaster, SBS, to save the taxpayer hundreds of millions of dollars per year.

“I think the time has come that the ABC and SBS be merged because all Australians should have one public broadcaster,” she said. “I believe that the public broadcaster’s should produce content for all Australians irrespective of who they are and where they come from. “If you really want to talk about diversity and the ABC, I think the time has come to have that discussion.”