Tough Ita as at home in the boardroom as she is in newsroom

Ita Buttrose is as comfortable in the boardroom as she is in any newsroom in the country.

Ita Buttrose has been a magazine boss, newspaper editor, health campaigner, TV personality and businesswoman. Picture: Hollie Adams

Ita Buttrose brings to the ABC more than one of the most recognisable faces in Australian media. She is as comfortable in the boardroom as she is in any newsroom in the country.

The broadly positive reaction to her appointment as the national broadcaster’s new chairwoman reflects her stature in a catty industry where the big names come and go, but rarely make the transition from one heavy-hitting  job to another.

Ita needs no introduction. She has been a gently lisping fixture in Australian public life for nearly half a century as a magazine boss, newspaper editor, health campaigner, TV personality and businesswoman.

Along the way, she stood up to hot-headed proprietors such as the late Kerry Packer and his notoriou­sly prickly father, Sir Frank, and rubbed shoulders with Rupert Murdoch on the board of what was then News Limited, the publisher of this newspaper.

Put-upon ABC staff, still shellshocked by the corporate knife fight that took out chairman Justin Milne after he showed managing director Michelle Guthrie the door last year, will take comfort from Ms Buttrose’s proven ability to match it with the toughest of characters, wielding the deftest of touch.

Regardless of whether Scott Morrison or Bill Shorten wins the looming federal election, nothing is more certain than a future ­dust-up between the national broadcaster and the government over ABC coverage.

This comes with the territory, yet both Mr Milne and the standoffish Ms Guthrie failed to master the tricky politics of dealing with Canberra while keeping a skittish workforce on side.

Ms Buttrose more than compensates for the absence of industry nous and big-name directors on the board of the ABC. She has been inducted into no fewer than three media halls of fame and was the 2013 Australian of the Year.

 

It could be said she was born into the news media: her father, Charles Buttrose, was a newspaper man who edited feisty Sydney tabloid­ The Daily Mirror, and went on to a big career at the ABC, rising to become assistant general manager before his retirement in 1974.

She left school at 15 to become­ a copy girl on The Australian Women’s Weekly, the jewel in the Packer family’s Australian Consolidated Press stable.

Her break came in 1972 when she was put in charge of launching edgy new magazine Cleo. She fought tooth and nail with Kerry Packer but got her way over its signature­ nude male centrefold, initially featuring a hunky Jack Thompson, and other innovations such as sealed sections.

In 1981, Mr Murdoch poached her to become editor-in-chief of The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph in Sydney, the first woman to run a metropolitan newspaper title in Australia. Having been on the board of ACP, she took up a directorship with the News group.

As chairwoman of the National Advisory Committee on AIDS, Ms Buttrose defended the contentious Grim Reaper advertising campaign against accusations that the confronting spots demonised HIV sufferers, especially gay people. She didn’t take a step back.

Her exit from Ten Network panel show Studio 10 last year seemed to bring down the curtain on her career in the public eye. She said she wanted to spend more time with the grandkids.

Scott Morrison, however, had other ideas, recruiting her as the ABC chairwoman in a captain’s pick after she was overlooked for the shortlist. Ms Buttrose will need all her experience, tact and ­resilience to succeed.