Process be damned, she’s the one with the goods

Australia’s top female broadcasting executive has a stellar CV and a Wiki page that starts by saying: ‘Ita, rhymes with fighter.’

Scott Morrison and Ita Buttrose in Sydney yesterday for the announcement of Buttrose’s appointment as the new ABC chairwoman. Picture: Hollie Adams

So, all the boys were gathered round, watching Ita on TV.

“Wait!” cried one. “You reckon she could run the ABC?”

Why the hell not, she’s done everything else, and so yesterday we had Scott Morrison gleefully announcing that Australia’s unassailable media queen, Ita Buttrose, would be the new chairwoman of the national broadcaster, an organisation she immediately promised to get “functioning again”.

In remarks that will be seen as helpful by some, and as hugely inflammatory by others, Buttrose, 77, promised to bring “stable management” to the corporation that too often makes more news than it reports.

She would start by having “a good, frank discussion” with “whoever is the managing director”, because there isn’t one at the moment, the latest — Michelle Guthrie — having been sacked. She’s now suing. Fun fact: applications for that job close today.

“If there’s not a close relationship between the chair and the managing director, you cannot make an organisation work efficiently and well,” Buttrose said. And if both have left the building, well …

“It’s time to get the ABC functioning again,” Buttrose said, as the Prime Minister, who pretty much personally made this decision, beamed from the sidelines.

“Australians trust Ita. I trust Ita and that’s why I have asked her to take on this role and I’m absolutely thrilled that she has accepted,” he said.

Buttrose does indeed have impeccable credentials. Having trained as a copy girl and then as a cadet, she at least knows what journalism is, which is more than can be said for most of the people who have run the broadcaster over the years, and indeed for many on the current board.

 

Buttrose cut her teeth on Frank Packer’s women’s pages, back in the 1960s. She was founding editor of Cleo — it was Buttrose who talked Jack Thompson into getting nude for the first centrefold — and editor-in-chief of The Australian Women’s Weekly, then the magazine with the highest circulation in the world, per capita. She’s also a former Australian of the Year; there’s been a mini-series made about her life; she’s the star of one of Cold Chisel’s cheekiest songs; she advocates on behalf of old people, AIDS patients, and, I kid you not, puppies.

So, everyone’s happy with the appointment? Oh, look, this is the ABC. Of course they’re not.

Bill Shorten wants to know how the government came to consider Buttrose’s CV, since she didn’t apply for the job, and was not on the shortlist of candidates drawn up by recruiters Korn Ferry and a panel appointed by the secretary of the Prime Minister’s Department.

“She’s a lovely person, (a) very respected Australian,” the Opposition Leader said, but she wasn’t one of the names put forward, meaning “we’ve now got more political interference”.

Paul Barry, the host of the ABC’s Media Watch, agreed, saying: “Seriously? Is the government really going to ignore the selection panel’s advice again and appoint Ita Buttrose to ABC chair, when she’s not even on the shortlist?”

Not that disgruntled types couldn’t also complain about the shortlist. The shit list, they were calling it, inside the ABC, because who these days comes up with a shortlist with only men’s names on it? Living in a cave, fellas?

Also, one of the names on the shortlist was ex-Fairfax boss Greg Hywood. Imagine the Maserati zooming into the carpark at Ultimo, or Southbank. There’d have been a strike. At the very least, a meeting of a committee of some kind.

Speaking of committees, the union is likewise beside itself. You can tell by the press release. “MEAA congratulates Ita Buttrose on her appointment as ABC chair but …” it said.

Yes, but. The union “remains concerned that the government has bypassed the independent selection panel”.

Former staffer Quentin Dempster agreed, saying on Twitter: “Nothing against Ita but she was not an applicant. The whole point of that process was to keep a trusted independent ABC above party politics.”

He found an unlikely ally in former chairman Maurice Newman, who said: “If you don’t want to have a process, fine. Leave it up to the PM or the minister or the tea lady or whoever”, but don’t make applicants jump through hoops.

Former MD David Hill agreed that it was “appalling that the international headhunters put a shortlist together and didn’t have a woman on it. I mean in this day and age to say that there’s no suitable woman to be on a shortlist of candidates is just totally unacceptable.”

That said, women, being only half the population, are pretty hard to see.

Then there’s what Buttrose said about the board. “I don’t see anybody there with a lot of media experience,” she told ABC’s The Drum, shortly after Guthrie’s dismissal. “They’re very well-credentialled, don’t get me wrong, but there’s not a lot of media experience there, and I think you must have media experience if you’re going to run the ABC.”

Media experience she has in spades, and Buttrose was in a conciliatory mood yesterday.

“The ABC is one of the most important cultural and information organisations in our country,” she said, soothingly. “I have grown up with the ABC. I’m a devoted listener to the ABC.”

As to the elephant in the room — bias, not that there is any — Buttrose conceded only that there was “room for improvement”.

“Eighty per cent of Australians say we’re unbiased. So we must be doing something right,” she said. “Look, there’s always room for improvement. It’s not only the ABC that gets complaints from politicians. I have copped plenty of complaints from politicians in previous roles, especially when I was editor-in-chief at News Limited.”

Yes, people remember that Buttrose worked for Kerry Packer — what an unbridled relationship that was, with Packer, nobody’s softie, once describing her, in a letter, as “a jewel beyond price” — but she’s worked for Rupert Murdoch, too. Indeed, he made her the first female editor of a major metropolitan newspaper in Australia, and she was the first woman appointed to the board of News Limited.

In her autobiography, she said she thought it was a bit of a boys’ club, and that Rupert was the best newspaper man in the world.

Now she’s Australia’s top female broadcasting executive, with a stellar CV, and a Wiki page that starts by saying: “Ita, rhymes with fighter.” Survivor, more like it, and also, once again, the boss.