Can Ita Buttrose reform the $1billion taxpayer behemoth that is the state-owned ABC?

Rod Lampard
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This week, Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced that well known, and trusted, Australian media royalty, Ita Buttrose, would be taking on the chair of the Australian Broadcasting Company (The ABC).

 

Her appointment to the chair provides hope for many of Australia’s taxpayers who want to see a return to a fairer, more representative ABC; one that represents Australia, Australian culture, and Australians. In other words, having a National broadcaster, that upholds a healthy Australian nationalism.

Buttrose’s statements during the press conference point in this direction.

[The ABC] is a voice of the Australian people. I think it reflects our identity, it tells our stories not just here in Australia but to the rest of the world, and I have grown up with the ABC.

Adding weight to this, Scott Morrison reminded people that the ABC needs to do what Ita has always done, put the viewers, the listeners, and their readers first.

It’s about the viewers, it’s about the listeners, it’s about the readers, and the services the ABC provides to Australians.1 […] 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.2

For the growing majority of Australians who consider the ABC to be an echo chamber for urban Leftist elites; or a propaganda machine for the radical Left, Ita might well be a false dawn, but given her professionalism, service to the community, real change is not just possible, but likely.

Buttrose is a hard worker and comes from the private sector. Having been in the media industry since the early 1970s, her long management experience puts her in a position to not only be blunt in pointing out the bad, it also means that Buttrose isn’t afraid to ask questions that might lead to necessary reforms which will correct imbalances, cherish and preserve the good.

For all those concerned with the ideological, and cultural, direction of the ABC in the past two decades, Ita Buttrose’s appointment might just be the rekindling of a light long extinguished by a collective, who are hell-bent on sentencing Australians to the shackles of globalist imperialism, and the leftist cult of modern liberalism.

In the past two decades the ABC has undergone a gradual takeover of its mandate, through its soft treatment of, and pandering to the ideas, and apologetic preaching platforms of Leftist ideologues.

Nowhere is this witnessed better, than the weekly Q&A program, and the unforgettable, infuriating, Howard-hating, Kevin07 fanaticism that made an over-excited, Kerry O’Brien, of the ABC’s 7:30 Report, jump with joy, on live television stating, “We’ve got him! We’ve got Him!” the night John Howard lost the 2007 election.

The looming question is can Ita Buttrose reform the $1 billion dollar taxpayer behemoth that is the state-owned ABC? And can she do this without making the ABC more of a financial burden on Australians?

I think she can. Her first order of business should be a cost-benefit review of staffing and infrastructure. Then start in on a review of how well the service promised in the ABC charter is being delivered to the Australian public.

With Ita Buttrose in the chair, we might see, not just the return of the ABC to its mandate, or its roots, but a return of the ABC to the Australian people.

References:

  1. Laura Ingle, Ita’s Message for Scott Morrison, 3rd March 2018
  2. The ABC, Ita’s Vision for the ABC, 28th February 2019

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