Hi, I'm Conrad Marshall and from the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

Welcome to Good Weekend Talks, a magazine for your ears, featuring in-depth conversations with fascinating people from sport and politics, science and culture, business and beyond.

Every week, you can download new episodes in which top journalists from across our newsrooms talk to compelling people about the definitive stories of the day.

In this episode, we speak to Ita Buttrose, the former newspaper and magazine editor, radio broadcaster, television host and chair of the ABC, has long described herself simply as a journalist.

But that single word doesn't sum up the range of the 83 year old's six decade career.

The media trailblazer talks to us today about being his stat in the testosterone fuelled fueled newsrooms of The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph.

As the first female editor of those papers, and the excitement of launching Cleo magazine in 1972 at a time of dynamic cultural change in Australia.

She also discusses why juggling career and family may be more challenging for women now than 30 or 40 years ago, and why some young men today are struggling to define new roles.

For what it's worth, she also firmly believes that the boardrooms of Australia are still male, pale and stale.

Finally, Buttrose opens up about her mobility challenges in old age, and her new book, Unapologetically Iter and hosting this discussion is the author of our Buttrose profile and cover story this week.

No apologies and that's good weekend, senior writer Greg Callaghan.

Thank you, Conrad, and welcome Ida.

Thank you.

Now, looking at your astonishing career over six decades, it's hard to know where to start.

But was there a single moment, a kind of game changing moment when you realized for the first time you were famous?

No.

Not really.

It was my dad.

It was my father that told me I was famous.

I think I'd been editor of the weekly for maybe two years, and I was invited to Bega.

And the town turned out a lot of people in the town turned out to welcome me, and they really treated me.

They gave me a fantastic day, and I went home and told dad all about it.

And he said to me, you're famous.

And that's the first idea that I had that I might be.

Isn't that fantastic that it came from your dad?

That must have been a a nice moment.

Now, you went from being editor in chief of the Australian Women's Weekly and Cleo at um, ACP, Australian Consolidated Press, and at the time, still the, um, it's the home of women's magazines, basically the headquarters of women's magazines.

And you went from there to being editor in chief of the Daily Telegraph and the Sunday Telegraph at News Limited, which was pretty much a bloke's regime then.

Very testosterone fuelled, wasn't it?

Absolutely, absolutely.

And I was a bit of shock, I think, because I went from a company where women were encouraged to one where we were an unknown factor, really.

They'd never had a woman in the hierarchy before.

They'd never had a woman editor in chief of any of the newspapers, never had a woman editor either.

And so there was there was some concern about what I would be like.

I remember that I remember I heard that I wouldn't go to the pub and drink with them and I don't I didn't because I don't I don't go to the pub and drink.

And maybe that's because we were prohibited for so long.

We women to go to the pub and have a drink.

But I don't know what it was.

But it's not my style, and I don't think I have to be one of the blokes to be successful.

Indeed.

Now I read in one story you have to correct this.

If it's not true that once when you were crossing the the floor that some of the blokes his statue, was it as bad as that?

No, not some of the blokes.

The whole room hissed at me.

Yes.

If I'd done something that they didn't agree with, or if there was a strike running or, or some, some argument running between the troops, as we used to call them, and management.

Yes, they would hiss at me as I walked through the fourth floor.

And, you know, it's very unnerving when people do that to you and you pretend you don't hear, but you do hear and you pretend you don't care, but you do care.

Do you reckon they would have done that if you'd been a bloke?

I'll never know, will I?

Mm.

Now, I spoke to a clutch of people for our good weekend story.

Um, and, um, the two words that really kept popping up, and now are kind of surprising.

Words for me were loyal and generous because the qualities that we associate with the legendary Ita Buttrose, um, are authoritative.

Yes.

Tough?

Yes.

Super skilled?

Yes.

But.

But loyal.

Generous.

Do you see yourself in that form?

I do, I think I am a generous person.

In fact, my father used to say I was overly generous.

He said I'd give people the shirt off my back if they needed it.

That's dad's summing up of the situation.

But loyalty?

Yes, of course.

I'm always loyal to people and I'm loyal to the people that work for me.

And if you if you want loyalty in return, you have to be loyal yourself.

You can't buy it.

You have to earn it.

Indeed.

And, um, I guess that was demonstrated in the fact that there are a whole group of, um, staff members who followed you from job to job over the years.

If I look at some of the names, um, led by maybe, perhaps Ainsley Cahill.

Um, I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly.

No you didn't.

It's Karl Ainsley.

Karl, I beg your pardon?

Okay, well, there are quite a few people that followed you from job to job, from, um, ACP to News Limited, from News Limited to Capricorn Publishing, where you established your own magazine.

So, um, that was about having a band of loyal troops.

Well, we liked working together, and I think I respected them, and I think they respected me.

We saw another very playful, um, showbiz side of your character when you were co-hosting studio ten and you did, um, the Waltzing Matilda.

Um, after a mouthful of helium, you recreated the the romance novel covers with, um, comedian Ash Williams.

And I'm hoping we're going to have space in the story to reproduce a still from from one from one of those, um, cameos because they're hilarious.

If not, um, anybody listening should go online and just put studio ten Ita Buttrose romance covers into a search engine.

Was it good fun?

Yes it was.

It was fantastic fun.

I loved being on studio ten.

We did all sorts of crazy things.

You certainly did.

And television was, um, wasn't new to you by this stage, but it, um, it was something you'd always wanted to do.

Well, I always wanted to host my own program, but but it didn't happen, so I thought, oh, well, it's just not meant to be.

I'll just carry on and do do do other things.

And then out of the blue, I was approached and asked if I'd host studio ten, and I thought, well, my and I was 70 when I was approached.

And I thought, well, you can achieve your goals.

You just have to wait and be patient.

And and we had a lot of fun.

We had a lot of fun on that program.

What was one of your more fun moments?

The other panelists?

Regular panelists were Joe Hildebrand, Sarah Harris, and Jessica Rowe.

And we used to try and stir Joe Hildebrand.

And it was easy enough to do this.

We we girls would just gang up and then he'd react and we'd think, got him, got him.

And we used to we used to love doing that to Joe.

And if he'd said to me, I can't believe you just said that, I knew I really got him.

You got him where he lived.

You also lived in London in the late 60s for a while.

With your husband of the time, Alistair.

And, um, that was a time when London was really swinging.

What was that?

What was that like being at, uh, in London at that time?

It was fantastic.

It was a great time to be in London because, you know, I, I, I'd only grown up in Australia, and I did spend a few years of my childhood in the States with dad and mum, but I was very young then, and so suddenly there I was in London and I arrived with my hair done up in what was then called a beehive.

And I still wore gloves and the girls on the subway.

I was a subeditor, so the girls on the subway said I could hear them saying, oh, look, she wears gloves.

So I got rid of the gloves and then, oh, look, she's got hairpins in her hair.

So I took the hairpins out and let my hair down.

And then I took my hems up because the miniskirt was in, and, you know, everything was everything was going then.

And my husband and I, we loved the theatre, we loved the opera, we loved the ballet.

So we spent most of our money on going to opera and ballet at Covent Garden.

And we saw we we reckoned we'd recognize the cast from the, from the sides because we couldn't afford the best seats, but we afforded the best seats that we could on our, on our budget.

So we always know the profile, but we'd never know them.

Front on.

It was the most fantastic time to be in London.

Everything was happening.

You mentioned just a moment ago about being in America with, with with your folks.

Uh, and there was a quite a cute story you told me when, when we spoke about being a little girl in Los Angeles.

And, um, there was talk of.

Can you tell us that story?

Well.

There was a Hollywood person there, and they said to Mum and Dad, you should have that little girl tested because she should she should be in Hollywood.

And they didn't.

I mean, I didn't know this was all going on.

I didn't learn about this until I was much older, and mum and dad didn't want that kind of life for me.

So I wasn't tested.

And I used to say to them, when I was old enough, you robbed me of being a Hollywood star.

You should have let me be tested.

And I've always I've always wanted to.

I think I've always had this yearning to be on the stage.

But maybe making speeches is because when you make a speech and I've made a lot of them, it's it's a performance.

It's a performance if you're doing them well.

And so then maybe, maybe that's my stage.

Well, it's not as if you've underachieved either, so I wouldn't have too many regrets about that.

Uh, when you, um, when you came back to Australia and then you went on to launch Cleo magazine in 72.

Now, this was an incredible time in Australia as well.

You went from the Swinging London of the 60s to, um, to an Australia that was undergoing quite significant change with Gough Whitlam had just been elected.

Um, and this was ushering in a period of real change.

It was a very change filled, exciting decade for you, wasn't it?

It was.

It was because Gough Whitlam, First of all, he stood on us.

All.

All of us.

A patriotism that I don't think we were aware we had.

And he also told young people like me that I didn't have to go overseas to make my name.

I could make my name in Australia.

And and he was right.

And I, I didn't go overseas to make my name.

I've made it here in Australia.

Up until then, most Australians who wanted to be somewhere or other in their careers used to go to London because that was what you did.

So first of all, he encouraged us to make our name in Australia, and he moved very quickly because in the 70s, prior to Gough, there was no no fault divorce, no maternity leave.

There was a luxury tax on contraceptives, 27.5%, which made them very expensive.

There was no female representation in the House of Representatives in Canberra.

You can't believe.

And I couldn't open a charge account at, say, at David Jones without my husband's signature.

So all of these things changed when Gough Whitlam became the Prime minister.

It was an extraordinary time, wasn't it?

And we forget how much social attitudes, social mores our culture has changed in in what is not a terribly long stretch of history.

Really?

No.

Um, but do you think young women today have any real understanding of how much things have changed, indeed improved for women since the early 70s?

No, I don't no, I don't, because I don't think they look back and and see how repressed we were and we were repressed.

We weren't even even our education wasn't considered important.

After all, we were going to get married and have children and we wouldn't be in the workforce.

So there's no point in educating us.

You know everything about us.

We were put in our place and we expect to stay there.

And you look at young women today, and I think they'd be surprised to see how far we've come.

I think they'd be shocked.

Really.

I think they'd be.

It would be an amazing, um, insightful lesson to see how much times have changed.

You've spoken about working women for decades, and you have made some really interesting observations about what it's like for career women and so forth.

But I'd just like to ask one question, and that is, um, is do you reckon it's harder for women today working and trying to raise a family than, say, when you were young and had a young family?

Yes and no.

I think social media, I think I think social media has changed it because when I finished work, usually at 6 or 7 when I was doing magazines, but later it would be much later than that.

Um, work was over.

Nobody could send me a text or send me an email.

You know, I went home and that was it.

Except the editor of the Daily Telegraph, King Watson, could always find me.

Even he would find me at 1 a.m.

in the morning if he wanted to.

So apart from Mr.

Watson, nobody else.

Nobody else disturbed me.

And nowadays, everyone's.

You know, they're on their phone 24 over seven.

They're texting.

They they answer the phones and they talk to people.

And I think that's what's made it more difficult.

There's no cut off time, no definite cut off time.

And so you have to be very strong I think if you're a modern younger worker, male or female.

Turn the phone off.

Just tell the phone.

Tell.

Tell people you're not available and turn the rotten thing off.

You've also been a very big advocate for women and particularly young women.

But I'd like to talk to you about young men because you were one of the very first people.

Now, I've done some research, um, that talking about young men.

And I guess that came from having a son.

But you talked about this is going back 25 years ago, long before it was fashionable to talk about men.

Really.

And, you know, the current hot topic is, of course, the crisis of young masculinity.

But you were talking about how it was harder for young men because their roles weren't clearly defined.

And possibly that scenario has got more pronounced, um, in the decades since you said that.

So what are your observations of young men now?

I think they're still struggling to find their way and and I don't I don't know if they're going to if they're going to find it because their role was clearly defined, as was ours.

And then women's liberation changed women's roles, and we suddenly realized that we could voice our objection to things and put our hand up and say, I want to do that or admit to having ambition.

And there are a lot of independent, younger women who don't don't feel the need, as I understand it, to even get married or even find a relationship or have children.

Now, when I was a young woman, um, I never thought I'd.

I wouldn't have children.

I always wanted to have children.

And I don't see that having children have spoiled my life in any way.

In fact, it's enriched my life.

And I sometimes read these articles about younger women and men who say, oh no, having children would spoil our lives, you know?

So we'll get a dog.

A dog is a great a great friend, but it's not a substitute for children.

And I think when you get older and you look back, you would you might regret not having children.

Because at the end of the day, when you're sitting in your rocking chair, you're not going to be thinking about a boardroom coup or something you did at the office.

You're going to want your family around you.

And I think it's better if that family includes children, but that's my view, and I don't I don't expect everyone to share it.

But I think I think young men need a bit more confidence.

They need a bit more confidence in their role and to realise that they're contributors to society as well, and that they need to do it with women.

You know, they it's it's not something you do on your own.

You do it in a partnership.

You don't necessarily have to get married, but it's good if you hang out together and exchange views.

Yes.

And again, you've been talking on that theme for a long time, but, um, it's, um, you know, it's an important subject.

And, um, we tend to, um, discuss these issues in terms of men's issues and women's issues instead of instead of what you've just said.

And that is for men and women to be talking together and, and having a real kind of conversation.

Now, you were in the vanguard of women being admitted to the boardroom.

You were, um, you were on the board of ACP right back in 1974.

I'm not sure if you were the the first woman on the board in 74 and ACP, but Dorothy.

Dorothy Drain, who was the editor of the Women's Weekly.

Then she and I were the first women to join the board.

And there was a small paragraph in The Sun newspaper Paper saying men on boards and Dorothy and I were included in that.

That's amazing.

This is 1974.

It's not 1954.

It's amazing.

Um, so in your view, a board still too male dominated and the classic term is male, pale and stale, that is, male dominated, Anglo-Saxon, often middle aged.

Uh, is this still a problem today?

Well, I don't think it reflects the diversity of our multicultural system.

Um, I don't think it lacks that representation.

I think it lacks First Nations representation.

I think it lacks people with a disability representation and probably LGBTQ plus people as well.

So during my time as chair of the ABC, I did suggest a couple of times some Asian board directors, but they didn't get up.

And so even the government needs to think about what makes up Australia.

And it's not just white men and women.

It's a whole diverse range of people from different cultures.

And if we're going to reach them properly, if we're going to run their businesses properly, we need representation from all of these people on our boards.

It's time for an overhaul.

While you were chair of the ABC, you also instrumental in leading the move to Parramatta as well.

Why was that?

Well, I've, I knew I knew the government was interested in diversifying a bit, a bit.

Um, and I just after you've been at Ultimo, which is the ABC headquarters, you realise you're in a little ghetto.

I mean, that's that's a ghetto.

And I said to David Anderson, the then managing director, David, we're in a ghetto.

We need to move some people out of here.

And I'd worked in Parramatta before when I was hosting a radio show at Tookey.

And I thought Parramatta was the ideal place for us to go in the first instance.

And, and so I when Paul Fletcher, the then communications minister, asked me what was on my mind, I said, I'm thinking of moving 300 people out of Ultimo to Parramatta.

And so that we can represent the community better than we do.

And there's lots of stories in the West.

I don't need to tell you that.

We all know those stories in the West.

And there's lots of people in the western suburbs who would like to work at the ABC.

And so what we've done by moving the ABC to a broadcast facility at Parramatta is that we've established a base.

And I don't know what's going on there now, but the plan was to move some other ones, you know, move further out, open some other officers perhaps at Liverpool, and we talked about Newcastle and make better use of the interstate offices, all of which are very well equipped and are underused in my opinion.

And would also, of course, feed into that diversity you've just spoken to, getting to the, you know, the, the, the real heart of Australia now.

Um, now you open up, um, on quite a number of issues in your new book, unapologetically Iter, I think, is this sure 14th book, is it your 12th book?

Where are we up to?

It's, uh, I think it's my 12th, 12th book.

Um, well, congratulations.

It's a good read.

It's a strong read.

It's it's full of attitude.

It is unapologetically Ita Buttrose.

Um, but you which is, which is great.

Um, now you talk about or you write about rather the challenges of getting older and you've had your own, um, your own journey here, as they say now, um, you had back surgery in, in 2021, and you've developed a condition that was diagnosed finally as isolated gait disorder.

Can you explain to us what that actually is?

I wish I knew, um, it was originally described as frozen gait disorder, which is a symptom of Parkinson's disease, but I don't have Parkinson's, so.

And I haven't developed any further symptoms so that the specialist that then now calls it an isolated gait disorder.

So what it means is, as far as I could tell, that I don't walk very well and that my walking is getting harder and harder for me to do.

And so, um, that's why I use a wheelchair quite often now, and I don't, I don't know where it's going.

I saw the specialist Lost just a couple of weeks ago.

And he they go through all these questions.

How's your swallowing?

How's your eyesight?

How's this?

How's that?

You say fine, fine, fine, fine.

And he and then we just chat and I said, and then I say, well, I'll see you in six months, will I?

And he said, yes, I'll look forward to it.

And I leave exactly as I was when I arrived.

So there doesn't seem to be anything I can do for it.

There's no known cure, and as far as I know, there's not enough research going on into gait disorders generally.

And I'm hoping that somewhere in the world there's a researcher doing something wonderful with gait disorders.

I mean, it's to do with the brain not connecting with the feet.

You know, it's not sending a message and not sending the right sort of message.

That's layman's terms.

So there's probably a medical way of describing it, but something's not connecting in some remote part of my brain.

So minuscule, says the doctor, that we can't see it.

It's so minuscule that we can't see what's going on.

So, as my GP said, I'm a medical curiosity.

And he said, you don't want to be that and I don't want to be that, but I think I am indeed.

And you're getting physiotherapy and various exercise treatments.

Oh yes.

I go to rehab three times a week.

I do an hour of exercise with them, and I have a whole stack of exercises that I do myself and their neuro physicists, physiotherapists.

So it's brain connected and they're very good and they just keep encouraging me to keep exercising.

That's the only thing that I've been recommended that I do.

And you seem to be as busy as ever.

I went to see you at one speech for the, um, Macular Disease Zs.

Um, Association.

And you've got another one coming up, um, at Macquarie University, I believe next month.

You um from.

Yes I.

Do yeah.

You've got a lot of, um, engagements.

You seem to be pretty busy.

I'm busy enough.

I'm not as busy as I was, but I wouldn't want to be as busy as I was.

I mean, I've been working for more than 65 years, I think.

I think I'm just.

I think I'm inclined to have some time off.

Indeed.

And 15 years old.

You started working.

Yeah.

So that's that's that's a long stretch.

Ida, have you had many long holidays did you have during that fantastic stretch of, um, career opportunities and that you had, did you have, um, like long holidays at any point?

Because I know you took your kids away quite a bit, so.

But did you actually have like a long break six weeks?

No, I didn't, no I didn't.

Maybe maybe three weeks or four weeks at maximum.

Um, and yes, I was offered lots of trips, but I usually gave them to the staff because I couldn't.

I couldn't take them because I was busy, busy running, running, whatever empire I was running at the time.

And I don't feel I've missed out on anything, though as I've got older, I've I've had a bit more time to go travelling.

And, you know, my brother was asking me the other day, where else do I want to go?

I don't, I don't think there's anywhere else I do want to go that I haven't seen, and I'm quite happy to stay in Australia.

Now.

You said something very wise to me when I, when I spoke to you about about job opportunities and, um, it was a very simple thing, but I think it's very, very true.

And that is, no one will know what your dream is.

Nobody will know what you want until you put your hand up.

A lot of people don't put their hand up either, because they're, um, uh, lack confidence or because they, um, just don't think anybody's going to take them seriously or they don't think they have a chance.

You've always put your hand up, haven't you?

Yes, I have.

And I think that's part of the the attraction of growing up with brothers.

If you didn't put your hand up, you miss out.

I mean, I didn't put my hand up for mashed potatoes.

My brothers would eat them all.

So I'm.

I'm.

I know that's not ambition, but it was their ambition to eat all mine.

But you've got to volunteer.

You've got to take a risk.

And because you're only here once, I think we spend too much time trying to do what everybody else expects us to do.

And I think women are more guilty than that of that.

Than men, perhaps.

But.

But in your heart, we all have dreams of what we want to do.

I'm sure of that.

And you have to listen to that sometimes.

And you have to give in to it and think, well, I'm only here once.

I think I'll have a go at that.

If you fail, it doesn't matter.

It's alright to fail at some things.

You just pick yourself up and find another dream.

And you were.

You weren't treated that kindly when item magazine closed and it did run for six years, which is a pretty decent run for a magazine.

It reached a pretty good circulation.

And, um, you know, you're very nobly made sure that everybody was paid.

You didn't declare bankruptcy, and it would have been a very hard time for you because you had, you know, a lot of people to pay off.

But, um, that.

Was a it was an awful time.

How did how long did it take you to sort of get over that?

Because the media were kind of using words like eaters Last stand and sort of saying, you're, you know, after a run of.

After a run of all these expanding successes over the years, you'd finally stumbled and fell.

As we know, the media can be pretty cruel.

But you know, you actually went on to have a spectacular second career.

Um, but as everybody knows, from, from that point onwards in, in television, radio, um, where does it where does it end?

And of course, with the ABC.

But, um, well, how did you deal with that?

Um, initial sort of few months afterwards?

Well, you, you go off and grieve and then you think, no one's going to pick me up, I've got to pick myself up.

And so I, I have these little chats with myself.

Pick yourself up.

No one else is going to pick you up.

And so you you pick yourself up and you think, well, what else can I do?

And you just you just look for the opportunities because you again, I go back to what I said.

you only here once.

You can't waste a moment.

And you know.

So something I did didn't work.

It survived six years.

It survived the recession we had to have which really which was really crippling.

And it was so hard, so hard to get advertising during the recession.

We had to have.

But you have to believe in yourself.

If you don't believe in yourself, no one else will.

You have to believe in yourself, and I believe in myself.

You've got five grandkids and I think they're all teenagers now, aren't they?

Yes, Jack, the youngest one, turned 13 last week.

Oh, really?

Okay, so you've got five teenage grandkids.

So that sounds like, um, a handful.

Oh.

They're lovely.

I adore them all.

And two of them are driving.

Two of them have their p plates.

One of them is on LS and the other two are too young yet.

So one of them rang me the other day and said, grandma, I said, yes, would you sell me your car?

I said, well, I'm not thinking of selling it, Sammy, but when you do, would you sell it to me?

I said, I don't think you can afford it, but would you sell it to me if I could afford it?

And I said, well, if you talk to your parents, that's what you always do.

When it gets too tricky, you send them back to their parents or the school counsellor.

Both of them very useful excuses.

That's that's a great comeback.

It sounds like Sammy is a chip off the old block.

Talk about putting putting your hand up after.

It's been a delight talking to you.

We could talk for hours.

How amazing your your career is.

Um, but again, we are restricted by time, so thank you very much.

I've enjoyed it.

Thank you very much, Greg.

That was Ita Buttrose, the media trailblazer and icon, now 83 on her very big life and six decade career.

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