Do we like Ita Buttrose?
Our score: 5 out of 10. Decades of real public good sit next to her pressure on ABC management over Lattouf and her recent comments about migrants.
Ita Buttrose is one of Australia's best-known media names, and for good reason. She was named Australian of the Year in 2013, and earlier received an Order of Australia honour for her work leading the national HIV/AIDS education program. That is a heavy resume for anyone, and it is the Ita most people grew up with.
On the harm test, her history is better than most. When she was Australian of the Year, marriage equality campaigners welcomed her, and Rodney Croome of Australian Marriage Equality pointed to her “unequivocal support for marriage equality”. In 2011 she reportedly pressed Labor delegates at their national conference to back it. We found nothing from her on trans people either way, so that is a gap, not a pass.
The wobble is a 2025 webinar ahead of her memoir. She said the multicultural society Australians talk about so proudly isn't working as well as it could be, and that newcomers must be emphatic about trying to “live our way”. Where you land depends on whether you hear a call for social cohesion or a nudge at migrants. It is one contested position, not a long record, and it sits oddly beside her older work.
Then there's the Antoinette Lattouf saga. Court documents showed emails from Buttrose, then ABC chair, to the managing director, including “We owe her nothing.” She told the court she did not push for the removal of the casual presenter, who was taken off air in December 2023 after complaints about a Gaza post. Buttrose and the ABC denied Lattouf's allegations, including that race played a part.
The Federal Court found in June 2025 that the ABC unlawfully ended Lattouf's work because of her political opinion on the Gaza war. The judge found the decision was made by the chief content officer alone, so Buttrose was not found to have made it. The ABC apologised and was later ordered to pay a $150,000 penalty on top of $70,000 compensation. Buttrose still comes out of the emails looking like she leaned hard on management, and her memoir was criticised for leaving the saga out.
The good stuff is real. She became a Dementia Australia Patron in 2021 and says dementia is personally important to her. Years earlier, as national president of Alzheimer's Australia, she said she wanted to “put dementia on the national agenda”. She also continues to be associated with the Bobby Goldsmith Foundation and Qtopia, though we only confirmed the dementia work here.