Scott, she said, had changed the ABC into a truly digital broadcaster. He'd introduced News 24 and the children's channel, he'd made the organisation more efficient and forward-looking. He'd also met the challenge of continuing to be independent of government, she said.

"One of the inevitable scenarios of managing media is the government loves you Tuesday and hates you Thursday," she said.

Carnell was, of course, referring to the way the Abbott government seized on revelations in the ABC's series The Killing Season, which laid bare the machinations over leadership during the Rudd-Gillard years, and the contrasting call on Thursday from the Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, that "heads should roll" over Monday's episode of Q&A. The program was a "lefty lynch mob" and it was "utterly incomprehensible" that the show had been rebroadcast.

But Scott, as managing director of the national broadcaster, is not going anywhere – at least not until his term expires in mid-2016. The Herald understands he has the board's confidence and was recently sounded out by board members to extend his term but declined.

Instead, Scott has launched a staunch defence of the ABC in the face of Mr Abbott asking publicly and pointedly "whose side" the broadcaster is on.

While the ABC admits an error of judgment in allowing Zaky Mallah, who was acquitted of terrorism charges but jailed for threatening to kill Commonwealth officials in 2005, to be in the live studio audience, Scott used his speech on Thursday to push back hard on the criticisms from the Prime Minister, which go to the role of the ABC.

The ABC was a national broadcaster, not a state broadcaster, he said: "At times, free speech principles mean giving platforms to those with whom we fundamentally disagree."

The views were quintessentially Scott and the speech his own words.

Unlike managing directors who have come from bureaucracy, or from a background of accounting, Scott has been a journalist himself, as well as a media executive responsible for the daily decision making in a newsroom.

When he arrived at The Sydney Morning Herald in the mid-1980s as an education writer, fresh from the offices of the Liberal education minister Terry Metherell, there was consternation in the newsroom about whether a political apparatchik could make the leap to reporter.

Scott showed that he could and quickly demonstrated other skills rarer in newsrooms – an ability to manage other people and plan. He quickly became news editor, responsible for the daily news agenda before then managing director, Fred Hilmer, who had worked with Scott's father in consulting, picked him out as executive material. He became editor-in-chief of metropolitan newspapers, responsible for overall editorial content, in 2003.

Scott is renowned for his ability to "manage up" – he is a master at dealing with bosses and boards, putting them at ease and seeing solutions, not problems.

Those who work closely with him say Scott believes that most arguments can be won by logic and he is prepared to debate an issue at length, if that's what it takes.

A strong Christian, though very private about it, he is generally regarded as being a man of integrity, who tells it like it is – often at length.

At the ABC, he has won the grudging support of staff even as he introduced big changes to the way journalists work across platforms. The latest redundancy round in which skills audits, dubbed "the hunger games", were used to decide who would stay and go were not popular, but many staff could see that Scott's aim was to reorient the ABC toward the digital future and ensure it served audiences of the future.

Under Labor, he secured additional funding for new ventures and an acknowledgement that the ABC had a role in future media services, although under Abbott the budget is again under attack.

He also demonstrated his ability to work with chairmen as diverse as former ASX chair Maurice Newman, a conservative, and Jim Spigelman, who was a senior staffer to former Labor prime minister Gough Whitlam.

Scott's push into digital has also put him on a collision course with News Corp, which sees the ABC's ability to offer free digital services as unfair competition, especially at a time when commercial media are struggling to find a business model in digital to replace the revenues from print.

If the government wants to gauge Scott's tenacity, it need look no further than the ongoing defence he has run in the face of a campaign run by News from Rupert Murdoch down.

The ABC has recently engaged a headhunter to find Scott's replacement.

The appointment – and removal – of the managing director of the ABC is the province of the ABC board, currently chaired by Spigelman, a former chief justice of NSW Supreme Court. While the chairman of the ABC is usually a captain's pick by the prime minister of the day, board members are appointed by a merit selection panel in consultation with the communications minister.

That panel is currently made up of former defence secretary Ric Smith, company director David Gonski and two more recent appointments, former shadow Liberal minister Neil Brown and News Corp columnist Janet Albrechtsen.

Two ABC board appointments are looming on the board of eight. Lawyer Cheryl Bawzrt has completed her last board meeting and banker Steven Skala is due to finish in November.

The appointments offer an opportunity to change the political complexion of the board or to boost its expertise in digital media, an area where it is potentially weak.

It will be difficult to do both. That could result in a tussle within government and on the independent panel.

Mallah melee

In case you somehow missed it, a furore has erupted over the decision to allow Zaky Mallah, a former Muslim extremist, to be part of Q&A's live studio audience.  When Mallah was given his chance to ask a question he directed it at Liberal MP Steve Ciobo. Ciobo said he would be happy to see Mallah sent out of the country. Mallah responded: "The Liberals have just justified to many Australian Muslims in the community tonight to leave and go to Syria and join ISIL because of ministers like him."

The result has been multiple complaints from Liberal MPs and the Prime Minister, who has ordered an inquiry by the Department of Communications into how Mallah came to be in the studio audience.