The 31-year-old former Northern Territorian starts his new dual role on Monday - behind the mike in the ABC Radio Canberra studio at 5.30am for the breakfast shift and then that evening in front of the cameras to present the news at 7pm.

It means a long day likely to stretch from at least 4.45am to 7.30pm but he says there will be a block of six hours in the middle of the day when he plans to exercise, sleep, read and rejuvenate.

"It's been made very clear I will be pushed out as soon as I'm off air on both ends of the day," he said.

"I appreciate there's many questions over how do you manage and how do you balance the hours, but to be honest, since I've been in media, I've known nothing but working long hours where you're committed to whatever it is that you're doing.

"Perhaps it was my upbringing in Tennant Creek and having parents who were strong businesspeople, who had that commitment to just getting on with it.

"In terms of the day, I'll be in here on deck [in the radio studio] at 4.45am, on air at 5.30am and will talk through the day, what we are looking at, what are things that will affect you, what's the traffic like, the weather, what are the big stories you need to know about .

"We'll be going through [on air] until 9am. From there, there will be time to debrief with the team., talk about where we're going from there, the feedback we've received from listeners and how do we act upon that and what stories are we going to be covering in the coming days.

"From there, I'll be heading home, making sure I hit the gym or go for a run. It'll be really important for me to have something outside work where I can have my own space.

"Then they'll be a big chunk of time where I'm expecting to work my way through the bookcase which has more layers that are unread than read.

"And then back into work at four in the afternoon starting to work with the team who have already been working right throughout the day on what we're doing next and how the stories will come together that have been unfolding throughout the day."

Most recently he was political reporter and national indigenous affairs correspondent for Sky News based in Canberra, Bourchier said there was a very simple reason he wanted to take on the two jobs, until now done by separate people, the TV news previously by stalwart Viriginia Haussegger and breakfast radio by Philip Clark.

"The opportunity for me to grow and to learn," he said.

"This is a chance for me to step out of what I've been doing for so long. to connect in a different way and to be able to tell stories and communicate in the media things that really matter and are important in people's lives."

Bourchier will be on radio five mornings a week and reading the TV news from Monday to Thursday. Craig Allen will present the TV news Friday to Sunday. ABC TV news editor Eric Napper said Bourchier was a catch for the station.

"He came to us very highly recommended," Napper said.

"He's a fresh voice for us and a fresh face for Canberra. He's got such a rich history in the media that we think we're lucky to have him." How the TV news updates will be done later in the night were still being worked out.

ABC Radio Canberra manager Steve McClelland said having one person do two jobs wasn't about cost-cutting but "giving radio and TV audience the best product at both ends of the day and having some continuity".

"We believe he is the right sort of person for this. His personality, his enthusiasm, his background makes it ideal," McClelland said.

"And it's true we are looking to do more cooperatively in parts of the ABC and this is a good example of how that can work."

Bourchier is openly gay with a partner, Karl, who is a public servant. He also has Aboriginal heritage on hs mother's side of the family in Victoria.

His mentor Stan Grant, now presenting 7.30 over summer, was moved to write a comment piece in 2014 about an "utterly remarkable" occurrence on Sky News that unfolded on an otherwise ordinary day.

The network happened to have "two Aboriginal journos covering a yarn" - Grant then as international editor and Bourchier as Darwin and indig­enous affairs reporter.

"This just doesn't happen on Australian TV: two reporters, both indigenous, covering significant events unrelated to our cultural and racial heritage," Grant wrote at the time.

Bourchier said he wasn't aware of his Aboriginal heritage until he was in his teens when the family started to speak out it.

"The great story-telling I learnt was from my mum's aunty, my Great Aunty Rita, who was the real connection between our generation and the past," he said.

"And the things that happened to her, in Australia in the '50s and '60s, were appalling. Where she had to say that she was from overseas ethnicity to get a job. She grew up having to eat her lunch in the toilet at school because no other kids wanted to have lunch with her. And that's not that long ago."

He says if the opportunity to marry arises, he'd love to do it.

"I suspect at some point in Australia, it will be yes and I would be thrilled," he said.

"However, I think that there are so many things I want to focus my attention on that the state of marriage equality is not one of them. And to be honest, I think it's been so politicised by all sides of politics and that concerns me."

Born in the NT mining town of Tennant Creek, Bourchier's parents were small business people. His mum was a scrap metal collector and his dad drove trucks and worked in an abattoir. He got his start in media aged 13 washing the windows for the local newspaper, The Tennant and District Times.

"It was a Wednesday night, on deadline, and the editor said, 'I've got this hole that's this big, which I think was 25cm in the old print lingo, on the sports page. You need to go to netball and cover it.'," he said.

"He gave me a digital camera and a notebook and I remember spending hours agonising over the photos, the words, the scores, checking and double-checking and triple-checking every detail and when I finally saw it in print, I was shellshocked and a bit in awe this was an idea and words I'd crafted and there they were in print."

He went on to work for the NT News and later National Indigenous Television (NITV) in Sydney and Canberra, before moving to Darwin in 2012 to join Sky News as its NT bureau chief.

He has been in Canberra for a year this time around working with Sky and was also living in the national capital in 2011.

"But I've been coming back and forth because my brother has lived here for the last few years and he's raising his son here," he said.

Bourchier says he is looking forward to getting to know the "dynamic audience" in Canberra.

"The population of Canberra, like the Northern Territory, come from all over the place and from all walks of life and the interests are so very diverse," he said.

"You have such a focus on the local community and that sense of cohesion, there's also much interest in domestic politics, given the nature of federal parliament here, and international affairs, and how that affects us here."

Bourchier is also keen to show Canberra what he is about as well.

"The really nice thing is finding my voice," he said.