"Fool" in the Shakespearean sense of the wise outsider commenting on the action, and "lesbian" in the sense that there is no question about her sexuality.

McCrossin's future biographers will never need to ask, "Was she? Wasn't she?" McCrossin is lesbian, living with another woman and her children.

I am in an Adelaide cafe drinking coffee with McCrossin, a multimedia commentator with a fortnightly column in the Australian Financial Reviuw, a hosting spot two days a week on Radio National and a thriving business as an MC, facilitator and public speaker. She is also a pop culture icon as one of the panellists on Channel Ten's Good News Week, which is why our coffee is interupted by a woman who "just wants to tell Julie how much she enjoys the show".

We are in Adelaide for the biennial gathering of the Uniting Network for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender concerns, an unofficial group of Uniting Church members. McCrossin had spoken to the gathering on "Living to Liberate: A personal perspective" at the request of her friend the Rev. Dorothy McRae-McMahon, Uniting Church minister and sister lesbian.

She had raced around the meeting room, microphone in hand, sharing her life story and her belief in the need to avoid self-destructive anger and resentment, an important message for a group of queer Christians trying to change the church.

McCrossin is a very warm and physical person. She is also a student, studying a law degree part time at the University of New South Wales.

This is her second time around. In the early '70s she studied Arts at Sydney University. So I jealously ask why the '70s were so active and she explains the difference between then and now.

"University was free, there was low unemployment, people could drop in and drop out. In the'70s people could get B and C grades and get jobs. Now students are mostly working and worrying about their HECS debts, trying to keep up high averages to get jobs. It's misguided to be critical of modern students; the climate is completely different."

But weren't the issues then more important?

"The issues are where you are. The difference is that in the '70s we agitated for change and saw it happen. We were part of the demonstrations for decriminalisation [of homosexuality]. Abortion was unlawful, women had to go to backyard abortion clinics, sordid, late-night abortion locations, really. It was difficult to get access to contraception, and we fought for freely available information on it.

"Women were still being forced to leave the public service when they got married. We challenged all this and saw change happen. Now I know that there is more to change than formal equality, but legislative change was important and it happened. We felt that we had what I since have learned to call 'agency'.

McCrossin then tells me the story of the women who set up the first feminist women's refuge by simply squatting in a house on an Anglican-owned housing estate and declaring that it was a refuge. I move on to the queer stuff.

"Nowadays people talk as though everything started with the first Mardi Gras in '78, but things must have been happening before then?"

McCrossin says, "I joined Gay Liberation at uni in '73 or '74, years before the 'big punch-up up the Cross'. I wasn't actually at the march but I was there later helping to bail protesters out, so I am claimed as a '78er. There were several years of public meetings and demonstrations leading up to that. I was a member of CAMP Inc (Campaign Against Moral Persecution) too, which met in a little room in Glebe. I was looking for people like myself. In the early'70s it was possible to feet that you were the only lesbian in the world."

Does she think things are better for queer people nowadays?

"They are massively better. The silence has been broken, gay people have places to go, homosexuality has been decriminalised, there are openly gay people like High Court judges and people can't lose jobs in the public service any more. It is still very hard for families though."

McCrossin had a hard time with her own family. She came out to them at 18 when her mother asked her whether she was in love with another woman. A difficult decade followed, for McCrossin, her parents and her siblings.

It was a difficult time. Homosexuality was illegal and treated as an illness. There was nothing to help her parents cope. It is still hard for parents, especially in some cultures.

McCrossin tells me of a friend, a Lebanese woman who has decided to stay silent about her sexuality forever, rather than risk family violence and ostracism, But she still emphasises that things are much better today than they were when she was coming out.

The fact that I am interviewing an openly lesbian "television personality" shows how times have changed. Slightly embarrassed, I bring up a TV Week article on McCrossin, entitled "Julie's Good News". I read from the article: "Not much is known about her, apart from GNW and her previous life as an ABC radio broadcaster... She prefers to keep her private life just that."

"That's not true. I remember the interview with TV Week at Channel Ten. I talked about my partner and her two children, about their father who is an active father, and about the fact that all three of us are part-time parents. The Channel Ten publicist was there and it was fine. I wasn't keeping my private life private."

I ask whether interviewers fail to mention her sexuality often and McCrossin tells me that 95 per cent of them don't mention it.

She enjoys clothes and make up, she's an uninhibited 45 year old, a size 16 who is comfortable with her body and sexy in a womanly kind of way, so she doesn't fit the lesbian stereotype that people have and they don't know what to do with it.

I ask if she wants to enter politics. "I feel that I am in politics now. I am not interested in party politics, but I do want to make a contribution and I feel that I am now, without restriction."

Does she get any hate mail?

"No, and I get all my mail unopened, so I don't think I'm being protected from it, I do get lots of mail thanking me for being gay and out, mainly from young women who tell me that I have helped them to realise that they should be who they are. I generally get a good response."

Phew. So what do you do to chill out?
To be brutally frank, I don't do enough to chill out. I have become the archetypal 21st Century deregulated worker where almost all of my work is contract and it's intense. I love what I do but its extremely demanding. My chilling out is gardening on the weekends with my partner, going out to see silly children's films with my stepchildren who are 11 and eight. I also have an aging kelpie and he embodies my commitment to fitness.

Okay. So on that note then, what does your fitness regime involve?
Six months ago, I had a really young border collie and he had the energy of a nuclear fission and a brain that could do a better job of running Telstra than the people currently doing it. So, I was walking three times a day, but I felt guilty about his quality f life so I sent him to live in the country and my exercise level has dropped remarkable. So I need to get another young dog. I walk every day now, but we have a very elderly dog, so we dawdle.

So, what are your greatest challenges with work and spreading your time around?
I feel incredibly lucky because on a daily basis I am asked to do interesting things, both paid and unpaid. The issue for me is making choices to balance the intellectual stimulation with some sort of physical wellbeing. Right now, I think I am out of balance and living more in my head than in my body.

What do you think you need to do to achieve a better balance?
Get a young dog. Also, I used to go to a place called the Korean Bathhouse and that is genuinely as good as sex. Once you have a soak in the ginseng, the hot and cold bathes, the sauna and you get the full body scrub and a massage, it is profoundly relaxing.

What about diet? What do you think is the key to a healthy, but fun, diet?
I refuse to see food as a problem to deal with. I am part woman, part rabbit. I eat heaps and heaps of salad. But when I feel the best is when I'm exercising regularly and not thinking too much about food.

You are a teetotaler aren't you?
Yes, I haven't had a drink for 20 years. I frankly don't think I could live the life I do if I drank. The way I cope with the insecurity of jobs in the media is to have a really normal working life in the daytime. But, I couldn't final GNW at 1am and be really coherent running a seminar the next day if I wasn't completely compos mentis. Foe me, not drinking has been a fantastic experience because I never have a hangover.

Why did you give it up?
I was a problem drinker. My personality changed when I drank and I felt I couldn't predict my behavior. I made that decision when I was 24 and I am now 46. It was the best decision I have ever made.

Is it a challenge at times?
It hasn't been. I consciously seek out other non drinkers at times and talk about the decision and reinforce it, but it has become a part of who I am. I've always felt it was the right decision for me. The whole truth...

What would you change about you body?
I have brought a lot of women a lot of pleasure on television by being in my mid 40s, size 16 and happy and confident. I don't think I want to change anything.

Who would you most like to do an aerobics class with and why?
Amanda Keller from Triple M. She is incredibly good company, she is a regular user of a personal trainer and she is a great role model. She's also very accepting so she wouldn't laugh at me.

What would you like to be served for your last supper?
Salad. I love salad with Virgin Olive oil, balsamic vinegar and avocado.

What is your greatest regret in relationships?
Work intrudes on how regularly I see my friends.

When did you last paint the town red and what did you do?
Last week I went to dinner with my partner and two friends I love the most. We got there at 7pm and didn't draw breath until midnight. It's about talking, not drinking.

What do you think is the secret to happiness?
Balancing time for quiet personal reflection with real engagement with your friends and your partner

It's easy to talk to Julie McCrossin. An hour-long interview goes in a blink of an eye, covering a diversity of issues from the state of public broadcasting to a conference she ran on the abuse of women and children. And when it comes to a conversation, McCrossin is not only witty and articulate, but fearless in what she says.

"I value my freedom to speak and people value that in me." And when you speak your mind without fear or favour, it pays to have more than one employer, she says.

"I see myself as the classic 21st century worker - on part time contracts. I work every week for four or five different organisations and have lived like this for 20 years."

One of her frequent employers is the ABC, where she currently presents Life Matters on Radio National on Thursdays and Fridays. Tomorrow she returns to ABC TV in her own half-hour weekly talk show.

McCrossin tackles personal and emotional issues. Each show has a theme, 3 guests, and a song, which wraps up the mood of the night. Tomorrows show is about trauma survivors.

McCrossin says it is 30 minutes of entertaining, intelligent conversation. The guests talk to her, and to each other. And in the McCrossin way - fostered through hundreds of hours as a professional MC, facilitator at events and seminars on social issues and five years in front of studio lights as a team leader on Good News Week - she makes them feel at ease.

"I think I'm naturally warm, convivial person and people associate me with a good time," she says. " People see me and smile… I always bring a colloquial sense of humour and style to what I'm doing."

She has no desire to ambush her guests. " If I want to bring up something I know will be tough for them, I bring it up with them before they go on."

McCrossin begins a week after Good News Week ended. She says GNW, which began on the ABC and finished on the Ten Network, had run its course. Doing two shows a week had "bled it dry". Like GNW, the McCrossin job offer came out of the blue. She got a call from executive producer Mark Fennessy about being apart of an "intelligent, late-night chat show. I heard intelligent and chat, and got aroused."

She says when people turn on to watch they will probably do so because of the guests, not her. While the goal is to entertain, she also hopes the show will give viewers something to think about after they turn off the TV.

McCrossin does not "live and survive" for the media. Her motto is one day at a time. " My first 18 months with Good News Week were on a weekly-basis contract. My decision then was to live a normal working life (outside her media commitments)."

She says "the key to handling the media is to expect the end today, and not to assume decisions will be made on merit and common sense."

She had 24 hours notice of the demise of Good News Week. A significant portion of her weekly wage was instantly wiped out but, in three to four weeks, she had built that5 income up again through her many other pursuits. The night before this interview she was master of ceremonies at the Australian Dance Awards; during the interview she was in Centennial Park doing a charity photo shoot for Community Aid Abroad.

It's a diversity she has enjoyed since graduating from university and joining community theatre group Pipi Storm which performed at schools, child welfare institutions and prisons.

She has had a long association with the ABC - her "greatest love" is Radio National, which she has been listening to since she was 16. "I love intelligent radio, it feeds my brain and soul." Before her current stint on Life Matters, she spent a decade with Radio National in the '80's and '90's.

She is passionate about public broadcasting, but her concerns relate more to McCrossin the viewer and listener, than the employee.

"If ABC cuts restrict what it can do, my primary concern is what I watch on telly and what I listen to… Public Broadcasting has a unique contribution to make, particularly in the arts, religion and coverage of social issues in depth in a way commercial stations almost never do."

"Public Broadcasting is about a comprehensive commitment to the charter. It has a special responsibility to foster cultural life." It is not better than commercial television, but different and essential.

"My observations of the media is that it is becoming particularly segmented and targeted to specific audiences. My fear is that cuts by federal governments of both persuasions to public broadcasting will make it more likely that to get certain types of I am going to have pay because they will not be on free-to-air TV anymore."

She says the ABC is an organisation in turmoil. It has to look at ways to generate income separately from government, but in a manner, which is consistent with its charter and will not destroy the credibility of the brand.

But this time around, she won't have to contend with the loveable antics of her Good News Week colleagues Mikey Robbins and Paul McDermott.

She's flying solo - and loving every minute of it.

Her own talk show, McCrossin, debuts this week on the ABC-TV, the station which launched Julie's television career.

Julie describes her 30-minute talk show as "sophisticated and entertaining". She's not afraid to canvas the big issues with a dash of humor.

"It's not comedy, nor is it news and current affairs," Julie said.

Each of the seven episodes centres around a theme, from great survivors to Aboriginal heroes and children of prominent figures.

A number of guests join Julie in the studio and via satellite, including Thredbo disaster survivor Stuart Diver, with each episode concluding with a live contemporary music act reflecting the mood of the night's show.

"People really want to hear Australians speaking about things that matter," Julie said. "They want to be entertained, but they also want strong themes.

"We have not had an Australian show like this for a while. It's a night-time chat show, it's quite pacy and that's the challenge for me, to get people to talk about really big, personal things in a relatively short period of time."

Surprisingly, comedy was never Julie's first choice. "Journalism is more my thing. I never considered myself a comedian, but I do enjoy being in front of an audience and getting to the meat and potatoes."

Julie said she will miss working with Robbins and McDermott, the trio having formed a unique bond over the years. "Good News Week helped me to feel really happy and comfortable in front of cameras and crowds," she said.

"I have had hundreds of hours on the set and even though taping McCrossin was different because I was out there without Mikey and Paul, I felt really relaxed.

"I can handle all sorts of people and the capacity to jump from the serious to lighthearted."