Do we like Magda Szubanski?
Our score: 8 out of 10. Decades of campaigning for LGBTQ+ people and a record of owning her mistakes, with one old sketch and one sharp tweet on the other side.
Magda Szubanski came to Australia from England as a little kid and grew up in Melbourne. She came up through university revue and the D-Generation, then Fast Forward and Big Girl's Blouse. Most of us know her as Sharon Strzelecki in Kath & Kim, and the Australian honours system noted her as an actor, comedian and writer.
Harm check: clean. No anti-trans or anti-gay anything, no conspiracy rabbit holes, no dodgy company that we could find. She's been on the receiving end of the nasty stuff instead. After a Victorian COVID ad in 2020, the eSafety Commissioner described the attacks on her as coordinated right-wing extremist attacks.
The stains are small and she's dealt with them in public. In 2022, after she backed an Indigenous netballer in a sponsorship stoush, critics dug up an old blackface sketch. She said she had spent the 25 years since listening, learning and apologising. In 2021 she compared a photo of Jenny Morrison to a Handmaid's Tale meme. A Liberal MP called it appalling. She said she was talking about far-right religious influence and not Christians generally, and wouldn't apologise.
The good stuff is long-running. She's the patron of Twenty10, which supports LGBTQ+ youth, and an ambassador for the Pinnacle Foundation. She volunteered at fundraiser concerts after the Orlando shooting. She was set for induction into the Logies Hall of Fame in 2025, and no fresh controversy has turned up since.
So: would we support her? Yes. She has used her fame for other people for years, spoken up when it cost her a pile of online hate, and owned her old mistakes. There's no court record and no allegations of mistreating people that we could find. The only knock is a bit of sharp-tongued politics.