When Channel Ten bought the cheeky comedy game show 'Good News Week' from
the ABC 18 months ago, the network publicists called a meeting. It was not
to discuss how to handle the often in-your-face humor of the host, Paul
McDermott, or of his co-stars Mikey Robins and Julie McCrossin, but to
prepare for any heat generated by McCrossin's sexuality.
"There was a publicity meeting about the fact that Julie McCrossin is a
lesbian, it was discussed as a PR issue early on," says McCrossin, down in
Melbourne for a quick spot with [Channel 10'] Bert Newton. "They just
decided it was absolutely no problem."
McCrossin does not claim any credit for bravery in the decision to be open
about her lesbianism, which she took before she started her media career.
But she knows there are other high-profile homosexuals on mainstream TV
and radio who cannot do the same.
For McCrossin, who just started a second job as host of [ABC] Radio
National's 'Life Matters' program two days a week, there was never a
suggestion she hide. She had decided before she entered public life that
if it came to a choice between a job in the media or being true to
herself, "then I would choose the latter".
"I think the critical thing for me is that I have never for a second
relied on the media for a job ... I love it when I do it, but I don't rely
on it.
"Second, I am really genuinely comfortable with being gay, I'm a really
warm and open person, and I'm not angry any more. I haven't been angry
since I was about 25." Angry about? "Social prejudice."
McCrossin, 45, shares her life with a psychologist who works for the
health department in New South Wales, Melissa Gibson.
She is pleased that the Good News Week team has consistently offered her
partner the same travel and other entitlements as the partners of
McDermott and Robins.
But McCrossin says it has surprised her, since she became prominent when
Good News Week started four years ago, that most personality pieces
written about her have omitted the fact that she is gay.
"It has been interesting, the non-coverage, and my hypothesis is that I
think I don't fit the stereotype. People associate lesbians with
masculine, angry women and it's largely because the media, with the
exception of the Mardi Gras and ... Kerryn Phelps and Robyn Archer, shows
lesbians when they are angry about an issue.
"Because I'm a middle-aged, friendly woman, who's not bad looking and has
a couple of step-children (through Gibson) and lives a really ordinary
life, that's not the angle they're expecting."
McCrossin is certainly warm and open. While she may seem spiky in some of
the tougher tussles with her on-air competitors, in person it is her
happiness that shines. It is perhaps more controversial that she is openly
happy and working in television.
She puts her ease down in part to being happily open and reconciled with
her family about her sexuality. And it helps that professionally she is
insulated from the ratings-related anxieties of other TV regulars, because
she does not consider media her main work in life.
Her vocation, she says, is her work as a community educator. McCrossin
spends much of her time convening seminars for many different community
and legal groups, mainly those involved with social justice, and many in
the area of child protection and the law. She does about a third of the
work for free.
"The media is hilariously unstable as an industry, even now the ABC is
seeing jobs disappearing, people get hired and fired with great rapidity.
But because I have this other life, which I love, which gives me a lot of
intellectual satisfaction and keeps me travelling around the country ...
I'm fearless."
McCrossin's interest in education and the law goes back to her work,
straight out of Sydney University, as a member of a theatre in education
group. It took shows about issues, including legal rights, to schools,
child welfare institutions and prisons.
Then, in 1982, she joined Radio National and worked for eight years on
programs including 'Background Briefing', 'The Coming Out Show' and 'The
Arts Show'.
After that she worked as a community legal educator with two NSW
government bodies. She is in the fifth year of a six-year part-time law
degree, which she says will help her with her speaking work.
As for Good News Week, McCrossin says it has enriched her, partly because
it has given her "the capacity to work with men".
"My previous working history was almost exclusively with women, just by
chance.
"It's like a senior management meeting, its men's territory and no quarter
is shown. I've had to gird my loins and get out my Xena: Warrior Princess
sword and say don't take it personally, bat on.
"I've been pushed way beyond my comfort zone and it's done me the world of
good."
Julie McCrossin hosts 'Life Matters' on Radio National on Thursday and
Friday mornings.
• Julie McCrossin talks for a living. As well as presenting Life Matters
she also leads a team into battle on Network 10, with the media quiz show
Good News Week.
During Julie's university years she worked as everything from a government
bus driver to a waitress in hot pants.
On graduation, a passion for politics and the media swept her into six
years of performing in schools, prisons and children's institutions with a
community theatre group, followed by eight years as a broadcaster on Radio
National and Rural Radio.

Julie's satirical edge has been applied as an MC and facilitator at events
and seminars on a wide range of social issues, with participants as
diverse as defence force personnel, feminist legal academics and foster
parents.

She's been a TV commentator for the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras and
the ANZAC Day March. The proudest moment of her performing career was a
short, silent performance as a clown called Plain Jane on
Play School.