Magda Szubanski’s name won’t pop up if you search great leaders. It should

October 3, 2026 — 3:00am

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It would be extremely difficult not to love Magda Szubanski. With her impeccable comic delivery, she has been making Australians chortle and wheeze for decades, most memorably in the guise of a sports-obsessed netballer called Sharon Strzelecki. She is also honest, vulnerable and open-hearted. When you walk down the street with her, people clasp her arms, beam widely, tell her they adore her.

And they still remember the pluck and leadership she showed as a prominent lesbian during the debate around marriage equality in 2017.

Which is why, when she decided to write a book weaving together the story of her mother’s death, with her work for the marriage equality plebiscite almost a decade after Australians voted overwhelmingly in favour of it, I was curious to see what insights it might contain about leadership, at a time when we seem particularly hungry for it.

The kind of leadership that is not bombastic, selectively deaf or self-serving.

The kind of leadership that won’t pop up on an AI search when you ask for a list of Australia’s leaders. You’ll get mostly men, prime ministers and governors-general, not an eloquent comedian who fought for her community, for equality, for human rights.

The book – I Can’t Tell You But I Will –tells the story of Szubanski’s evolution from idealist extremist to “militant moderate”, from comedian to campaigner, from daughter to orphan, wrestling with religion and........

© WA Today