Maxine McKew has garnered several titles throughout her career: award-winning journalist, trailblazer, political giant slayer.
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But on Monday, Ms McKew will gain another when she is appointed a member of the order of Australia for her service to journalism, Parliament and higher education.
"It's a lovely acknowledgement," said Ms McKew, currently an honorary fellow at the Melbourne University School of Education and advocate for education reform. She added, though, that "the work I've done I regard as my own reward".
Looking back, Ms McKew realises the "central kernel" of her career - one that has taken her from ABC newsrooms to the halls of Parliament House - has been her investment in some of Australia's most important public institutions.
Ms McKew started out in the ABC Brisbane newsroom in the 1970s, the only full-time female reporter in the office. Three decades on, and a Walkley and Logie win later, the Lateline anchor left the profession and took on sitting prime minister John Howard for his Bennelong seat at the 2007 federal election.
She said the idea to shift to politics had been "fermenting in my head for a long time". But it was a risky career move - Mr Howard at the time was, as Ms Mckew described, "the most significant political warrior in the country".
Nonetheless, Ms McKew won, making headlines as a first-time female candidate unseating one of the most powerful conservative men in the country.
"I tend to think that, given what we've seen recently that I could probably describe myself correctly as one of the first of the great political disruptors," she said, pointing to the number of teal independent women who won Coalition seats at last year's election.
"[Looking around last year] I thought, 'Oh, I know what's going on there. I know exactly what voters are thinking. Yes, this is the time to make a difference'."
Ms McKew's time in politics, though, was cut short when she was voted out after one term in the 2010 election. A "traumatic" public rejection that, she admitted, "hurt for a long time".
It had been a tumultuous three years for Labor in office, culminating in the leadership spill between Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard that saw Rudd ousted from the top job.
Since then, Ms McKew - still a Labor Party member - has been an outspoken critic of the party's performance during that time. In her memoir, Tales from the Political Trenches, Ms McKew wrote that it's "hard not to conclude that at some point in the last decade, the political class gave up the contest of ideas and the only thing that's left is a shouting contest".
But Ms McKew told The Canberra Times she thinks that the Albanese government has heeded the lessons of Labor governments past.
"I hear [ministers] being unafraid to tackle the big national challenges and to consider the next set of ideas that are going to propel significant change in this country in the way that Hawke and Keating did in the '80s," she said.
In particular, Ms McKew praised the government's funding injection for national institutions in the recent budget.
"I know from all of my work across the years that we neglect those institutions at our peril," she said.
"I have had the great good fortune in my professional life to work for some of our most important national institutions ... I really think we can say they are all central to who we are as a nation.
"And I hope I've given a bit more than I have taken".