McCabe went on to work for News Corporation before taking over the reins at The Australian Women’s Weekly in 2009.

Her critics accused her of ignoring the core values of The Weekly, replacing feel-good at-home celebrity stories with political profiles and that infamous shot of Julia Gillard knitting a kangaroo for Prince George.

In July 2016 she joined Nine, the owner of this publication, as head of lifestyle, responsible for the integration of Nine's lifestyle offering into a women's lifestyle network under 9Honey.

In mid 2018 she launched Future Women, a premium digital subscription model, “a club, if you like,” she says, for professional women, focussing on three areas, publishing, events and community.

“Future Women is a forum for forward-thinking women,” she says.

“We are creating a single destination to help women advance, both personally and professionally.”

Indeed, she says The Weekly was part of the inspiration for Future Women.

“I kept asking if you were to launch a product for today’s forward-thinking women, what would it look like?” she says.

“In other words, what is the 2018 version of The Weekly and I believe it has to be something which is more tangible, something which can live through events and be accessed every day rather than once a month.”

Sign up and there’s newsletters, podcasts, insight papers and a range of ways to get involved, a real sense of community.

“But FW is also about supercharging our desire for greater equality which I believe is very consistent with the way The Weekly saw itself.”

McCabe has plenty on her plate but politics, this desire for equality, still circulates through her veins.

She’s especially pleased to be launching Future Women in Canberra with an event to entice political junkies from all sides of the discussion.

Meet the Chiefs, an “off the record” event, features Amanda Lampe, former chief of staff to Julia Gillard, Clive Mathieson, Malcolm Turnbull’s chief of staff and Jim Chalmers, who was chief of staff to Wayne Swan and is now shadow minister for finance.

“You very rarely get to see behind the curtains,” McCabe says.

“I read Anne Summers' memoir, Unfettered and Alive, when she was heading up the Office of Status of Women in the Hawke and Keating days, and I thought it would be interesting to talk to the chiefs of staff, the people that don't ever go public.

“They are right in the thick of it, both from the political side of it, and the policy and strategic perspective.

“I think if we're going to get results we need to understand where to begin and I think these people have observations and insights that are so deeply rooted in reality and so rarely heard.”

McCabe is interested in levels of female representation in government, in policy debates around issues that affect women, and in finding a solution to domestic violence.

“Female representation is at one of its lowest levels and I'm hearing that the problems in the coalition are very real.

“There's a real fear of talking about it and I see Future Women, and our events, as a way to elevate that discussion and get some ideas out of it, get women engaged again.”

Jamila Rizvi is chairing the panel discussion. The Canberra-born-and-bred journalist, who worked for Kevin Rudd and later Kate Ellis, is also excited to come home.

“I know from being a Canberra girl, having worked at Parliament House for about six years, one of the things you know when you work in politics is what it looks like from the outside and how everything happens and decisions are made in reality are very, very different,” Rizvi says.

“There are the ideals we start with, the intentions we start with, and often they're derailed by a whole lot of things, whether that's the political process or realities of where money can and can't be moved.

“I think this event is an opportunity for people to see a bit of that and understand a bit of that.

“Particularly for a Canberra audience, where there are so many people with a good understanding of government policy in the first place - especially public servants who think they're so involved in the process and then it goes behind the doors of the minister’s office or the prime minister’s office and what comes out the other side doesn't look like what they sent in - I think this will be really eye opening for those people.”

Rizvi is editor at large for Future Women.

“What a glorious title!” she says. “It gives me this open brief to do pretty much whatever I like.”

She’s hosting the podcast and writing for the website, hosting events and working on the strategic side of things.

After a year where she battled a brain tumour, Rizvi is loving the deadlines.

“I had a year that I would very much like to forget ever happened and I'm very much hoping it's in the past and I can leave it there,” she says.

“I'm someone who loves work and has always loved work. I've been fortunate that I've always had jobs that were really fulfilling and exciting and it’s nice to be a normal person and feeling healthy and doing ordinary things every day.”

Is it nice to get her fingers back in the political pie?

“I don't think I'm very good at ever taking my fingers out, to be honest,” she says.

“I absolutely loved working at Parliament House and living in Canberra, I loved that period of my life.

“It was exhausting and relentless but I look back very fondly on it.

“If you grow up in Canberra there's a level of politics that is in your blood and you can never get rid of it and I for one don't really want to.”

Meet the Chiefs will be held on February 20 at QT, Canberra. For more information head to futurewomen.com