Former ABC presenter Yassmin Abdel-Magied has made her first Australian television appearance since coming under scorching scrutiny for her controversial comments made about Islam and a social media post that was seen to be insulting the Anzacs' memory.
Ms Abdel-Magied moved to London after her Anzac Day social media post: "Lest We Forget (Manus, Nauru, Syria, Palestine ...)" resulted in huge public backlash.
It followed on from a controversial segment on ABC show Q&A when the 26-year-old Sudanese-Australian Muslim claimed Islam was "the most feminist religion" in response to a heated debate with then-senator Jacqui Lambie.
Appearing on Channel Ten's The Project on Wednesday night, Ms Abdel-Magied was in the Melbourne studio and brushed off the criticisms despite acknowledging the pain she endured.
When asked by host Waleed Aly what it was like looking back at that time in her life, she called it wild and surreal.
"I went from being, like, this young Queenslander of the Year and on all these kind of boards and councils and I was like the good Muslim girl, the darling. Next minute it's like everything exploded," she said.
"So it's surreal to look back on them and be like that was my year.
"I'm now someone with nothing left to lose and that's kind of amazing. It means I can say what I want ... I think the nice version of saying it is no shits left to give."
When asked by Gretel Killeen if she regretted anything, Ms Abdel-Magied avoided answering yes or no.
"I don't think, thinking about that will make any difference to be perfectly honest. It happened. And everybody's advice did not work. Everyone was like, 'it will only be a couple of days', 'they'll get over it soon' and it was three months later ... I don't know what more I could actually do to fix it."
Ms Abdel-Magied spoke about how a friend who alerted her to the post so she took it down "pretty much instantly" and posted an apology despite thinking: "No one is going to think about it that way."
"I literally took a nap and it was the last nap I ever took," she said.
"There was quite a long period of time when I didn't say anything in public because everyone was like 'just ride it out, there's nothing you can say that will make it any better' and I think that's what everyone thought. And that's why a lot of the big institutions that I thought should have supported me didn't support me because I think they all thought it'll be over soon."
She said there are people in London who can not understand what happened in Australia.
Killeen raised the fact that Ms Abdel-Magied retweeted the message again, "Lest we forget (Manus)" on November 10, a day before Remembrance Day.
"Let us not forget that right now there are over 400 men on our watch, our money, in what is being called by like international agencies as a man-made humanitarian crisis," Ms Abdel-Magied said.
"This is not some war in Syria, this is not something happening on the other side of the world, this is men who have been really cruelly treated at the hands of us, our Australian government, our taxpayer money and we're not doing anything about it."
Ms Abdel-Magied has been busy, giving talks in the US and France, as well as writing another young adult fiction book and pitching a couple of television shows.
While she missed the weather, she said her time in Australia was "like dating an abusive guy".
"You love a lot of things about them but they hurt you deep, so what do you do? What do you tell people? Do you tell them about the great times you had, about how grateful you were for all the good stuff," she said.
"Or do you talk about the way that they traumatised you in a way that you will never be the same for?"
