In 2014, she featured in a parody of the Real Housewives reality TV franchise with several other newsreaders, including Ten's Sandra Sully and Seven's Natalie Barr.

The veteran SBS newscaster has a history of gentle misbehaviour on social media and in viral videos produced for The Feed.

In the parody, the veteran SBS newscaster is seen standing alone on the once-bustling sidewalks of Sydney's iconic Kings Cross. "Where the bloody hell are you?" she asks the audience.

And in 2015 she featured in a segment which took a different approach to the "celebrities reading mean tweets" meme which has been popular on the internet since its inception as a segment on the Jimmy Kimmel Live program in the US several years ago.

Instead of reading mean tweets to her, Lee Lin Chin read mean tweets from her. "How about instead of asking questions you form your own opinion, you fence sitting nimrod," she said, in a parody tweet aimed at Q&A host Tony Jones.

The "lock out" laws, which were enacted to curb alcohol-related violence, have been widely criticised for emptying the centre of Sydney of people, causing small businesses to suffer and bars and restaurants to close.

In the original ad, Lara Bingle asked the question while standing on a beach. In 2007, the government defended the campaign saying it had brought in an additional $1.8 billion in tourism dollars.

But those numbers reflected tourists staying longer and spending more; actual visitor numbers, in some cases, went down.