When I clicked on the program for the Festival of Dangerous Ideas, I expected the usual lineup of ideologically homogeneous speakers, but I was pleasantly surprised to find some diversity in the mix of the usual suspects.

The vast majority of the topics are curated the interests and preoccupations of the inner-city Left, such as asking audiences to ‘look beyond gender binaries’ or ‘unpack Australian colonisation and how ongoing untruthful narratives’ or whether ‘pandemic policy-making … were all in aid of preserving the lives of rich white people’.