OZschwitz Festival of Dangerous Ideas to lift lid on emotive and taboo subjects

What makes an idea dangerous? Does it have to inspire a brawl or even a death threat?

The organisers of the second Festival of Dangerous Ideas at the Opera House have been anguishing over how provocative a talk can be in these cautious times. And their response is that pretty much anything is up for debate in Sydney, including paedophilia in the Catholic Church, the lethal Israeli response to the Gaza-bound aid flotilla and, hey, even the upside of terrorism.

Verging on sacrilege, they have programmed a talk on what's so special about opera that justifies wads of financial support for a small, white, wealthy audience. If it's persuasive, presumably Opera Australia will be vacating the building.

''Some commentators [have] expressed the view that if nobody is punching each other after a session, it's not actually dangerous,'' said the Opera House's head of public programs, Ann Mossop. ''To me that's a nice kind of '60s view about political debate. But if you think about that kind of danger, we've got a session on what we can learn from terrorists.''

The British-Pakistani writer Tariq Ali will argue that al-Qaeda and other groups have been so effective in changing the world that the West should learn some lessons. ''What does the intervention of terrorists tell us?'' Ms Mossop said. ''It says, well, if you're incredibly single-minded about what you're doing, you can have an impact.''

The festival, which runs on October 2 and 3 in association with the St James Ethics Centre, has the legal minds Geoffrey Robertson and the American Alan Dershowitz debating the Pope's accountability for the sexual abuse of children by priests.

The Herald's chief correspondent, Paul McGeough, who reported on the attack on the Gaza-bound flotilla on May 31, will discuss the fallout for Israel.

And in possibly the most contentious session in safety-conscious Sydney, the American advocate of ''free range parenting'', Lenore Skenazy, will argue that children should be given more freedom rather than being protected from largely imaginary threats. She was dubbed ''America's worst mom'' for letting her nine-year-old son catch the subway home alone two years ago.

The Opera House's chief executive, Richard Evans, said: ''One of the reasons we invented this festival was there was such a feeling that no one ever said what they thought any more.''

LNK

OZschwitz Festival of Dangerous Ideas to lift lid on emotive and taboo subjects

OZschwitz Festival of Dangerous Ideas to lift lid on emotive and taboo subjects

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