Big Ideas

We often hear about "failing schools", but what if it is us, the Australian community, who are failing them?  Public school advocate Jane Caro argues that Australia's pursuit of school choice, and the tax payer funding that enables it, has come at a huge cost to the school system, to children's education, and to our broader society.

The 2025 Dymphna Clark Lecture at Manning Clark House was recorded on 26 August 2025.

Speakers

Jane Caro — Author, The Mother, Lyrebird, What Makes a Good School? and more, columnist, commentator, former advertising copywriter, academic, public schools advocate

Join ABC's Mon Schafter and four incredible speakers as they share honest, powerful stories about revealing their identities on their own terms. From fear to freedom, isolation to community - this is a conversation about truth, courage, and connection. Held in recognition of 40 years of ACON, it celebrates every journey of coming out and shines a light on personal stories, collective resilience, and the power of being seen.

Support

If this conversation raises any concerns for you, QLife is an Australia-wide anonymous and free peer support service for LGBTIQ+ people. Call 1800 184 527 or webchat 3pm-9pm every day at qlife.org.au

ABCQueer’s list of LGBTQIA+ community support services in Australia.

Speakers

Nina OyamaAustralian comedian, writer, actress and director

Ji WallaceAustralian trampoline gymnast and Olympic silver medallist

Zoe TerakesAustralian actor; author of Eros: Queer Myths for Lovers

Dr Atari MetcalfGP in NSW

Mon Schafter (host)Walkley Award-winning journalist, presenter and producer, founding editor of ABC Queer

If you're a feminist, or pro-civil or gay rights, does that make you "woke"? And if you're not, does that mean you should be cancelled, or abused online, or lose your job? So many of our public debates nowadays are divided along these lines, but is there a better way?

This event was recorded at the 2025 Melbourne Writers Festival. To explore more Melbourne Writers Festival talks, visit mwf.com.au.

Speakers

AC Grayling Philosopher, author, Discriminations: Making peace in the culture wars, and many more, Principal of Northeastern University London, and its Professor of Philosophy

Esther Anatolitis (host) Editor, arts and culture advocate, leader, commentator, author, When Australia Became a Republic, former Meanjin editor

Friends are different from family. We choose them and they choose us. Philosophers long wondered about what makes friendship such a distinctive relationship in our lives. Is being a good friend a kind of moral virtue?  Can friends help us find our true selves? What about the dark and difficult side of friendship — toxic friends and frenemies? How is the love between friends different from romantic love? Join Big Ideas host Natasha Mitchell and guests at the Sophia Club, a live philosophy event series held in Melbourne, London and New York. It is produced by Aeon Media, publishers of Aeon and Psyche.

Speakers

Mark Alfano — Professor of philosophy at Macquarie University, author of Moral Psychology: An Introduction, and Nietzsche's Moral Psychology.

Dr Peter Knight — multi-award winning composer, trumpeter and electroacoustic musician, former artistic director of the Australian Art Orchestra.

Sunny Kim — internationally renowned South Korean-born vocalist, composer, improviser, and senior lecturer in the jazz and improvisation at the University of Melbourne.

Thank you to Sam Dresser (senior editor), Brigid Hains (editorial director and co-founder), and colleagues at Aeon Media.

To deal with China as a major trading partner, and also a national security threat requires understanding the history that made China what it is today.  That history is shaped by resistance and different waves of uprising. How have governments dealt with these movements? How do they influence politics today?

China: Past, Present, Future was recorded live at the 2025 Sydney Writers' Festival.

Listen to Big Ideas — Behrouz Boochani and Arnold Zable: The language of resistance

Speakers

Linda JaivinAustralian author, cultural commentator, essayist and translatorAuthor of Bombard the Headquarters! China's Cultural Revolution

Louisa LimAward-winning journalist who reported from China for a decade for NPR and the BBCAuthor of Indelible City: Dispossession and Defiance in Hong Kong

Edward WongAmerican journalist and diplomatic correspondent for The New York TimesAuthor of At the Edge of Empire: A Family's Reckoning with China

Peter Hartcher (host)Australian journalist and the Political and International Editor of The Sydney Morning HeraldAuthor of Red Zone: China's Challenge and Australia's Future

The United States has long been famous for its world leading universities. But in the face of research funding cuts, government attacks on free speech, DEI and the right to protest, and the persecution of foreign students, could all that be changing?

The speech, Poison Ideas: Universities and other Antidotes to Authoritarianism, was recorded at the 2025 conference of the Australasian Council of Deans of Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (DASSH) representing 350 deans and associate deans from Australian and New Zealand universities.

Speakers

Simon Adams - President & CEO, Centre for Victims of Torture, Professor of Human Rights, Murdoch University

The Western world is supposed to stand for values like freedom, justice and human rights, a commitment to meet wrongdoing with consequence, guided by rules and obligations. How then, do we reconcile that with Western governments' and media's support of and complicity in the horrors in Gaza? How do we witness the bloodshed and destruction, and yet look away?

This conversation was recorded at the Canberra Writers Festival on 26 October 2025.

Speakers

Omar El Akkad Author, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, and novels The American War and What Strange Paradise

Peter Greste (host) Professor of journalism, Macquarie University, Author, The Correspondent

Build more houses. That'll fix Australia's housing crisis won't it?  If you listen to governments, you'd sure think so. Under the National Housing Accord, all governments have agreed to support a target of building 1.2 million new, well-located dwellings in 5 years.  But will that increase housing affordability, availability, quality, security of tenure, and the growing gap between the haves and have-nots? What's missing from this picture?

Join Big Ideas host Natasha Mitchell at the 2025 National Housing Conference with guests debating the rhetoric, reality and policies around housing supply.

This event was organised by the Australian Housing and Urban Institute (AHURI), hosts of the National Housing Conference.

Speakers

David ReynondsChief Executive, Department of Housing and Urban DevelopmentGovernment of South Australia

Professor Rachel Ong ViforjLeading housing policy researcher and advisorJohn Curtin Distinguished Professor of EconomicsCurtin UniversityDr Tim WilliamsGlobal Practice Leader, CitiesFormer advisor to five consecutive UK housing ministersFormer CEO, Committee of SydneyArchitecture firm GrimshawHost, The Grimshaw podcast 

Further information

The State of the Housing System 2025: National Housing Supply and Affordability Council's second annual report.

Housing analysis by the Grattan Institute

Whitlam's dismissal and following double dissolution 50 years ago, was arguably the most tumultuous period in Australia's political and constitutional history. This political crisis raises key questions about constitutional change and the robustness of Australia's current democracy.  What are the lessons? And could it happen again?

Presented at the National Archives of Australia

Speakers

Anne TwomeyProfessor Emerita of Constitutional Law at the University of Sydney Law School

Frank BongiornoProfessor of history, Australian National UniversityFrom 2026, Donald Horne Professor of History and Public Ideas and Director of the new Centre of Public Ideas at the University of Canberra 

Dr Brendan LimBarrister and author of Australia's Constitution after Whitlam

Paul Barclay (host)Broadcaster and former presenter of Big Ideas

In the 1930s, New Zealand-born, Cambridge educated Arthur Dale Trendall carved a niche for himself as the world's foremost expert in the study of ancient South Italian vase painting. How then, did he end up leading a crack team of code-breakers working in Melbourne to decipher Japanese messages for the Allies during the Second World War?

This lecture was recorded at Melbourne's Shrine of Remembrance in partnership with La Trobe University's Trendall Research Centre.

Speakers

Dr Gillian Shepherd — Director of the A.D. Trendall Research Centre for Ancient Mediterranean Studies, Senior Lecturer in Classics and Ancient History at La Trobe University