Festival of Dangerous Ideas

[2] In the inaugural 2009 event, the festival's opening address was given by atheism advocate Christopher Hitchens on the topic of "Religion Poisons Everything", which was countered by Australian Roman Catholic Cardinal George Pell in a session titled "Without God We Are Nothing".

[9] In 2015, the seventh Festival of Dangerous Ideas was made up of solo sessions and panels featuring speakers such as Tariq Ali, Naomi Klein, Peter Greste, Gabriella Coleman, Sarai Walker, AC Grayling, Marc Lewis, Paul Krugman, Laurie Penny, Jon Ronson, Eric Schlosser and Gideon Raff.

It announced ANTIDOTE: a festival of art, ideas and action featuring speakers such as Janet Mock, Reni Eddo-Lodge, Tamika D. Mallory (Women's March on Washington) and Micah M. White (Occupy Wall Street) and artists such as Noemi Lakmaier, Anne Collod and Kaleider.

Speakers included Niall Ferguson, Pankaj Mishra, Megan Phelps-Roper, Zeynup Tufecki, Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, Ayelet Waldman, Germaine Greer, Toby Walsh, Nikki Goldstein and Xanthé Mallett.

[citation needed] In March 2020, the festival was cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic as the NSW Minister of Health issued a ban of non-essential public gatherings of over 500 people.

Occurring over two days in September, the program featured over 72 speakers and artists, including 8 international guests, with discussions on authoritarianism, social networks, politics, artificial intelligence and algorithms, gender, and the Enlightenment.