Tomorrow (5:45pm, Sunday 4 October) I will be giving a talk at the inaugural Festival of Dangerous Ideas (FoDI), at the Sydney Opera House. My topic is that “the old should pay for themselves”, and specifically I’ll be talking about getting rid of the old-age pension and other aged care. Click on the below image for more details.
I first heard about FoDI back in May when Simon Longstaff (Executive Director of the St James Ethics Centre) e-mailed me to see if the Australian Libertarian Society could nominate a controversial speaker for the newly formed Festival. After a few discussions, I ended up not only as a speaker, but also as a member of the steering committee.
The Festival is a joint effort from the Sydney Opera House and the St James Ethics Centre and will be an annual event aimed at challenging people’s everyday assumptions with “dangerous” and innovative ideas. Other talks this year include “religion poisons everything” by Christopher Hitchens, “freedom is dangerous” by Germaine Greer, “yes to child labour” by Ray Evans, “why polygamy is good” by Keysar Trad, “bring back conscription” by Admiral Barrie, “genetically enchance humans” by Julian Savulescu, “end african aid” by Dambisa Moyo and many other interesting talks.
If you have some spare time this afternoon or tomorrow, get along to the Sydney Opera House and join the discussion. Most tickets are $20 (Student price $10), with Hitchens, Greer & Moyo costing a bit more.
I’ll be going along to the “polygamy” and “yes to child labour” talks today, and the Christopher Hitchens talk tonight. Tomorrow I’ll be giving my talk, and also introducing the talk by Admiral Barrie on conscription. If I have time, I’ll also try to get along to Germaine Greer and the “genetically modify humans” talks before going to the “dangerously funny” comedy night.
I have spent much of the last week preparing for my talk, and with one day to go I’m starting to get nervous.
I don’t think I’m a bad public speaker, but neither am I a particularly good one. As I’ve said to friends, if I just started ranting at a pub and 100 people showed up, that would be fine. But if you put 100 people in a room and ask me to go in and rant, I’m nervous. My mind slows down and I have to follow my script instead of talking freely. I forget to smile. But the only solution is to just keep doing it, and hopefully over time I’ll become more confident.




