IQ² Australia: Intelligent Discussion – Reasoned Analysis

IQ² Australia aims, unlike Parliament, to provide a series of thought provoking debates on crucial issues. You can watch the live debates and also participate.

All debates are broadcast after the event on ABC radio and television and they are available as recordings and podcasts online. You can follow on Twitter too.

The Goals Of Intelligence Squared

• raise the level of public discourse on our most challenging issues
• provide a new forum for intelligent discussion, grounded in facts and informed by reasoned analysis
• transcend the toxically emotional and the reflexively ideological
• encourage recognition that the opposing side has intellectually respectable views

Future Debates

SYDNEY

• 16 June: WikiLeaks is a force for good
• 26 July: If we keep populating we will perish
• 6 September: Atheists are wrong
• 11 October: Democracy is failing the planet

MELBOURNE

• 24 May: Public funding of private education is unconscionable
• 28 July: There is no justification for risking Australian lives in Afghanistan
• 15 September: We should all be drinking recycled water by 2015
• 15 November: The Catholic Church is a force for good in the world

Past debates – 2011 series:

• All drugs should be legalised – Sydney
• Both major parties are failing the Australian people – Melbourne

Background

IQ² Australia is an initiative of St James Ethics Centre, based on a similar program which began in 2002 in London. It is the brainchild of John Gordon, media entrepreneur, and Jeremy O’Grady, Editor-in-Chief of The Week.

AMP is now a national series supporter and the Melbourne debates are a collaboration between the St James Ethics Centre and The Wheeler Centre.

Some dates for my diary