SYDNEY’S annual Festival Of Dangerous Ideas rarely lives up to its name.

Generally the festival features the standard chattering-class issues such as climate change, asylum seekers or arts funding. Usually, the only danger for audiences is falling asleep.

But this year festival organisers had gone in a genuinely, almost unthinkably dangerous direction.

They scheduled a speech by Sydney-based Islamic extremist Uthman Badar titled: “Honour killings are morally justified.”

That title alone should have been sufficient for Badar’s hateful speech to be cancelled.

There is no possible justification for speaking in favour of killing women who are perceived by ­Islamic fanatics as having “dishonoured” their families.

There can be no justification for such a disgraceful event to be hosted by the Sydney Opera House.

And there is no possible way that the state government can justify using your taxes to host and promote atrocities such as this.

Honour killings are a barbaric form of ritual murder.

They frequently condemn women to death for the sins of men.

For example, victims of rape in primitive and extremist cultures are typically murdered by shamed ­families.

As a means of controlling and oppressing women, the spectre of honour killings is grotesquely ­effective.

Such brutality has no place anywhere on earth, be it the mountains of Pakistan or the villages of Syria. It certainly has no place in Sydney.

The organisers of this utter disgrace may congratulate themselves on winning media attention. Perhaps that was the aim all along.

But media attention will eventually fade, and those organisers will have to live with the fact that they intended to elevate the slaughter of women and girls to the very centre of Sydney’s cultural life.

The decision by the Opera House last night to cancel the speech was a victory for commonsense. All it took was for the right-thinking people in the community to speak up.

TRIAL WAS FARCICAL INJUSTICE

BY and large, Australia’s legal system works fairly and ­delivers appropriate results. This isn’t the case, however, throughout much of the world — particularly Egypt, where Australian journalist Peter Greste and two Al Jazeera colleagues have been imprisoned over charges that make little sense.

The trio face years in a squalid jail because they allegedly spread “false news” about Egypt and supported former Egyptian prime minister Mohamed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood. Among the evidence backing the claim were, strangely enough, pictures of Greste’s parents on holiday in Germany. Whatever those snaps had to do with false news about Egypt is anybody’s guess.

Little wonder, then, that Australia and the rest of the world reacted with such astonishment when the brutal sentences were handed down. “The Australian government is shocked at the verdict in the Peter Greste case,” said Foreign Minister Julie Bishop. “We are deeply dismayed by the fact that a sentence has been imposed. We are appalled by the severity of it. It is hard to credit that court in this case could have reached this conclusion. The Australian government simply cannot understand it.”

Australia is not alone. Clearly, this was a show trial where truth and evidence counted for nothing. The fate of Greste and his colleagues was sealed from the instant they were arrested and charged. “Unfair” doesn’t come close to describing what has occurred here. It’s a monumental injustice.

Greste’s destiny now lies with government and diplomats to liberate him from his abhorrent circumstances. Tony Abbott has already signalled such efforts will be subtle and behind the scenes.

We can only hope that these tactics work. In the meantime, Egypt deserves every word of condemnation it is currently receiving.

It has become a pariah state.

WINTER BLOWS THE WARMTH AWAY

OUR brilliant warm autumn gave way yesterday to fearsome cold. It was almost as though the whole of NSW had been transplanted overnight into Melbourne.

The chill was made that much worse by icy winds blowing in from the west. For some, the change of weather was not just uncomfortable but downright dangerous, with fallen tree branches and other hazards creating menacing conditions.

Still, it’s an ill wind, as the saying goes. Ski resorts recorded terrific snowfalls on schedule for the school holidays. Timing is everything.