What it means to be a Radical Moderate

Doggedly arguing a point from an extreme position – from the political left or right – is easy.

Arguing a point with nuance, moderation and a willingness to give weight to opposing views is much harder. It takes work. It takes mental discipline. It takes a degree of thoughtfulness and open-mindedness that seems to be becoming rarer in an increasingly polarised world.

It is this increasing polarisation that prompted the Institute of Community Directors Australia to explore the concept of the Radical Moderate and the role their approach can play in civic discourse.

We picture the Radical Moderate as someone who is capable of holding strong views and advocating for change, but in a respectful and reasoned manner that does not stoke division.

Radical Moderation is a broad church that encompasses differing and opposing opinions. It allows us to challenge each other, explore new ideas, and consider creative solutions to solve emerging problems.

Critically, it is not a progressive enterprise, nor is it a conservative one.

How do you know if you’re a Radical Moderate? Because you believe civil discourse, shared ground and democratic process are worth fiercely defending.

And because you want to be one! You see Radical Moderation as something to walk towards, not rail against.

Radical Moderation is not a quiet, bland consensus – it’s a noisy, argumentative space where challenges are posed by those determined to hold space for nuance, complexity and coexistence.

Radical Moderation welcomes centrists, yes, but also progressives, conservatives and combinations of the two. Radical Moderation welcomes those who insist on principled dialogue, moral clarity, and civic courage – even when it unsettles.

The Radical Moderate rejects extremes that flatten complexity, yet remains deeply open to bold, transformative ideas that can withstand rigorous questioning.

To explore Radical Moderation further, we asked thought leaders from a diverse range of backgrounds – politics, not-for-profit, technology and other sectors – to address a series of questions on what they believe it means to be a Radical Moderate, and why adopting such an approach matters.

The 20 writers who have contributed to this project agree on one thing: it matters a great deal.

The topics they have covered in such an accessible and well-argued way range from the generational change underscored by the 2025 federal election result to the media’s role in shaping public debate to the rapidly evolving influence of artificial intelligence (AI) and the subsequent implications for societal cohesion.

Most take a macro approach to exploring the diverse ways in which a Radical Moderate approach can offer pathways through poisonous and polarised debates, yet their insights resonate on an individual level, too.

Like many of us, I have learned some of these hard lessons from personal experience.

My family has always valued and encouraged robust discussions around the dinner table, on politics, religion or the news of the day.

Our two children have grown into fine young adults with progressive views of their own that they are confident in defending in a respectful manner; a fact that fills my wife and I with pride.

That doesn’t mean things never go off the rails.

At the end of one recent family dinner, my son and I found ourselves embroiled in an increasingly passionate debate about the role of “legacy media” in a world dominated by short attention spans and online engagement.

I lamented the fact that many young people consume their news in short bites on social media platforms such as TikTok.

I thought it was more than reasonable to suggest that they had a responsibility to seek out a wider range of views by also consuming other forms of media – such as TV news, radio and newspapers.

These legacy media are undeniably under threat and battling to remain viable. In my mind that night, this had no bearing on the role they play in offering balanced news coverage and a diversity of views to counter the spread of misinformation online.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, our son – who is 28 – took my line of thinking as an attack on his generation and argued that it was the responsibility of legacy media such as TV news to adapt and cater to the demands of a demographic that largely considers it irrelevant.

As a journalist of 40 years’ experience, I saw his dismissal of the mainstream media model and the shift in how a younger generation keeps itself informed as an existential threat.

The debate, although it escalated to an uncomfortable degree, remained respectful, and we both agreed to disagree.

It made me reflect later on my own capacity to dig in my heels and not give ground on something I believe in.

However, I also found myself thinking about the merits of my son’s views and why they were important to him. I didn’t dismiss their validity. I could see that it was possible for both positions to be based in truth.

Since the upending of societal cohesion in the wake of the covid pandemic, the self-censorship of privately held views that might be viewed as contentious by friends and family has become part of daily life for many people across the world.

In my own life, I see lifelong friendships tested when political fault lines open over a beer with mates from my own working-class background, magnified by (in my eyes) their increasing conservatism, which comes with ageing – a political shift that I don’t share.

Such situations test our skills in knowing when to keep arguing, when to acknowledge that there is more than one way to skin a cat, and when to take the heat out of the debate by offering to buy the next round.

I could not, however, ignore a chance encounter on a LinkedIn thread in which participants were celebrating the election of Donald Trump and all the good that would flow from that result.

As is the way with conflicting views, I made what I believed were rational, measured counter arguments to what quickly developed into a pile on.

The online encounter left me mentally hot under the collar, but it had been important to me to enter the lion’s den and present a reasoned argument – not name calling, not vilification, but a different point of view.

To me, that is the essence of what it means to be a Radical Moderate. To reject self-censorship at one extreme, and stridency at the other, in favour of a willingness to do the challenging work of engaging in difficult conversations, from a place of empathy, respect and principled pragmatism.

After all, when the talking stops, the fighting truly begins.

Greg Thom is a journalist at the Institute of Community Directors Australia. Over a 40-year career, he worked as a reporter at the Herald Sun newspaper and in communications at Telstra and the National Broadband Network.