If you’ve ever suspected that left-wing crusaders are whingers with a chip on their shoulder and a negative outlook on life, a sleek little volume from the Australia Institute will confirm you in your suspicion.

It’s called ‘What’s the Big Idea?’ but it turns out to be a babel of small ideas, a distillation of contemporary leftist obsessions, little barrows pushed by various monomaniacs in the fertile field of fashionable grievances – or, as the director of the Australia Institute, Richard Denniss, more rosily describes his contributors, ‘incredible (sic) people who have been so generous as to lend their time and...