On the panel: British feminist writer Laurie Penny, Croation theologian and philosopher Miroslav Volf, British-Pakistani historian and writer Tariq Ali, former Liberal advisor and Radio National's Between the Lines host Tom Switzer, and Canadian journalist and author Naomi Klein.

It's a mixed bag and at first glance the panel is refreshingly apolitical – questions of morality and ethics rather than left versus right political mudslinging. And that's presumably a mighty relief to Tony Jones, who missed out on the storm in a Twitter tag teacup last week and looks ready to pounce lest anyone drifts into (ahem) dangerous territory.

First up it's the insidious threat of pick-up culture and the hacking of the database of infidelity site Ashley Madison. Is this evidence of an acceptance of abuse? Laurie Penny had the first of what was to be several killer lines for the night: "Lying to your partner makes you a dick, it doesn't make you an abuser."

Volf, meanwhile, is more worried about the general preservation of privacy, and Klein smirked that Ottawa – the home of Ashley Madison and the Canadian government – had the highest percentage of users of any city on the planet, and referenced Last Week Tonight with John Oliver's assessment of the surprisingly sleazy side of the Canadian capital.

Speaking of which, John Oliver is in Sydney right now – hey, why wasn't he roped into this? Oh, the show that could have been …

It turned out that most of the international guests had been in Melbourne just in time for Operation Fortitude, so they unsurprisingly have opinions on the Border Force bungle. Ali pointed out that these sorts of events exist "to encourage fear", while Klein suggested the demonstrations that stopped Fortitude should be happening in response to Nauru.

Switzer, though, wanted to make sure that the panel realised that border protection policies have "broad bipartisan support", lest this talk about ethics start getting a bit, y'know, ethical.

But that biggest subject of the night was, perhaps unsurprisingly, climate change. Klein's most recent book This Changes Everything links capitalism and climate change to the degree that one can't be addressed without the other, and she railed against the way that the free market was "waging war on labour rights, on pensions, on social services … and waging war on life on Earth".

Switzer wasn't about to take that lying down and looks very proud of his metaphor accusing Klein and the environmentalist movement of being "watermelons": "hiding their socialism under a green skin". To which Klein laughed heartily: "I'm hardly hiding that!", and Penny sighed, "This is the kind of argument we're going to be having until our heads are under water."

Ali also took Switzer to issue over the popular claim that coal was the Third World's path to prosperity, especially in India where: "It's an open question how much poverty this is relieving."

Another fascinating question related to the current situation in Syria and whether or not it might be preferable to leave authoritarian regimes in place than forcibly remove them.

Volf had little doubt on the matter. "It's possible, and [with Saddam Hussain] it would probably have been desirable," compared with the consequences that followed.

As the conversation moved to the Syrian civil war and Australia's likely involvement in US bombing raids, Penny pointed out that if Australia's going to claim a moral obligation in Syria then it can't really pretend to care without taking in Syrian refugees.

With the clock ticking, everyone agreed that Donald Trump was probably not going to be the next president, and that showing gruesome footage wasn't about to change the US's gun laws, and we were out.

What was Monday night's finest moment? Klein and Ali made some articulate points, but watching Switzer visibly control his fury when Penny asked the climate action sceptic if he'd consider the economic cost of jumping off the tracks before a train bore down on him was probably the night's comedic highlight.

The number of tweets seemed down, though, with some large gaps where one could imagine tense producers trying to determine whether benign-sounding usernames concealed hidden double entendres. Sorry if you had a trenchant contribution to make, Mr S. Butz, but the ABC can't risk robbing Malcolm Turnbull of yet another lie in.