“How many progressive ideas were ever any good?” Mira Carney asks. “They couldn’t even change the banana Paddle Pop without getting it wrong; it’s not the same consistency, it’s gone woke . . . I used to work in a consumer products company; when you change something, it’s never better.”

We are sitting in Edmonds and Greer, a sprawling homewares emporium and cafe, guarded by toy soldiers the size of seven-year-olds, in the southern Sydney suburb of Oatley, in late November. Carney has just pulled us out of her regular coffee club of ex-Newington College mothers into a backroom. The ladies keep drifting off topic, and she wants me to understand why she is so vehemently opposed to the introduction of coeducation at the school she says did such a great job of educating her two boys.