The Secondary Schools Debating Council has announced:

Thirty six of New Zealand’s top secondary school debaters will gather in Wellington this weekend for the National Finals of the Russell McVeagh New Zealand Schools’ Debating Championships, hosted by Victoria University of Wellington.

The two best teams will meet in the Grand Final on Monday 12 August debating “This House would not prosecute people who download and share entertainment media on the Internet.”

The Debating Council is partnering with InternetNZ for this year’s Grand Final, to encourage public debate and education over internet issues.

Desley Horton, the President of the Schools’ Debating Council said that the Grand Final should be a great debate on a highly topical issue: “As we move into a digital age, young people in particular are increasingly questioning whether or not our laws are fit for purpose and up to date. It’ll be fascinating to see what New Zealand’s brightest young minds have to say about this issue.” …

Teams from Wellington, Auckland, Canterbury, Otago-Southland, Hawke’s Bay, Northland, Central North Island, Waikato and Kahurangi-Marlborough will take part in seven preliminary rounds of debates over the weekend at Victoria University of Wellington’s Law School.

Students will only find out the topic and what side they are to argue one hour before the debates.

The Grand Final between the top two teams at the Championships will take place in the Legislative Council Chamber at Parliament on Monday 12 August at 2.30pm, hosted by Hon Peter Dunne. 

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The NZ Initiative has three debates coming up, where some of NZ’s best debaters will argue on topical issues. They are:

• That NZ should be going for population growth, Wed 14 August, Ernst & Young, Auckland
• That alcohol should not be taxed more than soft drinks, Thu 15 August,  Mac’s Brewery, Wellington
• That if you’re young and ambitious you should leave NZ, Thu 22 August, City Gallery, Wellington

I’m on the post debate panel for the alcohol debate, where we comment on the arguments made by the teams, and offer some observations of our own. The debates are free to attend.

Stuff reports:

An international debating competition held in Wellington has been criticised for mooting that girls should be told to drink responsibly to avoid sexual assault.

The New Zealand British Parliamentary Debating Championships hosted by Victoria University last weekend debated that “This House, as a parent, would tell their daughter to drink responsibly to avoid sexual assault”.

The topic left female debaters “forced to defend their own rights to consume alcohol and have consensual sex”, a spectator, who wished to remain anonymous, said. 

The tournament was held on behalf of the New Zealand Universities Debating Council, and included teams from around the country, and some from Australia.

The spectator said many of the female participants in the tournament were adamant they did not wish to engage in the debate, but were pressured into “hardening up” and arguing the motion.

“What resulted were many of the male debaters literally laughing at their female peers as they tried to defend their own rights to consume alcohol and have consensual sex, and there was also much joking about the circumstances in which sexual assault occurs,” she said.

Participants were reduced to tears both during and after the debate, she said.

“One woman began crying during the debate which she participated in, and others were crying after the debate, for reasons ranging from personal experiences with rape, to the sheer shock of feeling they had to defend those rapists.”

Debate topics across the weekend were set by chief adjudicator Stephen Whittington, a former member of the Victoria University Debating Society.

Considering the sensitivity of the topic, he discussed the motion with five other adjudicators before setting it, he said.

Each of them agreed it was acceptable for the purposes of a debating tournament, Whittington said.

“As part of that discussion we discussed what the purpose of debating was, and as part of that discussion we talked about the fact that debating often requires people to defend ideas or arguments that they don’t personally agree with, even in circumstances where people do in fact have very strong views about those issues.”

Debating the morality of abortion, or whether Israel had a right to exist as a country, were instances in which people could have strong views on a topic and be forced to take the other side of the argument, he said.

Whittington said the idea for the premise of the debate was based on an article in Slate magazine, written by Emily Yoffe.

The view that women shouldn’t drink to avoid being sexually assaulted is a neanderthal one. However I don’t think you do anyone a service by saying that such a view can not be the topic of a debate. Far better to allow the topic to be debated and have talented debaters expose the massive flaws in that argument.

As Whittington says, many debating topics are controversial and may involve deeply personal issues such as abortion.

From Brent Edwards:

The EPMU Press Freedom Debate will be held at the Backbencher Pub on Thursday, May 7. Doors open at 5pm but the fun debate itself will start about 7.15 to 7.30pm.

The debate will raise money for the Media Safety and Solidarity Fund which supports press freedom and journalists’ safety in the Asia-Pacific region. Specifically the fund helps pay the education costs of about 100 children of journalists murdered in the Philippines and about 20 children of journalists murdered in Nepal. We have just agreed to fund a similar project in Pakistan.

The moot is: That only new MPs have anything worthwhile to say.

The affirmative: Chris Bishop, James Shaw, Marama Fox
The negative: Peter Dunne, Metiria Turei, Chris Hipkins
The chair: Carol Hirschfeld

The tickets cost $25 each.

Contact me on brent.edwards@radionz.co.nz

I’ve been to a few of these (and even been in one of the teams) and they’re usually pretty funny (and rude) affairs.

The NZ Initiative has announced:

Next Generation Debates Semi-final in Wellington
Tuesday, 11 August 2015 | 5:30 pm | Register for Wellington
Where: Mac’s Function Centre, Te Aro room, 4 Taranaki Street
Moot: “This house would legalise euthanasia”
Panellists: Hon Maryan Street (former Labour MP) and Dr Stephen Child of NZMA

Next Generation Debates Semi-final in Auckland
Wednesday, 12 August 2015 | 5:45 pm | Register for Auckland 
Where: The University of Auckland Business School, 12 Grafton Road, Owen G Glenn Building, Level 0 Foyer 071
Moot: “This house believes that economic growth always comes at the expense of people and the environment”
Panellists: Sir Roger Douglas and Sue Bradford

Next Generation Debates Grand-final in Wellington
Wednesday, 19 August 2015 | 5:30 pm | Register for the Final 
Where: Te Wharewaka Function Centre, 15 Jervois Quay, Wellington Waterfront
Moot: “This house believes that high house prices make us poorer as a nation”
Panellists: Phil Twyford, MP, Labour Party Housing Spokesperson and Andrew King, Executive Officer, New Zealand Property Investors Federation

Great topics and good choices of panelists. Well worth going to.

On Saturday Night I dropped into the Australs – the Australasia university debating champs which have been hosted by Auckland University all week.

The Saturday night was not the normal teams, but a women’s night, with the top eight female debaters debating in four teams of two. The moot was “That the Government should promote atheism”.

The venue was, somewhat fittingly, the Holy Trinity Cathedral in Parnell – a magnificent location. Around 500 people attended the debate, and I enjoyed meeting a few of them afterwards. The MP for Auckland Central hosted the debate and spoke at the beginning, with her most memorable line being how ******* awesome it would be to be married to a hairdresser, as Aussie PM Julia Gillard is.

All teams did well, and it was an enjoyable debate. I especially loved the comment from the fourth speaker for the negative as she told the affirmative team they were going to lose, and pointed out that normally losing a debate just means you get ridiculed and hassled by your friends, but in this case it meant they were all going to hell

When listening to a debate, I always start imaging in my mind what I would say if I was taking part.

If I was debating for the affirmative I would have launched an all out assault on religion – detail the history of wars and torture stretching from 3,000 years ago to modern day religious terrorism. Go through all the current conflicts and point to the fact 95% of them have religion at their core. And then use that backdrop to say that promoting atheism is the best way to keep citizens safe.

If I was debating for the negative I would have attacked the proposition on two fronts. The first would be to point out that atheism is doing just fine by itself, and the last thing atheism needs is the Government trying to help it. It’s the oen thing which might kill off atheism. You’d have Royal Commissions trying to define it, government agencies fighting each other to be the lead support agency for it. a jungle of academic works talking about which strand of atheism is best, and frankly it would be a nightmare for atheists who really just want to be left alone, and don;t want the Government helping them.

The other front I would attack the proposition on is that the moment you go from voluntary atheism to state supported atheism, it turns into the very thing it is meant to be against – a form of religion – but with the Government as God, instead of God as God. Bring up examples of the USSR and China’s state promoted atheism which creates human rights abuses even worse than any religion has managed.

What do readers think? How would you argue for or against the proposition?

One amusing part of the debate for me, was the fact that the person two seats along from me (one of the organisers) kept clapping at the most inopportune times. At what appeared to be random intervals she would do a loud short clap, or a couple of claps. I actually thought she had ADHD or something until it finally dawned on me that she was the time keeper. I’m used to bells or buzzers – I’d never experienced a clap used to indicate time before. The other reasons it took me a while to catch on was that one of the claps occurred not at the end of the speeches, but one minute into them. I later found out that indicates that opposition teams are now able to interject.

All in all it was a very enjoyable evening. Watching a fun intelligent well argued debate is one of favourite activities.

Congrats to Victoria University Debating Society who won last night the Australasian Intervarsity Debating Champs. As I blogged previously, they have been going on at Auckland over the past week with around 100 teams from all over Asia, NZ and Australia.

NZ had five teams make the octo-finals – the most in at least twenty years. Three NZ teams went onto make the semifinals, knocking out universities like Monash and Sydney who are the traditional heavyweights.

Victoria One faced Victoria Two in the semi-finals ensuring at least one Vic team would be in the final. Vic One emerged victorious. This reminded me of sporting contests in Dunedin when often the two leading teams would be Otago Uni A and Otago Uni B!

Auckland 2 defeated Melbourne I in the other semi ensuring a very rare all-NZ final!

Vic One affirmed ‘That the ICC should be able to prosecute for crimes against the earth’. They beat Auckland in  an 8-1 decision.

It is the first time NZ has won Australs since 1998 (when Vic won). It is Vic’s fourth Australs victory since 1975.

It is particularly great for Vic because they have reached the final in two of the last three years – losing closely each time (6-3 in 2007 and 5-4 in 2009).

The Vic One team is Udayan Mukherjee, Stephen Whittington, Ella Edginton.

Stephen was also the best speaker in the Grand Final and the second best speaker of the tournament (out of 300).  It is his third Australs Grand Final appearance, believed to be a record. Well done Stephen.

This debate should be lots of fun:

If you wish to attend, you can RSVP on Facebook, or by putting VC Debate in the subject line of an e-mail to Vic Uni.

The Victoria University Great Debate is on Tuesday March 1st at 6.30 at the Student Union Building’s Hunter Lounge at Victoria University.

The moot is “that there should be a universal liquor allowance for students“.

For the affirmative:

• Simon Bridges MP
• James Nokise (two times Billy T Award Nominee)
• Josh Cameron – allround funny debater

For the Negative:

• Darren Hughes MP
• Jim Stanton (One half of Wellington’s Comediettes)
• Jerome Chandrahasen – stalwart of the Great Debate and Billy T nominee.

The debate is always a very enjoyable affair. Tickets will cost $10, and you can pay at the door.

Congratulations to the team of debaters from Victoria University of Wellington who won the Australasian Intervarsity Debating Champs in Korea last night, the world’s second largest debating tournament with over 115 teams.

It is the second year in a row that Victoria has won the tournament, and the fifth time since 1975. The tournament features teams from all over Australia and Asia, including top universities like Sydney and Melbourne.

Victoria will defend the title as hosts next year in Wellington. I hope to get along and see some debates! The 2006 tournament in Wellington was excellent.

The winning team members are Seb Templeton, Richard D’Ath and Udayan Mukherjee. Well done on the win.

I’m in Auckland and gutted I will miss the Vice-Chancellor’s Debate tonight. But if you are in Wellington and want an entertaining 90 minutes I recommend you pop into the Vic Law School.

Date: Monday 17 October
Time: 6:30 pm
Location: Old Government Buildings lecture theatres (on the Stout Street side of the law school)

The speakers are:

For the Government – Paul Foster-Bell, Hon Christopher Finlayson, Stephen Whittington
For the Opposition – Charles Chauvel, James Shaw, Hon Shane Jones

The moot is “This house has confidence in Her Majesty’s Government”.

The debate will be hosted by the Vice-Chancellor of Victoria University, Professor Pat Walsh. Drinks and nibbles will be provided after the debate.

Considering the furore last week over Chauvel denying Whittington’s (correct) claims that Labour MPs used homopohbic nicknames against Finlayson, the debate may be a bit more cutting than normal.

You can RSVP on Facebook, but don’t need to, to attend.

Stuff reports:

The annual EPMU Press Freedom Debate will be held on Thursday at Wellington’s Backbencher Pub. MPs Winston Peters, Simon Bridges, Annette King and Lianne Dalziel, comedian Pinky Agnew and journalist Patrick Gower will debate whether politicians should be hacked off with hacking journalists. Proceeds go to the Media Solidarity and Safety Fund. Last year, former Labour MP Darren Hughes was in fine form during the debate on whether politics was a dirty business. Soon after he quit amid claims he took a student home after a night out drinking.

Last year’s one was hilarious. Well worth attending.

The VUW Debating Society has a debate tonight on paid parental leave. It is in Rutherford House Lecture Theatre 2 starting at 6.30 pm.

The debaters are:

• Sue Moroney, Labour Spokesperson for Women’s Affairs
• Paul Callister, Victoria University of Wellington Economist
• Barbara Lambourn, Advocacy Manager, UNICEF
• Max Harris – Champion Debater
• Richard D’Ath – Champion Debater
• Olivia Hall – Rising Star Debater

Should be a good debate.

Debating fans in Wellington have a treat in July. The 2012 Australs are on from Sunday 8 July to Monday 16 July, with sponsorship from Russell McVeagh.

The Australs are the second largest debating tournament in the world, and you’ll see some of the world’s best performing.

The schedule is:

• Round 1 – Tues 10 July, 0930 – 1200 (VUW)
• Round 2 – Tues 10 July 1400 – 1630 (VUW)
• Round 3 – Tues 10 July 1700 – 1900 (VUW)
• Round 4 – Wed 11 July 0930 – 1200 (VUW)
• Round 5 – Wed 11 July 1400 – 1630 (VUW)
• Round 6 – Wed 11 July 1700 – 1930 (VUW)
• Test (fun) debate – Wed 10 July 2000 – 2200 (Macs Brewery)
• Round 7 – Thu 12 July 0930 – 1200 (VUW)
• Women’s Forum – Thu 12 July 1200 – 1330 (VUW)
• Round 8 – Thu 12 July 1400 – 1630 (VUW)
• Women’s Night – Fri 13 July 1800 – 2100 (Grand Hall, Prlt)
• Octofinals – Sat 14 July 1030 – 1200 (VUW)
• ESL Semi-finals – Sat 14 July 1300 – 1500 (VUW)
• Quarter-finals – Sat 14 July 1500 – 1700 (VUW)
• Semi-finals – Sun 15 July 1030 – 1230 (Old St Pauls and Legislative Chamber, Prlt)
• ESL Final – Sun 15 July 1330 – 1500 (Old St Pauls)
• Grand Final Sun 15 July 1800 – 2100 (Paramount Theatre)

I’ll blog some of the topics, as they get finalised. They are usually very topical, and you get better debating of the issues that you get in Parliament.

The semi-finals and finals especially should be great spectacles.

The Australs debating semi-finals are this morning and finals tonight at the Paramount Theatre. The two semi-finals this morning are Monash 1 v Vic 1 and Monash 2 v Sydney 2. The final teams are not yet known of course.

Topics only get assigned 30 minutes before the debates start, so I don’t know what the finals topic will be. The quarters were:

• That the death of print media is bad for journalism
• That law enforcement should turn a blind eye to drug use and sale in designated areas
• That families whose children perform well in school should receive bonus welfare payments

I’ll update with who the finalists are later today.

UPDATE: The final is Monash 1 v Monash 2

It may surprise few people that I am a big debating fan. I took part in debating at school, and have enjoyed the sport ever since. Seeing people advocate for a moot, and rebut the arguments on the other side is great intellectual fun. You’re mentally critiquing the teams, while also enjoying their style and sometimes their humour.

The Australs Grand Final was last night at the Paramount Theatre and there were around 400 people there. 72 teams from around the region took part. As with all university sporting tournaments there is a active social side to the event also, and Andrew Butler from sponsor Russell McVeagh got a lot of laughs when he spoke about how experienced the adjudicators were at scoring, and how many participants had left a little of themselves in Wellington of taking a little of Wellington home. In fact his whole speech was hilarious, and very un-Russell Mcveagh like. Was pleased to note that the antics of a certain RM lawyer (and former YN President) at a certain Australs in Australia are still being talked about in hushed tones.

The moot or topic for the final was that we should introduce good samaritan laws. The two topics not selected (three are chosen and each team can veto one) were that the state should not favour monogamous couples and that school vouchers should be introduced. A debate on not favouring monogamous couples could have been fun but I guess arguing the affirmative would have been difficult.

The afffirmative team was Monash 1 and negative team Monash 2. Victoria University got knocked out in the semi-finals, but they joked at least the trophy would stay in Victoria. They were a bit gutted as they had won it the last two years in a row and a hat trick would have been a first. Monash however had won the world champs.

I won’t detail all the arguments but basically the affirmative argued that a law requiring people to intervene, if it is safe to do so, would generate a culture change and reduce crime and victims of crime levels. The negative mainly attacked the practicality of it and how intervention may make things worse. I thought the negative team had the better arguments but that may be influenced by the fact I agreed with them. They did miss an opportunity to not argue against it on philosophical grounds as well as practical grounds. You can see some of my tweets during the debate here.

After the debate we heard from (Supreme Court) Justice Tipping, Andrew Butler, Chris Bishop and someone else whom I can’t recall. Then the adjudicators came back and announced in a 5-4 decision the winning team was Monash 1.

It is no mean feat to organise a week long tournament for 400 people – all pretty much done by volunteers. The Victoria DebSoc members and friends did a great job, according to participants, arranging a total of well over 200 debates.

Sadly work meant I couldn’t stay for the free booze afterwards in The Establishment, but one of the co-conveners commented to me he had already arranged Monday off work which was sensible. I suspect it was a very big and late night. Very sad that if the purchase age is lifted to 20 by MPs, so many of the smart motivated participants wouldn’t be able to celebrate the end of the tournament with a drink.

The annual Vic Uni Debating Society Vice-Chancellor’s debate is:

Thu 25 October 2012
Rutherford House LT 1
Starts 6.30 pm
Refreshments after the debate

The topic is:

That passing a test of political literacy should be a condition of voting

The Government team will negate the motion, consisting of:

Alfred Ngaro, List MP for National
Stephen Whittington. Named 3rd best speaker in the world at the 2012 World Universities Debating Championships.
Third member to be confirmed

The Opposition team will support the motion:

Jacinda Ardern, List MP for Labour
Gareth Hughes, List MP for Green Party
Sebastian Templeton, lawyer for Chapman Tripp. Winner of the World Universities Peace invitational Debate in 2011 and ranked 15th best speaker in the world at 2012 World Universities Debating Championships.

I won’t be here for it, but if you want to attend just RSVP to rsvp@vuw.ac.nz with ‘VC Debate’ in the subject line.

For this topic I’d love to be in the opposition team, speaking for it.

Vic Debsoc have their great comedy debate tonight at 6.30 pm in the Hunter Lounge. Details are:

Come and watch some great debaters and comedians debating the topic “The rent is too damn high!”

This year we are delighted to announce an absolutely fantastic line-up of comedians and debaters for this event. Including former Billy T nominee and NZ Comedian Jerome Chandrahasen, amateur comedian and former Weir House member John Heslop, renowned beer critic and free lance writer Neil Miller, amateur comedian and former desoc member Nik Bruce Smith and finally our own debating extraordinaires Josh Cameron and Richard D’Ath. 

We will be selling tickets at our stall at clubs week or on the door for $10.

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On Thursday May 9th, the annual EPMU media freedom debate will be held in the Backbencher. These debates are to raise money for the Media Safety and Solidarity Fund which provides support to journalists and other media workers under threat in the Asia-Pacific region. Just a month ago three Pakistani journalists were murdered in a single day.

The previous debates have been hilarious. with only vague references to the topic, they are a cross between a roast and a debate.

The moot is “That you can trust a blogger, a lobbyist and a journalist, but not a politician.”

Patrick Gower is chairing the debate, and it is safe to predict there will be as many insults and jokes at his expense, as there will be at the participants.

The knuckleheads team is:

• Myself
• Chris Bishop, lobbyist for Philip Morris
• Andrea Vance, Dominion Post

The politicians team is:

• Annette King
• Tau Henare
• Grant Robertson

If you want a great nights entertainment, then order tickets from Brent Edwards at brent.edwards@radionz.co.nz or 04 817 9564. Tickets are $25 each and turn up  after 5 pm for dinner and drinks with the debate starting at 7.30 pm.

The tickets often sell out fast, and the venue gets packed to the brim so I recommend getting in quick.

I’m looking forward to a fun night for a good cause.

This debate is tomorrow (Tuesday) night.

James Sleep from the Campaign for a Living Wage (and the SWFU) is the guest speaker for the affirmative and Luke Malpass from the NZ Initiative is the guest speaker on the negative. Members of the debating society will also be speaking.