Another Fantastic Pre-Australs!

Run in conjunction with the Auckland University Debating Society, the Fourth Free Debate Pre-Australs Competition was held in Auckland in July.  Pre-Australs is a small, friendly tournament for debaters with limited opportunities to practice in English to warm up before the Australasian Championships.

This year, Free Debate trainers Seamus Coleman, Phil Barker and Amit Golder participated in what was the largest and most successful Pre-Australs yet! Participants came from across Australasia and this year saw a greater amount of debaters from Northeast Asia than ever before.

Teams debated a diverse range of topics which included:

• That we should implement gender quotas on the boards of all publicly listed companies;
• That we should elect all judges;
• That the state should remove morbidly obese children from the care of their parents; and
• That all major sporting leagues should have a salary cap (which produced a truly amazing and fascinating debate!).

As part of the tournament, all debaters, as well as the adjudicators and Free Debate trainers participated in an issues forum. We discussed topics ranging from whaling to pornography to the stylistic preferences of adjudicators from across the Australasian region. The issues forum again proved a massive success with all participants – allowing everyone involved to learn from each other, and benefit from the experiences and ideas of a room full of very engaged individuals.

The Grand Final was a hotly contested debate between Korea University 1 and Macau University on the topic “That the West should require Israel to forfeit its nuclear weapons”. The Korea University team, comprised of Seth Kang, Claire Minyoung Kim, Junbin Yun, won the debate and the tournament! This team then went on to win the ESL division of the Australasian Championships.

Congratulations to all debaters who took part in the competition, and special thanks to all trainers and adjudicators who helped to make the competition a success. Free Debate’s special thanks go to Nupur Upadhyay from Auckland University whose tireless efforts, professionalism and constant smile were crucial to the competition. See you all in 2011!