The 2005 New Zealand Schools’ Debating Team has recently returned from the invitational debating tournament hosted by the Debate Association Singapore where they did very well.
The tournament involved top debating nations Australia, Singapore, Pakistan, as well as some development teams from Singapore. The standard of debating (and adjudicating) was thus very high.
After five round-robin debates on topics such as the commercialisation of culture, sustainable development, and Microsoft s corporate power, the New Zealand broke to the semi-finals.
A particular highlight of the preliminary rounds was New Zealand’s defeat over the (as ever) strong Australia team. The team successfully affirmed the motion, “This House would close Guantanamo Bay.” Australia have won the last three World Championships and the team was justly very proud of the victory. The victory was reported in The Herald on Sunday and also The Hawke’s Bay Today.
In the semi-finals New Zealand defeated Pakistan, opposing the motion “This House would refuse to trade arms with non-democratic countries.”
In a close and narrow debate in the Grand Final, New Zealand unfortunately went down fighting to Australia. Kathy Scott-Dowell, last year s best speaker at Nationals, was named as the second best speaker of the Singapore tournament. Congratulations to the team and coach Sacha Judd on a great performance!