Debating Report
Australian Individual Debating and Public Speaking Championships
The 2024 Australian Individual Debating and Public Speaking Championships were held over the first week of the September holidays at Brisbane Girls Grammar School. Schools from across Victoria, the ACT, New South Wales and Queensland competed across a range of public speaking and debating events, with Prisha R, Olivia W, Jade H and Keira L representing Huntingtower in the main AIDPSC National Championships, and Grace T, Shiven R, Inuki A and Varun S competing in the accompanying ‘Speakfest’ development competition.
Prisha R was the 2024 Australian Persuasive Speaking Champion, with an outstanding speech of Australian government secrecy. She was also the national runner-up in Interpretive Reading with an extremely evocative and highly entertaining performance of Patrick Ness’ ‘The Knife of Never Letting Go’. She also placed sixth in the overall national rankings, drawn from all four events that competitors must compete in: Prepared Speaking (either Persuasive or After Dinner), Impromptu Speaking, Interpretive Reading and Coordinate Debate. This is a truly outstanding accomplishment: the grand finals were extremely hotly contested, and to be named one of the national champions is an incredible achievement.
Olivia W also placed ninth in the overall rankings, which means that both Prisha and Olivia will be invited to form part of the Australian team for the 2025 World Individual Debating and Public Speaking Championships, which are being hosted in Malaysia.
In Speakfest, Grace T placed second nationally in Persuasive Speaking with a highly critical analysis of Australia’s organ donation system, and placed fifth overall in the competition. Shiven R also placed third in after dinner speaking. Given that the Speakfest competition has grown to almost rival AIDPSC in size, they did an exceptional job to top these events.
All of our students involved did an utterly outstanding job, and made our school community very proud. This is an extremely tough competition, and all our speakers performed very strongly, with every single one of them finishing in the top half of the competition against some extremely strong speakers and schools. Congratulations to them all!
AIDPSC Speakfest Report
During the first week of the Term 3 holidays, eight Huntingtower students had the amazing opportunity to travel to Brisbane and compete in the Australian Individual Debating and Public Speaking Competition (AIDPSC) and its associate competition, SPEAKFEST. The 2024 competition was hosted by Brisbane Girls Grammar School.
Over the course of two full days, we had multiple rounds of debating and public speaking which provided us with an invaluable opportunity to learn and refine our skills whilst competing with top debaters from schools across Australia. Being able to compete at a national level was undoubtedly one of the best and most memorable experiences of our debating experience at Huntingtower. Alongside the constructive feedback from the adjudicators, and listening to other competitors, provided us valuable insights into becoming more proficient and effective public speakers.
Throughout the competition, we participated in 4 events that assessed how we spoke, how we responded to the debate and the substance of our speeches. The events included: Persuasive/After-Dinner Speaking, Impromptu Speaking, Interpretive Reading and Coordinate Debating.
Over the two days, we delivered our speeches and readings to a variety of audiences and judges’ panels. On the third and final day, the finalists were announced and invited to present to all the competitors. In the SPEAKFEST Showcase, Grace To (Year 10) placed 2nd for Persuasive Speaking, and Shiven Rewal (Year 9) placed 3rd for Interpretive Reading.
Overall, all 4 Huntingtower SPEAKFEST competitors were placed among the top 15 in Australia, with Grace To achieving 5th place overall.
A heartfelt thank you to Mr McDonald and Ms Gavillucci for being amazing supervisors, but more importantly for all their hard work behind the scenes to enable us to participate in this prestigious competition. Without their guidance and support, this would not have been possible. We are truly grateful.
Inuka A, Shiven R and Varun S
Year 9 Students
DAV Junior British Parliamentary Debating: State Champions
Congratulations to Lara L, Saina M and Amelia W, who were the 2024 State Champions in the Debaters Association of Victoria’s Junior British Parliamentary competition.
British Parliamentary debating is a highly challenging form of debating, with four teams competing in each debate, short preparation times, and the ability to interrupt and question speakers during their speeches. It requires tremendous intellectual dexterity and confidence as speakers vie to make their arguments the most important within the debate and maintain control of the overall argument.
After placing second in the qualifying tournament, the Huntingtower team faced off against two teams from Melbourne Grammar School and a final team from Start of the Sea College to debate in favour students being able to elect their own school principals.
In an extremely high-quality debate with near constant points-of-information and a constant back-and-forward between the teams, the Huntingtower speakers were named the winners and the 2024 State Champions, maintaining an unbroken streak of seven years of wins for Huntingtower in this competition.
Congratulations to Lara, Saina and Amelia on a truly outstanding result.
We also extend out congratulations to all of the students who participated in the preceding tournament, which only concluded last Sunday. They demonstrated great skill and courage in taking advantage of an opportunity to extend their debating skills in an exciting new format. With less than an hour to prepare and no advance warning on the topics, they had to debate issues ranging from introducing licences for mobile phones, banning restaurants from selling meat-based meals on Mondays, and the value of teaching non-fiction texts in English classes. Well done to everyone involved!
DAV Senior British Parliamentary Debating: State Runners-Up
After finishing amongst the top teams in their tournament, Keira L and Sophie L qualified for the Grand Final of the Debaters Association of Victoria’s Senior British Parliamentary debating competition.
The Grand Final has held between Huntingtower, St Kevin’s College, Melbourne Grammar School and Korowa Girls’ School, with an intense secret topic debate on whether legal rights should be conveyed if AI’s gain human-level intelligence.
In an incredibly close result, Keira and Sophie placed second in the state, putting up a fierce case to beat other teams and finish as runners-up in the competition. We congratulate them on an outstanding result to finish second in the state in such a highly challenging competition.
DAV Schools Competition: Semi-Finalists
This year a Huntingtower team made it all the way through to the Sem-Finals of the Debaters Association of Victoria’s Schools Competition. This is the largest competition that exists in Victoria, with over two-hundred-and-fifty schools entering over fifteen hundred teams. To make it to the semi-finals, a team must finish top of their region, and then remain undefeated through up to five further rounds of finals, until they are just one of four teams remaining undefeated out of the hundreds who began.
Congratulations to Jamie C, Dylan S, Hirun S, Neerav J and Kaushan A on this outstanding achievement. Following an extraordinary run through the competition, they only narrowly lost their semi-final debate against St Kevin’s College, where our team had to argue in favour of forcing all companies to realise all their AI code for open-source use. Faced with an extremely challenging side of an already challenging topic, their put together a forceful and well-argued case, and missing out by only the narrowest of margins.