Video transcript
NSW Premier's Debating Challenge 2015 - Years 9 and 10 State Final

Well, good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the William Wilkins Gallery in the Bridge Street offices of the New South Wales Department of Education. I'd like to acknowledge the Gadigal people, who are the traditional custodians of this land. I'd also like to pay respect to the elders both past and present of the Eora Nation, and extend that respect to other Aboriginals present.

My name is Lloyd Cameron, I'm the speaking competitions officer at the Arts unit of the New South Wales Department of Education. You're about to witness the 2015 final of the Premier's Debating Challenge for years nine and 10 students for the Teasdale trophy.

Today's debate is between Killera High school and Sydney Boys High School. Killera High won the competition two times in the 1970s, and Sydney Boys have won overall four times, the last being in 2010. Our adjudicators today are Tony Davie, Dominic Bowes, and Sarah Jackson.

Tony attended North Sydney Boys High, winning this competition when he was in year 12, the year 12 version. He is a member of the combined high school's debating team. And since 2005, he's been debating and public speaking assistant at the arts unit. He's adjudicated many debates and given numerous workshops.

Dominic was an outstanding debater for Sydney Boys High and for the combined high schools debating team. He's a past winner of the year 11 challenge in 2007, and he's worked for the New South Wales Department of Education for several years as an adjudicator, workshop leader, and coach.

Sarah was a member of the Northern Sydney team that won the primary school state debating championship in 2007, and a state finalist in the Premier's Debating Challenge for year 11 in 2012. She coached the state winning team in this particular age division last year, and she's currently studying science at the University of Sydney.

Our chairperson is Joanna Bennetts and our timekeeper is Simone [? Cowl. ?] They both attend Model Farms High and their team reached the state final of the years seven and eight challenge in 2013, and the semifinal of the years nine and 10 challenge this year. I'll now hand over to them for the rest of the proceedings.

I welcome you to the state final of the Premier's Debating Challenge for years nine and 10 for the Teasdale trophy. This debate is between Sydney Boys High School and Killera High School. The affirmative team from Killera High School is, first speaker Elissa Zhang, second speaker Jack Rumbelow, third speaker Matthew Lee, and fourth speaker Olivia [? Charles. ?]

The negative team from Sydney Boys High School is first speaker Akeedh Razmi, second speaker Louis Saunders, third speaker Hugh Bartley, and fourth speaker David Wu. Each speaker may speak for eight minutes. There will be a warning bell at six minutes with two bells at eight minutes to indicate that the speaker's time has expired.

A bell will be rung continuously if a speaker exceeds the maximum time by more than one minute. The topic for this debate is that we should ban weight loss television shows.

Good morning adjudicators, chairperson, audience, and opposition team. The topic of today's debate is that we should ban weight loss television shows. We, the affirmative team, strongly believe that banning weight loss television shows would be a step forward to better the health of Australia's future.

Any TV show that is broadcasted for the purpose of competitive entertainment, where participants compete to lose the most weight, should be banned in Australia. The affirmative team would like to clarify that weight loss TV shows do not include documentaries, news shows, or lifestyle television. We are targeting specific weight loss TV shows, a prime example being Australia's Biggest Loser, which is a popular TV show that has been running for several years.

As first speaker of the affirmative team, I'd like to stress the ineffectively of these weight-loss shows and also discuss the link between these shows and how overweight or obese people are generalized. My second speaker, Jack, will highlight the effect these weight loss shows have on Australia's perception of health. And how these shows are reality TV shows and are a warped representation of reality.

Ladies and gentlemen, I will now analyze the ineffectiveness of the status quo and its detrimental effects for overweight people. The status quo at the current time has a large number of weight loss television shows on prime TV time. These TV shows are apparently meant to promote weight loss and healthy lifestyles and help improve the ability of the nation and its people to lose weight.

If this is so, then why is obesity in this country rising? We are the third most obese country out of all the countries, only behind America and the UK. Wouldn't the money used to create these shows be better spent to fund education programs in schools? It should be. And the time wasted by these programs could be better filled by educational programs.

Another problem or threat that is posed by the status quo is that the view society has on overweight people and how they came to be that way, which can lead to bullying and other detrimental effects on these people, as I will elaborate on further in my speech. The status quo currently also sees thousands of dollars put into these shows, leading to the exploitation of people who are overweight. Shouldn't we spend the money in a way which better benefits our society and its people?

At these times, drama can be shows which will boost a struggling Australian film industry or even educational documentary. The status quo, as I mentioned before, can lead to bullying of people that are overweight or even just look overweight. It is due to the mis-characterization of what overweight is.

We are influencing society in a negative way by maintaining the status quo and can use the resources wasted by these TV shows to influence society in a positive way through better shows that educate people about being healthy and living a healthy lifestyle. These shows are planting the highly destructive thought in the minds of our nation that skinny is feat. However, we know that this is not the case.

You don't need a six pack and quads that could break bricks to be healthy. As you can most definitely lead a healthy and balanced lifestyle while not losing any weight, the trainers and mentors of these TV shows such as The Biggest Loser are always enormous bodybuilder men and stick figure girls, who strives to tell their audiences that they are the only image of perfect weight loss, which is grossly untrue.

These negative messages are reaching the children of Australia and all they're being told is that skinny is good. And in this day and age, it is very easy for men, but especially women, to take it too far. This can eventually lead to life-threatening conditions such as anorexia and bulimia as they're only been taught to lose weight. How can we allow these destructive shows to exist in our society?

We believe that weight loss shows are twisted lifestyle and health shows. They're not health and lifestyle shows where healthy eating and moderate exercise is promoted. They're all about lose weight now, faster, push yourself until you've collapsed. Stay below the yellow line or else you'll have to go back to your previous lifestyle as an overweight mother of three.

This aggressive and damaging attitude is central to these weight loss TV shows. Meanwhile, the rest of the nation is sitting on the couch with a bag of chips, watching the blue team crawl over the finishing line. Do we want people seeing this? Do we want our children seeing this? To see this gross mis-characterization of overweight people and obesity?

These weight loss shows have led to the generalization of all overweight people. Not every overweight person leads an unhealthy lifestyle. This is the assumption we make as we glance over at a slightly chubby person having a Big Mac meal, thinking that maybe they shouldn't be eating that. When it comes to this, people don't think twice about overweight people and their back story.

They must all live unhealthy lifestyles and they don't even realize that this is an extremely negative and damaging attitude to have. And it's judgmental and it's not what Australia needs. People don't realize that maybe you look overweight because of a genetic predisposition. Or maybe that woman over there is actually pregnant. You don't know.

And by banning these TV shows, it will remove these stereotypes for future generations. And they won't grow into these negative attitudes forged by the weight loss television shows that are broadcast all around Australia. This is why the affirmative team strongly believes that we should-- we need to ban weight loss television shows for a better, healthy, not skinnier, Australia.

Ladies and gentlemen, it is becoming far too acceptable in Australia to be obese. One half of all Australians are overweight. 35 percent of all Australian adult males are obese. Over-eating and bad health is an epidemic in Australia, heading to diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. The best route out of this epidemic is popular cultural. TV for the everyday people.

Popular culture will change behavior, but the affirmative team today is neglecting the best route out of this issue. They're neglecting the grassroots of societal change in health. So ladies and gentlemen, with this in mind, we will be presenting you four points of substantive today.

As the first speaker of the negative team, I'll be proving to you that shows like Biggest Loser glorify healthiness. And secondly, even if we accept the harms that the opposition has pointed out today, it shouldn't violate our freedom of programming. And my second speaker, his first point is that it provides more exposure to alternate body images, and secondly, how it promotes better weight loss techniques.

So now, before I go into my substantive, I would like to point out a few flaws in the opposition's case. So, they first came out and told you that the government should not spend money on TV shows like this, and it should be spent on education, et cetera, et cetera. Well, ladies and gentlemen, there's a massive flaw in this.

The [? shows ?] that go into Biggest Loser do not come from the government. They come from actually private companies that invest in such shows. So the government doesn't actually have a say in whether they should invest this money in education or infrastructure. The private companies are actually hosting these events and actually televising them on TV.

And their whole case also revolved around how these shows like Biggest Loser promotes an unrealistic message, and you have to do this and you're forced to do this and et cetera. However, ladies and gentlemen, we've think that Biggest Loser only encourages people to become healthy and encourages people to undertake a healthy lifestyle. Because Biggest Loser promotes a realistic outcome because they show the beginning of a person when they are unfit and at the end of their journey and they're actually fit, and they're actually not going back to their bad habits.

And they also talked about how Biggest Loser promotes that being skinny is fit and you have abs to be fit and something like that. So ladies and gentlemen, I would like to tell you that when I'm watching Biggest Loser, I don't look at the trainers training these people, I actually look at the contestants.

And these contestants are real life, everyday Australian people. And we think that people, while watching them, can relate to them. And we think that everyday Australians, these people are showing us that it's not impossible to not be obese and it's possible to actually get to the end of the journey.

So with that in mind, I would like to go onto my substantiate. My first point is how weight loss shows glorify healthiness. So I have four sub-issues on this. No, scrub that. So firstly, as I've already told you in my intro, Australia is a pretty fat country. So we think that both teams can agree with that, and with this in mind, I would like to go into my second sub-issue.

So we think that TV shows like The Biggest Loser glorify healthiness. So I have four sub-issues under this. So on the first sub-issue, we think that we have to see what it actually tries to promote. So we think The Biggest Loser, at its base, tries to promote healthy eating and healthy exercise. So we think that Biggest Loser shows people actually going out there and actually doing exercise to lose weight and actually eating healthy to lose weight and actually eating healthy foods in order to undertake a different lifestyle.

So the second sub-issue is the nature of the show. So the people who go on these shows are actually normal, everyday Australians. So we think that the people who are watching these shows can relate to these people. Because they can say, hey, like this guy is just like me, if he can lose weight, why can't I? So we think that these people who go on these shows actually have very deep personal stories.

So, all these people who go on these shows, they have gone through really tough hardships. They've been overweight for about 10, 20, 30, 40 years. So the shows show that if these people can lose weight, people who are watching these shows can relate to that and therefore be motivated and be driven to lose weight themselves.

And we also see by this that the people that go on these shows aren't actually perfect people that we always see on TV. We don't see them as being models, they're normal people, they make jokes themselves. And we can't say that these people only lose weight because they are on TV. No, these are normal people who are losing weight themselves because they want to and because they have the drive to do so.

So we usually see, on these TV shows, that most of the people are extreme examples, right? So why is this good? People who watch these TV shows can say that if this guy can lose about 50 kilos, why can I lose 10? So these shows actually target the average overweight people as well. Not only the extreme overweight people in our society. So we think that the show is also very realistic.

So, unlike the pop-up ads we see on the internet, where it says, oh, if you take this pill you lose 50 kilos, we think that this show is actually very realistic, because it shows the beginning of the journey and also the end of the journey. And it shows that losing weight is actually a grueling process. But yeah, it can be done, and it is possible to lose weight and this is what we are standing for on today's debate.

The current overweight people watching these shows think that, oh, I'm going to be fat for the rest of my life, there's no way out of this, and I just can't stop this and I'm just going to keep eating. So ladies and gentlemen, it tells them and it motivates them and it drives them to think that it's possible to not be overweight, and it's possible and tells them that I can change.

So biggest loser also promotes a healthy habit because they don't actually force you. So ladies and gentlemen, you can see with the people who get eliminated, are still shown to continue their healthy habits even though they're not actually in the show. There's an episode where they show the people who are eliminated. They show them that they are continuing with their healthy habits and the healthy exercise habits.

So ladies and gentlemen, on the third sub-issue, which is the medium of communication of the TV shows. So we think that TV shows are very appealing and very effective. They're actually tangible, visual media that people use to actually send a message to people to lose weight and give them the motivation to lose their weight.

So ladies and gentlemen, on the final issue under this point, which is how it actually helps the competitors themselves. So they become healthy at the end. Because of the nature of the show, and because it's very competitive, people strive to be better than the other, obviously there's a money incentive as well.

So, it's not really actually about the money. If you interview them at the end of the show, you'll see them saying that I never did it for the money, I never did for anything. I just wanted to become healthier, and that is what we're willing to stand behind on this debate.

So onto my second point today, which is how we should not get rid of the freedom of programming, despite any of the harms that the opposition has pointed out. So we actually deny that there are any substantial harms in airing weight loss shows. So on the contrary, we actually believe that their model implicates more harms. So even if this isn't true and we accept their harms, those slight harms do not actually merit or give a right to ban these weight loss shows.

So ladies and gentlemen, why is this? So what is the right? The right is their right to programming. So why does this right exist? The media is there to serve a public interest, to entertain them, which is also consistent with weight loss shows and shows such as The Biggest Loser. And also, on a side note, to get people fit.

So these shows get high ratings and are watched by people all over the world, regardless of whether they are overweight, underweight, or male or female. So when does the right stop being in place and when are we allowed to take this right away? So at what point do we ban these television shows? When they contain explicit, inappropriate content, they have extremely gory violence, they're offensive, and they breach natural security.

Ladies and gentlemen, weight loss shows do none of these things. And even if they do, they are not done to the extent in which some television shows actually do and are actually allowed to be aired. Two examples of this. Quentin Tarantino's films are aired on channel 9 during prime time. And also Martin Scorsese's films are also aired prime time.

So if we think that if these shows are allowed to be aired, why not Biggest Loser, when they're promoting healthy lifestyles and a healthy outcome. So ladies and gentlemen, through this, we can see that weight loss shows clearly stays within the parameters of appropriate airing and thus there is no justification for weight loss shows to be banned. And ladies and gentlemen, we are very, very proud to negate.

Before I begin my substantive matter, I would like to rebut some of the opposition's points. Firstly, the status quo is brought up by the negative. But we firmly believe that the status quo is not working. Even though The Biggest Loser currently exists, the problem still exists. The Biggest Loser has been aired in this country for many number of years.

Secondly, the negative suggests that The Biggest Loser promotes health, but they are wrong. It promotes weight loss. These two things are not one and the same. Thirdly, if The Biggest Loser's goal wasn't as admirable as you say, to lose weight, to become healthy, then why are the contestants eliminated? Why are they forced to compete? The goal is not for people to lose weight on The Biggest Loser, but to provide drama and entertainment.

The nature of the show is not about health but about weight lost. The negative contradicts themselves by saying that The Biggest Loser promotes health and glorifies health. Yet in truth, it glorifies a weight loss. And this is not ethical for the viewership and the youth that are watching The Biggest Loser.

On the topic of freedom of speech and freedom of the media, there is a line between freedom and whether or not we should speak about things that are unethical and convey messages that are unethical towards the viewership. This is harmful. So does this truly mean that this still should be aired?

The negative stated that The Biggest Loser is real and shows the life before and after. It presents the old lifestyle out to the viewership so it can be scrutinized. And it can be mocked. This is not a good thing. Allowing them to be judged and mocked for eating an entire tub of ice cream for dessert, which is extreme and not realistic at all.

Why should we believe everything that the show presents to us as real life and how these overweight peoples and obese peoples live their lifestyles. And now onto my substantive matter.

Shows like The Biggest Loser promote healthy lifestyles but in a way which is damaging to our idea of a healthy human being. By parading obese people and shaming them for their lifestyle, we not only become a needlessly abusive society, but also one that has wrongfully misplaced their ideals of health and beauty by constricting it to weight.

The way in which The Biggest Loser operates is flawed because it measures a person's health, level of achievement, and to an extent, beauty. Solely on how much weight they lose, without taking into account metabolism, gross muscle mass, height, gender, and many different conditions and genetic disorders, which may cause different people to gain weight faster.

It tells us as viewers that health and desirability is measured by a single number. And in the viewership is families and thus children. If this show was to have a negative effect on any demographic, it would be children. We, as a society, are lucky to counteract the negative messages of The Biggest Loser to an extent with proper education in the areas of health, diet, exercise, and bullying.

Otherwise, the only education would be the message that a person's self-worth is measured by their linear weight. To remove shows like The Biggest Loser would remove the negative messages the shows convey to youth and other viewers. Even so, why do we, as a society, need to mis-characterize overweight peoples in the first place?

To promote a healthy lifestyle is good for everyone. But to do so in such an abusive and destructive way is wrong. It highlights a problem that our attitudes as a society have against overweight and obese peoples. Which is that being fat is wrong in principle.

If a man or woman has no issues with outside perceptions of their body, is properly informed of relevant health risks and warns of the dangers of being grossly overweight, they should be entitled to how they live their lives, as well as the body that they have. They should be free to be overweight if they wish, and the problem lies in how we inform them of the issues and dangers.

The Biggest Loser does this incorrectly. It, from the get-go, characterizes being overweight as bad, provides back stories in which the contestants are portrayed as being unhappy and ashamed of their weight. The coaches chastise the contestants for being lazy and unfit during the entirety of the show.

Why do these stereotypes have to be true for all of our perceptions of those who are morbidly obese, as well as those who have a little junk in the trunk? These misconceptions are pushed forward by the wrongful way these shows portray a very touchy issue.

Onto my third point. Destructive weight loss programs should immediately be banned as they are fueled by fake personalities. These contestants or participants have been selected by large television networks based on their personality, rather than their overweight condition. No TV network wants to make a show filled with average and quiet contestants.

They want participants that are different and clashing personalities. These shows such as Australia's Biggest Loser thrive off of the drama-filled performances for each carefully chosen participants give in order to capture the fleeting attentions of the average viewer.

In addition, the shows are almost entirely scripted to ensure the largest amount of drama occurs. Australia's Biggest Loser is a perfect representation of a grotesque and unhealthy way to lose weight. Contestants are forced off the show if they are unable to meet this weekly goal, under the threat that they are removed.

And in most cases, this being removed from the show will not better their lives. These fake, scripted, popularity-based weight loss TV shows must be banned, as they deliver a highly distorted perception of health. These shows lead to a negative and destructive social perception of overweight citizens.

In conclusion, the ways in which The Biggest Loser promotes health are flawed in practice, unethical in their portrayal of overweight peoples, and are bad for the general viewership and the youth of Australia. Thank you.

There are few things more difficult to achieve in life than a personal transformation, especially one related to body image and weight. But what makes these transformations much easier is an exposure to similar transformations occurring on TV and around you.

As somebody who has struggled with being very overweight in the past, I can tell you that a key factor in enabling me to overcome my problem was seeing people on TV and around me make these kinds of transformations. It was shows like The Biggest Loser that helped me get over my weight problem. And I honestly doubt that I would have achieved what I did without them.

With that in mind, ladies and gentlemen, I will be reading four issues today, two of them being substantive. Now onto the first issue, that do shows like The Biggest Loser promotes healthy lifestyle. The opposition came out and told you at first that these kind of shows promotes incorrect body images and we disagree with this.

We think that the end result of these TV shows show people who have progressed from being very overweight to less overweight, not to the kind of skinny, incorrect kind of body image that the opposition talked about. The opposition's first speaker also came out and told us that the aggressive weight loss system used in these kind of shows is very damaging, and we have a couple of responses to this.

Firstly, we think that these aggressive systems will happen if these shows are allowed or not, they just won't happen on TV. And we think that actually it is best for them to happen on TV, where they are under the public scrutiny and where they'll be much more safe. But secondly, we think that these aggressive weight loss systems are always less damaging than obesity and being really overweight. Because this always lead to things like heart disease, cardiovascular diseases, depression, things that really reduce your life expectancy a lot more than any potential damages from the aggressive weight loss system.

The opposition also told us that these shows make us think that all overweight people are living unhealthily. And we have a couple of responses to this. We think that society already kind of has this kind of idea with these shows, whether they have these shows or not. And I'll go into that a little bit more in my substantive.

But secondly, we think these shows actually help the stereotype instead of making it worse, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, they show really extreme examples of overweight people. People who weigh 250 kilograms, and showed these particular people as being unhealthy, rather than people who are just a little bit overweight.

And secondly, at the end of these contestants' journey, when they're no where near close to being flat-stomached or having ripped abs, or having thighs the size of tree trunks. Yet they are still considered to be healthy. And that is the really important difference that kind of neutralizes all their material about what they said.

They also told us, lastly on this issue, that The Biggest Loser is designed for entertainment and therefore can not be helpful to people losing weight. We think this is true. It's a TV show, it's designed to be entertaining. However, it is also effective in encouraging a healthy lifestyle. As we've been saying, the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

And with that in mind, I'd like to move on to the second issue in tonight's debate. Is it acceptable to breach freedom of programming in this particular case? And this is a bit of a shorted issue, there hasn't been much clash so far. In a response to everything we told you at first, the opposition's second speaker came out and gave himself a really high burden of proof.

He told us that if it is unethical to be showing these things on TV, then these things should not be aired. And I invite the third speaker of the opposition team to prove exactly how it is unethical, because they have not done that so far. If they can't do that, choose the burden of prove they have given themselves, they will not win that issue.

And with that in mind, I'd like to move on to the first substantive issue of this debate, that of body image. On our side of the case, we believe that shows like The Biggest Loser give more exposure to alternate body images. I have three sub-points.

Firstly, talking about the current state of television, secondly, how this current state harms the average person at home watching, and thirdly, how it is always a good thing to have a show that challenges these norms. Onto the first sub-point.

Television is a huge promoter of unrealistic body images and beauty standards. Everywhere you look on TV, you're confronted by attractive, impossibly skinny, flawless people. People like airbrushed models, newsreader's caked in makeup, tanned muscle people. And the current structure of our television environment just shoves these unrealistic beauty standards down the throat of everyone who is watching.

And because of the vast viewership, it strongly contributes to greater society's view that these unrealistic beauty standards are the norm and are the only acceptable level of beauty. There are very few shows on television that actually challenge these standards. But the most popular and mainstream one and most effective one is The Biggest Loser and other similar shows.

Now second sub-point, why this is really damaging. Talking about the average person at home. The average person at home usually doesn't achieve these body standards thrust upon them. This is not really ever going to happen. It's really harmful for these people to be force-fed all these attractive people on TV the whole time.

But it's especially bad for people at home who are overweight or obese, and these are the people that I'll be focusing on for the remainder of this point. These are the kinds of people who often spend lots of time at home watching TV and having these unrealistic beauty standards shoved down their throat.

They often have very poor self-esteem, they're sometimes depressed often due to these unrealistic body standards. And they often aren't even overweight because of their own decisions. They might have a disease or a condition that makes them fat. And for these people, it is incredibly damaging for their self-esteem to have these beauty standards forced upon them.

Although, to both sides of the house, these standards still exist. On the opposition's side, there are very few shows and no really popular shows that challenge these beauty standards. Under our case, shows like The Biggest Loser still exist and are out on TV every single day, giving exposure to these people, to these alternate body images.

On to the third sub-point, it is always a really good thing to have the kind of show that challenges these body image norms, for a few reasons. Firstly, it gives an escape for the viewers from the unrealistic standards on normal TV. Secondly, it gives a reality check for viewers because they are no longer only seeing the really unrealistic beauty standards.

And thirdly, it gives viewers a comparison when they're looking at other people on TV because they're no longer only being shown the really, really attractive people. And this is especially effective with a show like The Biggest Loser because it's a very popular show.

It has a prime time slot on TV. It has relatable people competing in the show. It has a really great system of getting viewers, which is firstly, it humanizes the people on the show. They pick relatable people who the viewers can kind of understand and like.

Secondly, they make the audience sympathize with these contestants by doing things where they give the real age of the person and their body's age on the show, and telling them their life expectancy as a result of their habits.

And thirdly, they take the audience and the contestants together on the weight loss journey. This is really effective. This is a unique and powerful system that is really effective at making viewers connect with contestants and successfully challenges the body image standards in normal television.

And due to this irreplaceable exposure to alternate body images that weight loss programs create, we can not afford to ban these shows. Now onto the final issue of tonight's debate, the issue about the other weight loss techniques. And we think that The Biggest Loser and shows like it promote healthier and more desirable weight loss techniques.

TV shows are really uniquely placed to encourage certain agendas, especially shows like The Biggest Loser because of everything I just talked about. Their high viewership, the prime time slots, the system of audience engagement. The Biggest Loser promotes really valuable agendas and rhetoric.

The base rhetoric of a show like The Biggest Loser is that exercise and healthy eating equals weight loss. This is a really important and desirable message that we want to have out in the public eye. But if we banned these shows, what we are left without having these weight loss shows giving us this great rhetoric is damaging weight loss programs that are heavily advertised and forced down people's throat.

Now, what are these programs? There are three kinds of programs. Firstly, there's programs like crazy diets, such as the paleo diet, where you eat like a caveman. Or the 5:2 diet, where you eat for five days and then starve yourself for two days. Or a nut diet, where all you do is eat nuts on some days.

These are crazy things but without the healthy alternative that we get through weight loss shows, they are one of the biggest things you're left with. Now, the second type of show are money-making schemes, such as Jenny Craig. These are schemes that just take advantage of vulnerable, depressed people who want to lose weight. They cost heaps of money, they're really not something that we want to have.

And the third type is chemical solutions such as diet pills, which have lots of undesirable side effects. The weight loss shows promoted ways like losing weight through healthy eating and exercising a lot, are undoubtedly more desirable than these alternatives.

And although there are other ways of getting this message across, none are anywhere close to being as effective as The Biggest Loser and shows like it because of its popularity, its presence on TV, and its unique way engaging viewers. And because of these kind of shows' unique position that we mentioned before, we think it's unacceptable to ban these weight loss shows. Thank you.

All right. So, good morning, ladies and gentlemen. And today, I'd just like to quickly summarize our case and also just analyze the opposition's case. So, the opposition first came out with the idea of how The Biggest Loser has been a huge promoter of healthy eating and a good lifestyle for people to live.

First of all, never in The Biggest Loser do they reference food. The majority of The Biggest Loser is spent watching people climb over hills, pulled by ropes, put under strenuous pain, may I add, and pushed to the physical limit to which they are brought to tears in front of an entire Australia where they're embarrassed in front of everyone.

He also talked about relating to real people. Now look, when we see people on the TV, as my first speaker said, they're sitting back watching these shows with a bag of chips on the [? TV. ?] These shows are designed to entertain. They are not thinking about the well-being. The creators of these shows did not design these shows to make sure that the people benefit from these things. They are made for entertainment and money-making exercises, despite what the negative team seems to believe.

For example, in the example Big Kev. There's a contestant on The Biggest Loser last year, or the year before that. And he was brought back for two Biggest Loser seasons for the simple reason that The Biggest Loser had not actually fixed his problem within the first season that he was there. And then he came back and it still didn't fix his problem.

So I ask the negative team if it's so calling fixing the problem. We have a prime example of someone who's not fixed by this perfect, flawless status quo, which apparently creates this Australia. It's a healthier Australia and we're not as an obese a country. Sorry.

OK, so now they talked about how they're losing weight for their own gain, but they're losing weight because they came on TV. Let's face it. I mean, they've been given an opportunity to lose weight and they want to lose weight. But also, the fact is that half these contestants, they're kicked out before they reach the end of The Biggest Loser program.

So, for example, what is the contestant who gets kicked out in the first round, what do they gain from this great big program that apparently every contestant experiences? It's simply not right. You can't have someone who just come in, given them one way, put their weight up in front of the entirety of Australia, and then said, OK, right, you're going to lose weight. Oh, no, wait, sorry. You're out of the TV show. Goodbye.

Now, I would also like to point on that again, it's a forced journey under TV under scripted circumstances. These activities they undertake, they are designed to have a go at people. They are designed to exploit people's weaknesses. And people who are overweight may have, because of society's perceptions pushed also by these shows, are generally quite vulnerable to these people watching on TV.

And it's bad enough they're having their weight put on to start with. Let alone, before anyone loses anything, they're put at these enormous weights before these people, and people are judging them for their size before that. And it's unfair. I mean, you can't simply script a TV situation drafted exactly to exploit someone, simply because they're overweight.

This is the negative issue with these shows. Why we want to ban them is not because they're menacing to society's culture or that kind of stuff. Sorry. And it's more to do with the point that these people are being exploited. We have to realize this. As our first affirmative speaker defined.

It's officially to find these weight losing shows such as The Biggest Loser, which are also perhaps reality TV shows, which is designed for entertainment. These people interests' aren't at the people who created these shows. It's not their heart. They're looking for money, it's a money-making exercise.

Now, we came onto the right to program, and about the second, the first--sorry-- negative speaker talked about how the TV companies have the right to program whatever they want to put on the TV, whenever they want to use. Well, I ask the negative team simply, they used Quentin Tarantino as an example.

And firstly, there are laws governing when these films rated M and MA15 plus are aired anyway. We have no laws on these weight loss TVs. We can monitor Quentin Tarantino and they're not put on at prime time. They're put on at later hours, when they know that children will not be watching and [? desiring ?] to target their audiences by the laws put under by the Australian government.

So, I again stress the importance that the right to program needs to be monitored. There are still restrictions on other shows, so why can't we apply these restrictions or even ban it altogether because, unlike Quentin Tarantino films, these are exploiting people in real life. They're fantasy situations, Quentin Tarantino.

This is real life we're talking about. Real people, as the negative team said themselves, which are actually being exploited. Whereas is in Quentin Tarantino, it seems you might see some violent action, but it's obviously so fake that I think we can all agree it's stupid, really.

So, now moving on to the-- sorry. We heard the second. Now, the second speaker, he talked about beauty standards, OK? The Biggest Loser, it's conforming to these beauty standards. It's saying, we want the makeover week, as an example. At the end of The Biggest Loser, all the contestants who have made it through are dressed up in these fancy dresses, makeup, done everything that is done to a supermodel done to them to make them look acceptable to society's conformed views.

So I ask the negative team, if this is happening at the end on a yearly basis in the Biggest Loser TV show, why should we let this continue? It's reinforcing the beauty standards. We should be funneling the money that we use to put into these TV shows into education, which does not come from the government. The money which comes from these shows can be put on educational programs at the prime time, which is more suitable for the audience, unlike a Quentin Tarantino film.

So back on the other weight loss, they also talked about Jenny Craig and diets. And Jenny Craig is a private institution as well. But The Biggest Loser, it's a public view of this. People who go onto Jenny Craig, they talk individually with a person. And they are put through their own steps, no one else is pressuring them, they're just having a one-on-one talk with someone who understands them. They're thinking about this one person. This person on the end of the phone at Jenny Craig has the person's best interests at heart.

I stress to you, ladies and gentlemen, that the people in The Biggest Loser do not have these people's best things at heart. And again, I go back to the Big Kev example. He was brought back because it didn't work. You know? Had he talked to a Jenny Craig supervisor, which he did, he went to someone like Jenny Craig after this.

And he's now on the better road to recovery. Because someone has gone one-on-one with him, told him his solutions, been a real person, talked to him about it. And now they, together, have fought a better path through-- Sorry, provided a better opportunity for weight loss than The Biggest Loser ever could.

So just in summary of my team's case, my first speaker, she talked about the status quo. And again, the status quo, ladies and gentlemen, the negative team have kept on reinforcing the fact that the status quo is working. Well, it isn't. This show. We all the third most obese country today, ladies and gentlemen. The third most obese country.

Biggest Loser has aired for about, what, 10 years now? And it has not made a change. We have continually gone up year by year in the obesity rankings. I'd also like point out she also talked about the mis-characterization of overweight people. So, the views that are put forward on Biggest Loser. I mean, the people that are seen there, the way that they are portrayed by adverts. It's morphed, it's not what's really happening. It's morphed to suit an entertainment purpose.

She also talked about the other end of the spectrum. So we see these trainers standing up there, you know, fierce, muscly bodies. And we say, well, is that the goal? That's another [INAUDIBLE] so, proof of the idea that the biggest loser is conforming to these beauty standards.

Simply because of the reason they're putting these people there and they're saying, we need to look like these people. You don't need abs to break bricks. To be fit. Sorry. And my second speaker, Jack, it's a popularity exercise, as well. I mean, it's network 10. I mean, let's be honest here. Their money really comes from advertising and the more advertising there is, it's because the show is more popular.

For example, The Biggest Loser probably has, it's watched nationwide, billions of viewers. So, I think that we, as the affirmative team, believe that it's a popularity exercise, again. It's not got these people interests at heart. He also talked about scripting to cause drama, which I talked about. And by banning it and implementing these educational programs, in areas such as, when we've implemented education programs in other areas, such as drug use and things, we've improved it.

So why don't we take it to obesity and overweight, and we can improve the lifestyles of everyone in Australia. That is why, as the affirmative team, we are proud to say that we believe that weight loss programs should be banned. Thank you.

The affirmative team's idea of using television to get people to lose weight is some sort of David Attenborough documentary. And the nutrient goes through the specimen's body and infiltrates his muscles, making him a whole lot healthier than he was before. What they have failed to recognize in today's debate is that drama is a good thing, entertainment is a good thing.

You are not going to get millions and millions of people watching these motivational programs, you are not going to get people interested in what's going on in the show without the drama, without the entertainment of The Biggest Loser. The Biggest Loser is only as successful as it is, it is only a big deal, because it is entertaining, because we can relate to the people on there, because it's funny, it's exciting, it's dynamic. It's a competition.

You are not going to get the masses to lose weight, you're not going to claim the benefits that we have claimed in today's debate, you are not going to get the people watching the program, you are not going to get the viewers to lose weight with a documentary. That is not the way to do it.

Under the opposition's model, obesity rates will rise and we have proved that to you down the bench and I will continue to do so. With that said, three issues. One, do these shows have good messages to people's health? Two, do these shows have good messages for body image? Three, what do we think about freedom of programming?

OK, first issue. They told us that the attitude amongst Biggest Loser people is that it's really aggressive and it's like push yourself until you collapse, has elimination, that stuff. We think that the people who go on these shows, they're going to be really, really overweight, and they're going to need strong motivation to lose that weight.

And so, when you think of the people at home watching, they don't have to work as hard as the extreme cases which you see on The Biggest Loser. What we see on these shows is kind of a positive, regulated, visible attitude, where people are motivated to do this. And the opposition somehow thinks that more exercise is harmful.

We think that, even though people are eliminated on the show, that is actually a positive motivation for them to get healthy. Because we can see there are three month check-ins on these kind show. They go and revisit people who have eliminated. And are, like, 100% of the time, they are still continuing the diet, they are still continuing the regimes of exercise that have helped them become so healthy.

Next contentious point in this debate was when they told us that general health is not necessarily the same as weight loss. And so, these shows give us a distorted perception of health because not every overweight person leads an unhealthy lifestyle.

If you are overweight, you have double the chance of diabetes. If you are overweight, you have triple the chance of having a heart attack. So, although it's not exclusive, there is a huge, intrinsic link between being overweight and being at risk of these kind of terrible things to happen to your body. And those are just my conservative estimates.

So, we think that these are good goals to aim for. And, on the important point about people who have genetic diseases and things like type 1 diabetes, we think that the best way to exacerbate fat shaming in society is by having every, single person on TV being a skinny, attractive model with all of their makeup done up. That is the best way.

What we have proven to you on the negative side of the house is that when you have a show that shows regular, normal people going through their positive goals, positive health goals, that means that we can see these kinds of people on TV, we can accept them for what they are. And we have shown you a case of nuance where this lifestyle obesity is clearly distinguish from those other cases.

They told us that the show's message that you need to be a bodybuilder to be healthy. But I don't really see many participants on Biggest Loser becoming bodybuilders anytime soon. OK. They told us that what they would prefer is they'd have health shows on, like, you know, how to be healthy. That we're going to get rid of weight by watching people, watch this really entertaining documentary on how to exercise.

No. That's just not going to happen. We think that these documentaries will not change behavior, they will not get the benefits of popular culture, popular interest. They will not make it cool to lose weight. What we are doing on our side of the house is we are making it cool to lose weight. Biggest Loser is an extremely popular show, and it has proven that when people are doing something, when it is glorified for people to do something so important, they are more likely to do it.

When you see all of these people on TV trying to lose weight, when people around you are trying to lose weight, they are watching this show, it becomes cool to be healthy. And our goal in today's debate is to make the population healthy. The opposition's harms are limited to the people in the show. Our benefits of the shows are limited to every single person in Australia.

Because they are motivation for everyone watching the show, they are motivation to be healthy, and often it provides a well-rounded idea of how to be healthy. They told us that there's not much of a focus on food, they're just going up hills. But in reality, these shows analyze each of the diets of the contestants and how a person at home can do these things. The shows go in to detail.

How can you do the exercise that x competitor is doing? You need this equipment, you can do it in your lounge room at this amount of time, this amount of days a week. How is that not helpful to people losing weight, and it's entertainment? It just doesn't make sense.

They told us the people on the show will be chosen by their personality or their drama. But honestly, we're fine with that. We think that boring people are not going to connect with the everyday people at home, and they're not going to connect and they're not going to display the benefit of these shows.

They gave us the example of Big Kev, who apparently had to come back on the show because he didn't lose enough weight. I'm pretty sure that Big Kev lost a lot of weight on Biggest Loser. And he's just one example. I'm pretty sure, like, 100% of people who went on Biggest Loser lost weight. That isn't just not disputed, that is just an objectively good outcome.

And so, at the end of this issue, we can see that health messages are clearly enhanced by The Biggest Loser, clearly enhanced by these shows. And people are more motivated to be healthy. People outside of the show and not relevant to the harms that they have been proposing. OK.

Second issue about body image and self-esteem. They told us that people on the show will get bullied for their weight. Two responses. First of all, we think that everyone on this show opts in to be on TV, so they understand the risks of Twitter and stuff. But second of all, we think that these people have consented to that extra motivation.

And most of the messages that they received by the group of people who'd be bullying them, are more positive ones. They're like, oh, good on this guy, who lost 50 kilos in two weeks. He's such a legend. Good on him. What an Australian hero, you know. It's more positive than that.

They told us that these shows will promote the mocking of participants and that all of the self-worth of these people will be placed into how much weight they lost. OK. A couple of responses. First one, we think that every game or competition or reality show has to be rude sometimes. That's the way they do it, that's the way they engage viewers, that's the way they entertain.

But the way that they are rude is not degrading, it's not damaging. These people, who have committed to losing weight, doing whatever they can, the messages are positive. They're like, work harder, rather than like, you're lazy and awful. That's just not the way it works. You watch the Biggest Loser, they don't openly criticize them. OK.

We think that when you have people's personality exposed, their talents highlighted, people are more likely to relate to them on a personal level. And we think that people who go to the extent on going onto a public TV show and showing their huge bodies on those TV show are willing to go to those lengths to be healthy. And we think that's a really uplifting story for the people watching the show.

We think that people do not have to go on the show or they don't have to watch it. It does not infringe of their rights if they are uncomfortable by pressing the off button. These shows provide positive stories. They told us that real people are exploited because of their body image and all this stuff.

If this is the case, then why is the affirmative team not banning Australia's Next Top Model? A show where many, many people watch it to be like, ugh, I'm so ugly, I'm not like the person on that show. Literally, so how much more damage than people who watch Biggest Loser. Biggest Loser makes people feel good about themselves.

The affirmative's model is not conducive to helping people's body image standards. In fact, The Biggest Loser and other shows like that are entertaining, decent shows which promote good body image and promote normalization of this kind of attitude. And the thing that you can do it, you can lose weight. OK.

I have a minute and 10 seconds left, so I'm going to talk about my final issue, it is basically the freedom of programming and why even if every, single thing, every little bit of thing we told you about the practical material on our side of the case today didn't exist, why the opposition can still not prove their burden.

Because that [? verba ?] of a show being unethical to ban is not The Biggest Loser, right? The stuff we ban on TV, like extreme gore, extreme nudity, and dark scenes. They told us that just because someone is offended or hurt or the show's crass and it's judgey. Have you ever watched the Bolt Report?

I don't know about you, but I think there are a lot of offensive shows on TV that are not banned. There are a lot of offensive shows that are allowed. And we think that the bar is extremely high if you're not allowing a program in prime time. And, in this particular example, weight loss programs are apparently worse than Quentin Tarantino movies, who are restricted after 9:00 PM. But apparently, weight loss programs can not be shown at all because they're so harmful.

It's so harmful watching people try their best to be healthier, it's so harmful watching people do whatever they can to make their body better, and it's so harmful watching people try hard to achieve their goals. It is not very hard for me to think I'm proud to oppose today. Thank you.

The adjudication panel will now retire to consider their verdict.

Well, first and foremost, the entire panel would like to extend our congratulations to all six speakers and their team advisers, both for making it this far. Could you take a quick glance at the back of your program, you'll see how many teams they've gotten past to get to this point, but also for giving us an absolutely cracking grand final here today. And we'll give them another round of applause for that.

As is custom, we'll start with a few pieces of feedback before getting into the actual adjudication. Although we agree this was an absolutely sensational debate, we think one thing that both teams could improve on was separating out the way in which they thought their arguments would play out for the contestants themselves and for the viewers at home.

We think at times, those arguments tended to fuse together, and there are some different dynamics the teams could've explored as to whether they would play out. Differently, for those two stakeholders, or in similar ways. And secondly, we thought that although humor was very well deployed by a lot of speakers in this debate, it's important to bear in mind that it's never a substitute for rebuttal. So tell the joke and then provide the rebuttal afterwards.

And I don't want to pick on the third negative, but we should clarify because there's a lot of debaters is in the room, that at seven minutes 50, you have 10 seconds left and a little bit of leeway, not a minute and 10 seconds left. For future reference. All right.

So the adjudicators agreed about a number of things in this debate. We agreed it was fantastic, and we agreed about the result, and we agreed that there were probably three issues that decided it. The first was quite a small one. What is the level at which the state should intervene in what was dubbed freedom of programming. The second was to what extent do the programs encourage healthier lifestyles in terms of weight loss. And thirdly, is there too great a emphasis on weight loss that creates other health problems in our society in terms of body image.

On that first question about whether the state should intervene. The first affirmative came out and told us this was kind of an embodiment of a sense of warped priorities. This was with money that could go elsewhere to Australian film or to campaigns that promoted weight lost in more effective ways.

The negative quite rightly and quite quickly pointed out that it wasn't government money that was going to these resources. And the second negative defended the use of TV as a medium to reach more people more quickly in terms of weight loss as a priority. So even if it was money going to TV, it was money well spent in terms of their viewership and the time slots they occupied.

The bigger clash here was a clash about whether it was unethical to engage in these particular programming, clashing with the idea of freedom of broadcasting. The neg told us the threshold for the state intervening was relatively high. Things have to be really, really violent or offensive in some way before we banned them, and that these shows simply did not meet that threshold. They were not as bad as Tarantino films.

The affirmative came back and said well, the test was not necessarily that, it was whether it was unethical. And then we heard the idea developed at third affirmative in particular, but could have had a bigger place in the affirmative case, that these shows were in some way exploitative or humiliating of the contestants that participated in them.

We thought, to that extent it was fair enough for the third negative to come back and say those people had opted into those shows, or that didn't necessarily deal with the particular argument that there was something wrong about sitting at home and enjoying watching that particular humiliation. Both teams largely agreed though that this debates should turn on whether it actually made people healthier.

So we move on to the second question. In terms of healthier lifestyles, the affirmative told us a couple of things that meant that these shows were unlikely to promote healthier lifestyles. They told us the incentives of the show were not aligned with those health goals. They were in fact commercial programs designed to make so much money. So they picked contestants not on suitability for weight loss but on their character. That they tried to bring in as much advertising revenue as possible. And that to that extent, there was a problem with these programs. And that eliminated people in the form of competition.

The affirmative were happy to carry that burden and say, well, that was part of the way these shows worked, but it didn't mean that entertainment was mutually exclusive from weight loss. We thought a fair portion of the material brought to us by the first negative stood at the end of the debate as to why they show were likely to encourage weight loss. One was to do with the narrative arc.

That people could see people with a kind of before and after shots, but watch all the stages in between to see them go, as the second negative pointed out, not necessarily from obese to rake thin, but from obese to a little bit pudgy but happier. We thought that was a fair enough narrative arc for them to follow.

The second thing they told us was these people were relatable. They were everyday Australians, they were the kind of Joe citizen that people could see themselves engaging in. And even if they didn't need to lose 50 kilos, they might go out and try and lose the 10 that they needed to lose.

And finally, they told us that it combats the idea that there's a magic solution to weight loss. When people are trying to sell you pills that might help you with weight loss, these shows put in the idea that there was a lot of hard exercise involved, and that was a realistic portrayal of what weight loss would look like.

We thought there was some good responses from the affirmative. To say that some of those effects were limited. That was there any every proof from the affirmative that people did actually put their packet of chips down and go out. The affirmative also wanted to rely on this kind of empirical argument, that Australia was still an increasingly obese country and that this show had been airing for 10 years.

We think it was fair, probably, for the negative to point to the fact that there were tendencies in the show that meant the people would be less fat. And probably, the relative statistical comparison was were it not for the showing of Biggest Loser, would we be fatter still. And I thought the neg gave us enough reasons to suggest that people would lose weight as a consequence of these shows, even if the benefit to the contestants themselves might be limited in some circumstances, as the Big Kev example showed.

The final question in this debate was well, then do we put too great a emphasis on weight as a metric of health. Does this create a problematic body image problem, which is an issue which would mean that we should justify banning these shows. We thought there was some really good affirmative material here. That the way in which they portray those back stories that the negative wanted to rely as humanizing was actually quite problematic. That they created the idea that the only way people got fat was by eating whole tubs of ice cream at home. And that kind of distorted the causes of weight loss.

That it created the idea that it was somehow acceptable for personal trainers to chastise and humiliate people as a means and a step in the process of losing weight. And that put a whole emphasis on being thin at the consequence of a more holistic view of health. That it was quite possible for people to be a little bit overweight, happy in their bodies, and they shouldn't be ashamed of that.

We thought there were a number of responses from the negative that were quite good. The first was to say that we shouldn't underestimate the scale of the problem Australia has with obesity. That the problems and the links and the risks, even in the estimates of the third negative of highering chances of heart disease or diabetes were serious problems.

That the people watch the show not for the trainers but for the contestants. So the take home message they took was that you could be healthier if you were just a little bit less overweight, and that you didn't necessarily need to be as muscly or as thin as those trainers. And finally, we accepted the second negative's substantive that were you to remove these shows, the impact on the kind of emphasis on fitness in our society would be marginal.

That to that extent, there were heaps of shows like Australia's Next Top Model that still created that idea that thin was good and that banning these shows wouldn't fix that particular problem. So at the end of this debate, the panel were convinced we shouldn't ban these shows. We congratulate the negative team.

A team member of Killara will now congratulate the winners.

We'd like to thank North Sydney Boys for such a great debate today. And also for coming so far to debate and winning today. And we hope to see you in the future.

A member of the winning team will now respond.

I think today was a very interesting debate with a very interesting topic. And for that, I'd like to thank the opposition for giving us such a high level debate, which we really enjoyed and we felt like we got a lot out of that. I'd also want to thank everyone here for watching, especially the teams that haven't gone so far in this competition, but still are willing to watch and learn. And I'd also like to thank all the students from our school, who took time out of their school and sacrificed their school time in order to come to this debate.

I'd also like to thank all the people who organized this competition. Like Lloyd, everyone who organized PDC. The teachers, the coaches, Dr. [INAUDIBLE] and Miss [? Powell ?] for coming in person to watch this. And I'd also like to thank my teammates for helping us get through this. And especially I'd to thank [? Will Shapiro ?] who is also a teammate of our team but couldn't come today because of certain reasons. So, thank you, everyone.