UDITHA JITH: Commemorative events are never critical. They're never unbiased or educational. They're always emotionally charged events, patriotic events, that focus on Australian soldiers that paid the ultimate sacrifice and nothing more. This is why commemoration of war is always detrimental and can never be productive. On our side, we stand for the stopping of commemoration.

We think this includes stop celebrating Anzac Day, for example, and like-minded events. We think this includes repurposing the war memorial for early educational and for un-objective purposes. And we think it also includes tearing down statues that promote the glorification of warfare. We don't think it includes stopping educational campaigns and schools syllabuses because these in general promote an unbiased perception and we think that's probably a good thing to continue in the future.

Today, I shall be talking about the principal harms of commemoration and why it's for all state colleges. And my second point shall be talking about why our model is good for the soldiers. My second speaker shall be talking about the effects of our model international relations. Firstly, we think under the status quo commemoration is often equal to glorification of events. We have four main reasons for this.

Firstly, national pride-- we think that commemoration often fosters the idea of mateship and bravery. And we also think that it fosters the idea these are exclusive Australian values. We don't think many commemoration activities celebrate Turkish mateship or Turkish bravery, which is also been upheld in the same light as well. And we think by implying that it's something Australian soldiers did for the rest of the country is a negative thing because it endorses their action in a way that often leads us to forget the bad actions they did because at the end of the day, no sides are truly guiltless in war.

Secondly, we think it forces a huge emotional connection. When we have our family members still wearing their old grandfather's badges, for example, going to ceremonies we think these are huge events that happen to all citizens. And these are often emotionally connected events because there's so much tension, so much acknowledgment of what has happened. And we think this is a bad atmosphere because it also forces a biassed perspective where you are likely to endorse your grandfather's actions because they're your grandfather, regardless of the fact he might have killed 20 soldiers during the war.

Thirdly, we think commemoration also promotes a one sided perspective. We think it's a limited scope at commemoration events to acknowledge the sufferings of other country troops, even though this still happened under the war. And we also forget about other contributions. We only think that an objective perspective is good. We think that it's best for objective perspective to be gained. And this is only done throughout the history syllabus, rather than events where you're glorifying what has happened in the war before you.

And finally, fourth and finally, we think there's a huge rhetoric of heroic actions because when we spend so much time praising the ancient wars, we focus on the fact that three ANZACs defeated the Turkish to protect another ANZAC [inaudible]. We don't think about the 20 Turkish people that died on the soil protecting their homeland. And we think this contradicts our education, which implies that no one is a hero and all sides are equally to blame for war. And we think that's an inherently bad thing.

So why is this bad? We also have three reasons for this. So firstly, we think it fosters the idea of superiority. And that's particularly bad in a multicultural nation like Australia when we live with people that have ancestors that fall on the other side of warfare. So even if it's subtle, we think there's still going to be alienation that's happening when we have events that talk about how Australian troops defeated the Japanese. And that's particularly harmful if you're a Japanese person who feels like they can't relate to the Australian sentiment, or be part of the Australian culture.

And we think that the sacrifices that we promote are often going to detriment the other citizens of our country. We think this is going to lead to a situation where the society isn't cohesive. And we don't think that's a particularly good thing because we can't have truly beneficial discourse at the end of the day.

Secondly, we think it devalues our education because we have two conflicting ideas. Firstly it's this unbiased view that's promoted through history syllabuses of both Turkish and Australian troops fighting and both committing murders and both having sacrifices. And then we have this emotional patriotism, which we think human nature is more likely to be appealed to, and whether or not it's good or not. Because if you have events where we talk about the bloodshed and suffered by our poor Australian troops, we think people are going to be more convinced rather than a history teacher is talking about the same event in a boring fashion.

So thirdly, we think it prevents a critical view of military actions. We think it polarises a debate of Australian defence actions because if you glorify things, as we've previously shown, you're at the end of the day seen as a bad person if you go against this viewpoint in a public setting, If? You, for example, go to a commemoration activity and start talking about how ANZACs did bad things. And we've seen this in the case of Yassmin Abdel-Magied who acknowledged that lest we forget, but she also said there's a lot of bad things happening in Australia at [inaudible]. And she's immediately hit with racist comments, which shows that if you try to detract from the events even momentarily you will be criticised on the global scale.

And because it polarises debate, it doesn't allow us to examine events in a critical eye. And this is bad because it allows governments to have dubious actions to be more likely to fall under the reader because, for example, if a soldier killed an innocent Arab and kicked his body into a ditch, we don't see a huge public debate about this when there's limited attention in the media because we have this idea that the military is intrinsically good because of all these commemorations. And as public opinions change, we also would like a more public debate on why Australian actions are bad.

And we think we deserve this discourse for the establishment of acknowledgment of these issues. We think that communication between people have different opinions is always going to be a good thing because it allows for all the citizens of Australia to truly appreciate these events and become more well rounded, cohesive citizens. And at this point we've seen that commemoration always glorifies and detracts from how we actually view the debate about Australian's actions.

Secondly on the issue of why it's good for soldiers, we have three reasons for this. Firstly, we don't think there's a link between commemorative services and aid, because in commemorative services we often see the story of warfare, the battles and everything being promoted, rather than the actual aftermath of it. Secondly, we also think there's more of attention on the soldiers that paid the ultimate sacrifice rather than soldiers that steal overtime from poor and are suffering PTSD, which we think are still sick are really valuable stakeholders. And thirdly, we think there's huge money being spent into these commemorative activities that are showy and detract from the actual event that has happened.

Secondly, we don't think soldiers, especially modern soldiers, really want glorification because we think that instead of having millions of dollars being spent on a warship to commemorate Gallipoli, they'd probably rather have treatment for PTSD. And we've seen in the budget the returned soldiers don't actually have enough money or a huge scope for this.

So we have three reasons for why soldiers don't want to glorification. Firstly, because it has no link to aid. Secondly, they probably feel uncomfortable about having people celebrate the actions which they're still traumatised daily. Like if you killed someone in Iraq, would you think having events about talking how that actually was particularly good is going to help them in the future? And because they're also not happy with the funding that's getting from the ADF. And we think they have a critical view.

And what our model does is, we allow for quiet funding and acknowledgment. We allow for accurate respect. We allow for soldiers to voice a distaste with the ADF, which is not being done under the status quo. We have more effective help for soldiers, more comfort for soldiers, and it's beneficial to the most vulnerable stakeholders in this state.

So at the end of the day, we can see that the status quo doesn't help give true attention to stakeholders. And in our model, we're able to return all the most vulnerable stakeholders for the best. That's why we're proud to [inaudible].

[applause]

CHRISTOPHER PREDIC: The first negative speaker, Symeon Ziegler, will now begin their case.

SYMEON ZIEGLER: On the 100th anniversary of Gallipoli, when Australia was able to hold an official commemorative event in collaboration with Turkey it shared the sorrow, it shared the suffering, and it shared the remembrance. Together, we were able to remember and see the human cost and the impact the war has on individuals.

What do we stand for in today's debate? We stand for also ending the glorification of war. At this point we don't think that the glorification of war still exists, but at the point of time when it does we're fine to do that. We just want to still commemorate war. The second thing here is that we're fine also to teach objective history and the objective truth of what happened in schools, except we don't think that that's possible because we think the history is a matter of perspective and it's a matter of the biases that you're coming from.

So we don't feel that the model that the other team's trying to push forward of this objective truth that they can teach students about what happened. We don't think they can get there. But at the point of time when they can, then we're happy to do that too. Now, a few points of rebuttal which I'd like to point out. The first thing here is that they tried to say, oh, this increase is vilification towards people who fought on the other side. Empirically, we don't think this is true.

There is a huge Italian community not too far away from here in [inaudible], and we don't feel that those people are constantly vilified on the street for fighting against us in World War I and World War II. And we think the reason why this is true is because when we commemorate war, we're more able to see why people fought. We're more able to see that the people who fought for certain reasons, whether or not it was to defend their country or whatever, but was able to see that those reasons occurred for those other people who were fighting against us. And so we feel that this is why that vilification isn't going to happen.

The second thing here that they said was that we wouldn't be able to acknowledge when Australians had done wrong. But again, we don't feel that that's empirically true because we can see all the stuff that Australians have done wrong. We can see that the huge war and the huge problems that we did to the Japanese in internment camps and the problems that we did with Japanese prisoners war. But the second thing here is, we think that you're more likely to see when you've done wrong when you're able to remember and commemorate what your troops did because it's not going to feel as though it's a national attack constantly attacking you. What we feel it's going to be presented as, is it's going to be-- [feedback]

What we feel however, what it's going to be presented as instead, instead of it just being a constant attack and you're only getting the negatives, this way you're also able to get the positives and the negatives and you're able to get that more balanced view. And so society is likely to perceive this as better discourse and therefore more willing to listen to and respect and acknowledge the problems that Australians have done in war and why those were bad things. Two things I'm going to prove to you today. One, why we get a better understanding of the nuances of war, and two why it is important for us to recognise the soldiers.

Onto this first idea of why you get a better understanding of war. Now the opposition have greatly assumed that war is bad and war will always be bad. But we don't think that's the case. We think that sometimes it is necessary to go into a war. Wars like World War II, stopping fascism and stopping totalitarianism, we feel that those unnecessary wars that sometimes it's good for us to have.

We feel that wars like Vietnam can be like what the opposition wants, where they're always bad. But we feel that war has this capacity to be necessary. So when we're deciding on future wars we feel that is highly, highly important that the public and politicians have a detailed, nuanced understanding of what war is and where and how war can be necessary.

Four ways that this occurs when we commemorate war. The first thing here is, it brings war into the public sphere. We get a debate about what's happening and we get to hear about the events that occur rather than some co-opted narrative that I'll get on to later. The second thing is, we become more aware of the nuances. We're able to more critically think about war. We're able to compare the effects of World War II and the necessity of that with the necessity of something like Vietnam. And we're able to say no, perhaps we shouldn't have been there.

The second way that this goes through is it highlights the human cost of war. When you just learn about the history it's numbers, it's statistics, it's things which don't actually bring out that human element. To hear a million people died is very, very different to hearing, this person died. This is the story of what this one person did. This is the story of the unnamed soldier. These are the stories that humans are more able to connect to and have that mirror neuron empathy towards.

And so these are the ones that are actually going to be showing how the costs of what war has. We feel that commemorative events do show this at a much more extent. We've got stuff like the minute of silence. We've got stuff like the last quotes. We see this all the time at commemorative events.

But particularly here, you do not get this in history class at all. And that's why their side is never ever going to be able to highlight the human cost of war to the same extent that we would. Onto this third idea is that it creates discourse around war. We see this every Anzac Day. There's always protest students, always saying, hey, should we be celebrating this? And saying like, should we be going into wars?

This criticism, it's really good for our country because it allows for this public discourse and it builds a public understanding of war and it builds this public understanding for the necessity of war. And this fourth point here, which is really, really important, is that if the state doesn't talk about war then others will. Others will offer their own narrative as to what these wars were about and why we fought them. This is really, really harmful because when you've got people on the neo-nazis or the far right who are able to co-opt these narratives and say that the Iraq War was a holy war against Islam, this was always going to be much, much worse than if the state was able to say, this is what this war is about.

Then we feel that if it's able to be done by the state it's going to be more nuanced and a better understanding of, was this war a necessity to go into? Or was this war something which we probably shouldn't have been into? Was it a Vietnam or was it a World War II? So we feel that this needs to happen from the state from the outset. The state needs to be proactive here, issuing its own narrative before those other narratives are able to form and gain popularity.

Then we stand on the comparative, if the state doesn't put forward this narrative someone else will. And then the state will have to respond. But the problem with that is it's too late and that narrative is already out in the public sphere. And it's already been adopted by all these people. The thing of importance here is that it keeps the attention away from it being patriotic because otherwise if the state doesn't do it, it's going to become more and more patriotic as it's a much easier thing to go onto.

It means that we can't do those official events that they did with Turkey like I flagged in my introduction. And we felt that this leads to a better understanding of the nuances of war. But this was super, super important for three reasons. The first is it got a better understanding of the past and whether or not certain wars we've fought were good or bad. And this allows you to separate between the wars and the soldiers.

This I would say, look, we feel that Gallipoli was probably a mistake. But the people who went there did brave things and did acts of bravery. The second thing here is that we can acknowledge the mistakes that we did. When we talk about war and when we talk about the people who fought in them we can say, perhaps these people were lied to, perhaps. And so we can acknowledge that and move on.

Next thing here, and this is really, really important, and like the beginning here, it allows us to make better understandings about when we go into future wars and to be able to say, OK, let's balance our strategic interests with that human cost-- that human cost that we were able to get much, much better than the other team. And so that was why we thought it was importantly critical here to then value this commemoration.

The second reason is because it was so important to soldiers. We feel here that [inaudible] four important reasons. The first is, these people have made an important sacrifice to our country. They've given up their lives and their freedoms. The second thing here is that we ought to recognise acts of bravery more to recognise good things. We see this all the time with Autism Australia and Australia Day itself. And so we feel here that recognising things is something that we do quite often.

But we feel that commemoration is particularly important because the freedoms that we have here today are often quite because of the sacrifices that these people made. The freedoms that we have to have a democracy in Australia is because people went off and fought the Japanese in World War II. So we feel that was particularly, particularly important. But additionally, because these soldiers often had their rights restricted through conscription, through being waged by their government, we feel here then we have this obligation to remember that and recognise the efforts that they made and recognise the efforts they made in the way that is empathetic to them.

So that's why we feel it was always going to be more important to get a better understanding and better nuances of war. But it was also going to be better to our soldiers if we empathised completely [inaudible]. Thank you.

[applause]

CHRISTOPHER PREDIC: The second affirmative speaker, Isabella Matthews, will continue their case.

[applause]

ISABELLA MATTHEWS: Ladies and gentlemen, the negative team today gave a lot of material about how nuance is very important, which we found to be particularly confusing because commemorative events are about the furthest from nuance that you can get. What does Anzac Day look like here in Australia? We saw on the centenary of Anzac Day that millions of dollars were being poured into things such as massive warships in Sydney Harbour to commemorate these soldiers and to commemorate their actions.

And we think that this is inherently glorifying war because it's showing them that these actions were extremely important, that they were extremely significant, that they had such a big impact on our society and an impact that we should continue to celebrate today. Because by putting a massive warship in Sydney Harbour, you were essentially celebrating this act of war, this act of violence, and this act of hate. So now a few points in rebuttal.

First of all, I would like to address issues such as whether or not we can get an objective history and an effective public discourse with commemoration. So on the negative team today, they've told us that we need to teach objective history and that this happens most effectively with commemoration because you have public events where you can see the positive and negative of war and that allows for public discourse and criticism of Australia's misdoings in war which can then benefit us in future wars. However we think that this is inherently flawed. We think that you cannot have objective history with commemoration.

And we think this because of a few reasons. First of all, when you commemorate war you inherently have a biassed opinion towards it because you're only showing one perspective and one side of the story. And in Australia that is Australia's story, that is that our soldiers were heroes, that they were brave, that they made the ultimate sacrifice, and that the opposition was the enemy. And we think that when this is being shown in big public events such as marches with [inaudible] veterans parading down the street with their medals, or with their families with their medals, we only see this positive side and we are not actually enlightened as to the real events surrounding the war and the background of this war. And we've think that under our side, we get a much better and a much more objective understanding of history.

And we think that this is because we have history being taught in classrooms. We have the syllabus being prescribed by NESA, or the people who essentially understand how people need to be educated. And we think that when this happens we are unable to have a very good historical analysis of war and that this enables us to understand how war affects all stakeholders in all nations, not just in Australia and not just our returned veterans. And we think that this is actually far more beneficial for public discourse. And we think that this can allow for a more informed and a more educated understanding which can remove some of the biases that currently exist under our commemorative system.

And we think that in terms of future wars and in terms of what the negative team mentioned about history just being numbers and not acknowledging the human cost, we think that in history you can actually acknowledge the human cost extremely effectively because although history does deal with statistics and it does deal with numbers, it also deals with personal stories of events that happened in wars and things that were done and atrocities that were committed. And we think that we actually can gain a better and more in-depth understanding of these things through history when we have professional teachers who are learned in this area and who have a lot of education in this area teaching people. We think that we can gain a better understanding of the human cost, the material cost, and the economic cost of war.

And we think that this can then lead to more educated contributions to war in the future which the negative team was so insistent that we get. And we think that it's much more important that we have these coming from an educated foundation rather than from the events and the biassed rhetoric surrounding commemorative events.

So now on to more the idea of whether war is necessary and what's good for the soldiers and the people. So, the negative team today has said that war is necessary and that therefore we should-- like, this can be necessary sometimes and that therefore it's good to commemorate it. We think that yes, war can be necessary. But we think that just because it's necessary does not mean that it is good and does not mean that it is something that we can commemorate because even if you have to fight someone to stop them from invading your land, you still fought them, you were still in hatred of them, and you still committed a lot of murders against these people. And so we think that to commemorating this is inherently bad because, as I have shown to you and as my first speaker has shown to you, commemoration inherently glorifies war.

They also mentioned that soldiers are not constantly vilified and that they fought for reasons that through commemoration we can have a better understanding of the reasons soldiers went to war. However, we actually think that the commemoration allows for a more subtle sort of prejudice against people from other nations which I will go into further depth in my substantive. They also mentioned that some soldiers are conscripted into war. Therefore they are forced into it. No, they are conscripted into war and therefore it wasn't their choice and so we should commemorate them and commemorate their actions.

However, we think that conscription is actually one reason we should not commemorate war because we see that these soldiers are forced into doing something. It was not their choice and so why should we glorify these actions that were not the choice of these soldiers but were actually the choice of large institutions such as the government? And their specific actions were the choice of institutions such as the military, which as my first speaker has already proven to you can often be quite dubious and sometimes corrupt in situations such as war where the line between moral and immoral is often blurred. And so we think that conscription is not a viable reason to continue commemoration.

They also mentioned that shared suffering and remembrance in places such as Gallipoli is positive and only happens under commemoration. However, we think that if we stop commemorating war we can still have soldiers getting together and we can still have the more productive understanding of war through history as already mentioned. And we think that this will be more productive and will facilitate greater benefits such as funding for post-traumatic stress and things such as that. And so we think that we should stop commemorating war.

So now into my substantive, why commemorations bad for international relations. I have two reasons for this. First of all, why it's harmful for international relations and alliances, and second of all why it promotes racism. So under the first point, with commemoration it makes it a lot harder to both form alliances with new countries and also to break alliances with old countries that may be harmful. And there are several reasons for this. So first of all on to why it's difficult to break alliances with old countries.

So, as Australia we have a very long and rich history with nations such as Britain and nations such as America. We have very close ties with these countries. And we see that this is because of our close wartime alliances. We see that we have followed America into literally every single war since World War II.

And so we think that because we've constantly been on the side of America, constantly fighting evil and defeating the enemy, we think that it's very unlikely that Australia would ever stop our close alliances with this country even if they were bad for us. We think this is an extremely bad thing because in order to have a productive society and a productive international community you need to have leaders that are able to think objectively about what's going to best benefit these nations. But we see that because of commemoration, these views are clouded and you cannot have this objective stance.

And so now on to why it prevents us from forming new alliances. We think that with the constant rhetoric surrounding commemoration, we remember when we fought other people and when we hated them. And these are people like Turkey and Japan. And we think that even if we do not openly show hostility towards these nations today, there is still this subtle underlying message that could prevent us from drawing closer relationships with these nations that may benefit us in the future because we have seen them historically as the enemy which we are reminded of in commemoration. And so we think that this is bad for international stability and security.

Secondly on to why this promotes racism. We think there's a portion of the public who's patriotic and personally linked to past veterans. And they're more likely to be racist towards past war enemies with commemoration because it's mostly emotional rather than logical. And we think that this sustains and justifies racist views that come from ignorance and fear through commemoration because we're reminding people that these were their historical enemies. And so we think that this is extremely bad for our society because we do not want racism and we do not want to be promoting this in our multicultural society. So that is why we are proud to affirm.

[applause]

CHRISTOPHER PREDIC: The second negative speaker, Alex de Araujo will continue their case.

[applause]

UDITHA JITH: The mad titan Thanos said that the hardest choices require the strongest wills. And going to war is a choice that requires an incredibly strong will and a lot of thought. And even these guys conceded that often war is necessary to go into. We had to go into war to stop Hitler and the Nazis. That was an example of where it was clearly good to oppose that.

And given the potential ramifications of going into war and getting it wrong, or not going into war and getting it wrong, it is very important that we make the right decision. Now these guys have pointed to the example of Anzac Day marches and celebrations, but that is clearly saturated with images of people crying as the last post is played, a minute of silence at a dawn service in Gallipoli alongside Turkish soldiers as well, things lies the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. And obviously there is some celebration when we remember wars. That is obviously balanced with commemoration in a way which allows us to make the best decisions that we possibly can when forming alliances and when entering or not entering wars.

And ultimately, the fact that we were the side that made those better decisions was what swung this debate at this point in the debate in our favour. I will do four things in the speech-- three [inaudible] rebuttal, firstly on what this commemoration looks like, secondly what is the effect on its treatment of war, third what is its effect on soldiers, and then fourthly I'll have some substantive as to why commemoration creates positive national identity in response to their material about social disconnection.

Going to the first issue in rebuttal of what this commemoration looks like. They give us a number of reasons why this is actually glorification. The first is that it encourages purely national pride. But as Symeon told you through examples, it doesn't. We can give you the example of Turkey and dawn services in Gallipoli as examples of where Australian soldiers and Turkish soldiers stand together and commemorate the war together in a way which emphasises that they both experienced sacrifices, that it wasn't just one or the other.

And that isn't a unique example. There are other examples of this in other conflicts around the world. The second reason they give you is that this promotes a one sided perspective. Two responses-- one is, it just doesn't. It's often packed with historical information accompanying all of these marches, especially now when we understand our responsibilities as a global citizen, when there's a lot more information around and there's a lot more hubbub to all of these celebrations. And there's also, we emphasise the conditions for all involved as opposed to just Australians.

Secondly, even if these events themselves only emphasise the Australian perspective, there is history books and other sources which also provide a wealth of information about the conditions that other countries faced. Note that most of these things are actually mandatory in school syllabuses, so you're probably going to get a lot of knowledge about the conditions that other people faced. And then onto their third reason why it's just glorification as to things like personal connections and heroism.

Two responses-- one, Symeon gave you a number of examples which I went into in my intro as to why it's not just talking about the heroism of these soldiers. It's talking about the atrocities of war. We have lines upon lines of people who died in World War I at the Australian War Memorial. We have heaps and heaps of opportunities to say that war is abhorrent, that war is terrible, and it's something which we should really think twice about before going into again. And ultimately the coverage of war something which is accompanied with the sentiment, please don't let this happen again.

And that is something which clearly leads people to believe that war is wrong. So it's not emphasising heroism. But secondly, it celebrates people without celebrating their actions. And what I mean by that is, it says that it was very brave of people to fight in wars. It doesn't say that what they did was necessarily correct or morally just. And it's important that we make that distinction because it means that we're not legitimising a morally [? irrepressible ?] actions. We're only legitimising the bravery of these people to go into war in the first place.

Note also, Symeon gives you compelling factual characterisation of the poignant nature of this commemoration. And what this means is this commemoration is largely regretful rather than glorifying. That is very important when we look at the rest of this debate because these guys rely on that characterisation for pretty much all of their points. And when we knock that down and we tell you that this debate is about a commemoration which is regretful, it is poignant, these guys don't really have a leg to stand on. But even if they do, I'm going to deal with those responses to those points directly.

Second issue on what is the effect of treatment on war, they tell you that we prevent discourse on military actions. Two responses-- first is what Symeon tells you, which is that we are the side that gets more discourse because we keep these events in the public eye. We point to things like the Anzac Day controversy as an example of that. Symeon went through that logic and that wasn't responded to. But secondly, even if we do lose some public discourse, we think military organisations are capable of monitoring their own behaviour through things like training, through things like government inquiries. And ultimately that is a self-correcting thing which would probably get out if they did anything wrong.

We then tell you that commemoration increases our understanding of war. We tell you that we can understand history and that people become more knowledgeable. We tell you that we make bad decisions going into war. And these guys concede that often war is necessary. We point to the example of World War II as I did my intro.

And that is a huge concession because it means that often we do need to go into wars. Even if wars are good, they are still necessary and they're still morally right to go into if we're stopping a bigger atrocity. And if we're the side that is more likely to make a good decision on whether to go into that war, we are hugely ahead in that regard. And the third thing we tell you is that we can fight against groups which are co-opting those narratives for malevolent purposes. Again, not responded to.

So ultimately, we've made bad decisions going into wars. On alliances, however, these guys tell you that we reduce our likelihood of making the correct decisions in alliances. That's just empirically not true. We oppose leaders, not countries. We oppose political movements, not countries. Japan is one of our largest export sources. We're incredibly close to Germany politically.

What this means is, we don't necessarily inherently oppose a country. We only oppose the leaderships that own them at that particular time. Obviously we would oppose Nazis but we wouldn't oppose Germans at the moment. There is a very, very clear distinction there. So we are still obviously able to make decisions about alliances in a strong way.

So we were the side that made the best decisions. That is very important because of the huge consequences of making the wrong decisions. On to the third issue in this debate, on what is the effect on soldiers? They tell us that this is worse for soldiers because they don't want this commemoration.

Two responses-- one, this analysis relies on these events being celebrations rather than commemoration. We told you that they're commemoration rather than just celebrations of bad actions so that's important. But secondly, these guys absolutely do want commemoration because they understand more than anybody that war is terrible. They've often been conscripted or drafted into a terrible conflict.

They've seen terrible things. And they want people in their country to know that these things are terrible and that these conflicts are things that you probably shouldn't be going into. That is something which a soldier probably wants because they don't want people to be in the same position that they are. But then we give you a number of benefits to soldiers. The first is that we remember them when they should be remembered.

They tell you that being a soldier is bad. That was very ignorant. Often being a soldier is something you're forced into and you still deserve recognition for your bravery. Even if you choose to be a soldier, you still deserve recognition for your huge sacrifices. Men have laid down their lives so that we can sit in this hall now in a free society. Ultimately, that is something which we should value.

And we also give you benefits to current soldiers. They feel like their country's behind them. They're more likely to take risks and lay down their lives for the good of their country. They're more likely to have good morale when fighting. These things weren't responded to. These things are very important.

So ultimately, we will decide the benefit of soldiers and we made better decisions in conflict. My point in this speech will be why commemoration creates a positive national identity. Note that this response to their material about social acceptance. When we fight wars, we fight for a common set of values-- things like freedom, dignity, and justice. And when we commemorate wars, we also commemorate these values. Now this commemoration allows us to emphasise the importance of these values and protect them.

Two examples here-- the first is a neo-Nazi who recently went on Sky News. A powerful argument against him was that our grandfathers didn't fight against the Nazis for his identity to be allowed to spread in this ideology to be allowed to spread to countries like the UK and Australia. So it stopped those kind of harmful narratives. Secondly, when black athletes took a knee during the national anthem of an NFL game, they could point to this as being an extremely American thing rather than the criticism of being un-American because they were exhibiting the free speech and freedom that their ancestors fought for. And this is incredibly beneficial in fighting against injustice.

But secondly, this also helps create a positive national identity because it encourages that we can unite in commemorating these wars regardless of race. It's incredibly inclusive and you feel like you belong. It also often emphasises the disproportionate contributions of disadvantaged communities as something regrettable. For example, indigenous regiments often marching separately on Anzac Day to emphasise their efforts fighting for a country that continue to oppress them. And that is ultimately something which is cathartic for these groups to feel their contribution and disadvantage is being recognised.

But it also promotes inclusively because wider society can empathise with these individuals and it encourages social progress in a way which is incredibly convincing and outweighs the kind of abstract harms that they've pointed to. So to conclude this speech panel, it may be true that the hardest choices do require the strongest wills. But when commemoration of war increased our understanding of war and made it more likely we'd make better decisions, it provided soldiers with recognition for their sacrifices, and fosters a positive national identity around the world, it doesn't take too strong a will to see that Sydney Boys are ahead in this debate.

[applause]

CHRISTOPHER PREDIC: The third affirmative speaker, Laura Charlton, will now conclude their case.

[applause]

LAURA CHARLTON: Adjudicator, second negative thought he did something really clever when he said sometimes war is necessary, like that was something that our team had ever disputed. We understand that sometimes war is necessary. We understand that soldiers aren't evil people who go out and kill people on other sides because they want to kill people.

We know that soldiers are conscripted. We know that war is sometimes required to make sure that a massive genocide of Jewish people never occurs again. But we think that the commemoration of war doesn't look at it this way. It doesn't say, war is a necessary evil that is really awful.

It says that lots of people died and this is really sad, but look at all these good things that happened. Look at the way that Australia came out on top. Look at how we managed to create this idea of mateship and honour that is exclusive to ANZACs. And that is why the commemoration of war is always a bad thing.

Three issues in this speech, the first being what commemoration looks like, the second being the detriments of this kind of commemoration towards the public and towards education, and the second being the impact of our model on soldiers and how they react to commemoration itself. So onto this first idea of what commemoration looks like. We get a lot of material on this from second negative saying that what commemoration looks like is a dawn service in Gallipoli where Turkish soldiers and Australian soldiers stand side by side.

Ladies and gentlemen, how many times has something like that occur on Australian shores? How many times at a small Anzac Day ceremony in Wollongong do you see a large group of Turkish soldiers and a large group of Australian soldiers standing together for the last post? We think that actually never happens. We think that's a very rare occurrence that only happens if you have the ability to go over to Gallipoli and experience that there. We think that this was actually quite an isolated example that doesn't point to anything other than, if you have enough money to go to Gallipoli, if you are a soldier that goes to Gallipoli, you can understand bad things happened to both sides.

We think in regional Australia, where there is a predominantly white Australian community, they don't have Turkish people standing with them. They don't have Japanese people standing with them. They don't get those benefits. That's a majority of experiences and that's why this model still stands.

The second idea they brought was that you get historical info at commemorative events. We have the response to this. We have two responses, the first being we don't think that when you go to an Anzac Day event you are reading information pamphlets about the experience of Japanese people in prisoner of war camps. We don't think you're reading about the amount of Turkish people that died protecting Gallipoli. We think you are listening to emotionally charged stories about how Australia got through this massive task. We think you are hearing about the way that Australian soldiers were gunned down on the beach but how they didn't let that stop them and they were so powerful and brave.

We don't think you're looking at a balanced idea and weighing it up thinking, hmm, maybe Turkish people also suffered. That's an important idea. We think it's too much of an emotionally charged arena to do that in. And so we don't see that that actually happens.

The second response being that we think that this historical information comes most effectively from an education system that is not tainted by glorification and commemoration. We think that as long as these two things coexist, you cannot have an effective education system where it is saying that sometimes Australian soldiers did bad things because that is immediately counteracted by the commemorative service that is saying Australian soldiers are heroes, respect them always. So we think that's why the commemoration often does not look like it's giving you historical info.

And lastly on this idea that commemorative services aren't just saying that war is good. We never stated that commemorative services are saying war is good, like we should try and go into all future wars that we possibly can because it's always a good experience. We do think that commemorative services obviously say war is bad. We just don't think they offer that nuanced perspective and we don't they give logical reasons. We think they actually make people see soldiers as a good honourable service and it actually encourages people to look up to what the Austrian Defence Force is currently doing.

So we think that at the end of this issue what commemorative services actually look like is the glorification that we spoke about at first, is the patriotism that we spoke about at first, is the alienation of Japanese Australians, of Turkish Australians, who feel as though they are being vilified because they go into a service in regional New South Wales, they go into a service in a predominately white area of Sydney where they are being told that Australian soldiers all made the ultimate sacrifice, that they are the definition of mateship, that they are the definition of honour. And that there is no alternate ideas about how other people suffered at the hands of Australian soldiers.

So onto the second idea of, how does commemoration affect the public? So what we hear from first negative here is this idea that we critically think because of commemoration. Commemorations the reason why we have the nuance of war. We have a couple of responses to this. The first being that we think that commemoration again, as we told you at first, which we think still stands in this debate, is always a kind of glorified arena as I spoke about in my first issue.

We think that second of all, we don't think that commemorative service tells you about the experience of prisoners of war. We don't think that a commemorative service tells you about the experience of Japanese soldiers. We think that even if it did, you still get that on our side of the house in probably a much more effective way. And that's why we still come out on top on this issue.

The second idea we got told which is one of the main points of their case, was that history classes don't offer the emotional side which means that they can't be effective. We have a couple of responses to this as well. We think that first of all, history classes can be incredibly emotional. We think if you do a case study about two soldiers on opposite sides of the same war, one who was on the Turkish side of Gallipoli, one who was on the Australian side of Gallipoli, if you look into the background of both of those soldiers, if you see that they both had children, they both had mothers, they both had sisters, and they both died in incredibly painful ways on the muddy battlefields of Gallipoli, that's an incredibly emotional experience but it's paired with facts, it's paired with balanced debate about both sides of the war, and that's always more effective than going to a commemorative service and only hearing the idea of this Australian soldier and ignoring the fact that there was a 15-year-old boy fighting for Gallipoli going through the exact same thing, which is what you get in a history classroom because that's what the government wants to teach.

We think that even if we don't get this emotional side in a history class, and which obviously we do, we think that probably a purely logical approach is better than an illogical approach that's been saturated by emotions like patriotism, like national pride, like the idea that Australians are the definition of mateship and courage and honour. So we think that ultimately we pull ahead there because history classes are beneficial.

The second major idea we get here is that we get better discourse because we put these issues in the public eye. We gave you lots of reasons down the bench why the opposition do not get better discourse. And that is, they polarise the discourse. The glorification of these events means that if you say one thing against it, like Yassmin Abdel-Magied did, you become the victim of racist, violent, angry responses.

You get shut down immediately without people giving you any idea, without people actually engaging in that debate, because people say oh, you hate the troops. You think the troops are evil. You don't want to celebrate the troops at all. You must be a bad person. I'm just going to call you a crazy Muslim and then ignore the debate entirely.

That's what happened Yassmin Abdel-Magied and we don't think she's an isolated case. We think that most people who speak out against events like Anzac Day, who even offer an alternate perspective, get this kind of polarised debate which isn't effective at all. And we don't know why the opposition want to encourage that kind of thing.

We think that second of all our model actually gives people like Yassmin Adel-Magied the option to talk because no longer is the debate centred around the idea of, Australia is a brilliant military power and we did a lot of good things. It's centred around the idea of, war is a bad experience. People on both sides do bad things. Let's look at both these sides and decide on what we think about this debate.

We think that means that the discussion that is in the public sphere is far more respectful, it's far more productive, and it means that we actually get a kind of discourse that is effective rather than just offensive. And we think that's really important and something we'd always stand for. And the final idea under this point was the idea that we oppose leaders and not countries. We think that that's the entire reason that we should get rid of the idea of commemoration, because commemoration blurs that critical thinking. You don't go to a commemorative service and people don't say, remember we don't hate Japanese people we just heat XYZ Japanese military leaders.

You don't get that. You get the idea that these Australians died at the hands of Japanese soldiers. That word, Japanese, becomes definitive of how those soldiers died. That's why it fosters that kind of, non-inclusively and that's why education is always more effective because you learn about these figures with more information and it isn't blurred by that idea of emotional rhetoric that you get in these arenas of commemoration.

Second of all on the idea that the benefits of this has on soldiers who are probably the most important stakeholder in this debate, we pull ahead here because we give you a lot of analysis as to why soldiers don't necessarily want to be seen as heroes. We feel that if a soldier comes back scarred and emotionally destroyed from killing another human being and then someone comes up to them and says, well done you served our country because you killed this person, they're going to feel incredibly conflicted because if they did do a good thing by killing this person, why do they still have nightmares about it? Why do they still suffer from PTSD about it? How many times do you hear a soldier say, I'm not a hero, I was just doing my job. I was just doing what my superiors told me to do.

We think what commemoration does is it removes that idea. It doesn't allow soldiers to have this kind of nuanced discussion about what the ADF is and what it stands for because all that gets said is that all soldiers are heroes, all soldiers do good things, even if they killed someone that was still an inherently morally good action because they did it for our freedom. So we think that at the end of this debate, because we pull ahead on the issue of benefits for soldiers and because we've proved that commemoration is always disrespectful and never productive, we're very proud to oppose.

[applause]

CHRISTOPHER PREDIC: The third negative speaker, Guy Suttner, will conclude their case.

[applause]

UDITHA JITH: Ladies and gentlemen, education is fantastic. It allows you to think critically about issues and to understand both sides. And that is why we fully intend to teach children about war. The difference between the two sides in this debate is that we can combine that with commemorative events and what they do is allow you to understand the emotional harm of war.

Because a textbook can show you some statistics or a bit of writing by this person. What it can never do is bring you down to Anzac Day where there is a bunch of veterans who are standing during the minute's silence crying for their fallen friends who died in the war, remembering the home that came to them. Because when you're in that moment, when you can see those actual real living people who are suffering, then you understand a harmful war can be, then you understand how it actually harms the individual rather than a paragraph on the page. And the reason that we are able to combine those two is, it ensures us that we have the best education about war and ultimately make the best decisions, which is so, so important.

I'm going to prove to you two main things in the speech. First of all, we get a better perception of war on our side. And secondly, why we improve the lives of soldiers. So first onto to the perception of war. Now, what we keep telling you here is that we need to have a balanced understanding of war.

We don't want to glorify it. We want to understand that it's necessary, and that sometimes people need to go to war and do bad things for the good of everyone. We told you a couple of ways on how this occurs. We told you that ceremony commemorative events highlight the human cost of war. There's things lies the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, the minute's silence, the playing of the last post, walls and the Australian War Memorial which list all the people that have died.

Those are all things which are very powerful and explain the amount of people that have suffered as a result of war. We also told you very crucially that there's difference between war and the people who fight within it. That we know that Gallipoli was a disaster, but we can recognise the people who fought in it around those beaches were very, very brave. And now what that team tried to tell you here was that, well, that encourages a really harmful view of the world because now you think that those people are all really good because they did something that was brave, which is not true. You can understand that someone did something that was brave and selfless and good, but the cause that they fought for was bad or the thing that they did wasn't great.

And that is why you can, for example, condemn a policy of going to fight in Vietnam because that was a bad war while at the same time understanding the soldiers who did that by themselves were good people. We gave you the example of how we have commemorative assemblies with Turkey, for example, and how we can join together and agree and fight well, and commemorate this event well. And they just said, well, why don't Turkish people come to Australia? Which ignores the obvious example that this Gallipoli happened in Turkey, not Australia. So why would they come here?

But secondly, more importantly, that this ignores the entire point here. Just by saying this one example isn't true doesn't rebut the entire point. We can give you other examples of people going to Germany, and French and German people going to the Somme and going to the memorial there and saying that what we fought for was quite bad but the people who died here should be recognised because their sacrifices were important.

Now as I said previously, I've talked about education. Education is just insufficient because it doesn't give you the emotional impact of war and that is so important. Till you understand that war actually harms people you're not likely to acknowledge why it's something that needs to be held very, very-- seen as very dangerous, only to be used in the worst circumstances. But now, the most important thing under their side, the most important point that they used, was this point of patriotism, why this encourages this really patriotic outlook in the world.

Now, we have a couple of examples where that just is not true. Firstly, because you incorporate people from Turkey, French and German people can look together. We have a massive trading partner in Japan. We're friends with Germany. It is just that we are able to bridge those boundaries because we see that political leaders did bad things, that a Nazi was a terrible person doesn't mean that we should say that all Germans are bad.

Secondly, that we acknowledge our mistakes. The government, for example, when it apologised to the stolen generations showed that it can do certain things and in reality they were bad and apologise to them. The US government has apologised for the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam. And there's many instances like this where governments are able to look back and withstand their actions. And [inaudible] follows through in these commemorative events.

Lastly in what has been said here was that, well, people who speak out against this movement get vilified. And they gave the example of Yassmin Abdel-Magied. Now, what I think this shows, the fact that they were able to bring out this one example, this one specific person, shows that that incidence was more likely to the fact that she was Muslim and got racist abuse like that just the same way that Waleed Aly gets racist abuse, not the fact that she opposed the Anzac day because tonnes of people also oppose the Anzac Day and don't get that type of criticism. And we also just think that just because some people criticise her on racial grounds, there's always going to be some racists in Australia but the majority supported her and a majority of people understood her comments. And we think that shows that people can actually use these commemorative events to have a balanced view of the world.

Lastly, and this is really important, we told you a point how when the government did make narratives about Gallipoli you allow other people to come in and do that. So, for example, in America a guy like Steve Bannon come in and say that, well, the war in Iraq was a holy war between Christians and Muslims. And that's really bad because it's really divisive rhetoric in society which harms certain groups. And we got no response that under their side. That is the exact reason why you need government to step in and say, this is about democracy, it's about freedom, it's about the people who died here and establish those values as important, which is the point that my second speaker told you to no response.

It is also saying that very, very important, that can be used to, example, fight harmful movements at home. So when a neo-Nazi goes on Sky News you can say that that is not the type of ideology that we've fought against in World War II just so can come into our news platforms and talk. So, what was quite clear here is that the perception of war under our side is only likely to be balanced focused on the human cost of war while also acknowledging that sometimes wars are unnecessary and that we have to do them even though they may cause some level of harm because the greater harm of not fighting the Nazis is even worse.

Now the benefits of this are really, really important. It was Abe who said better we be able to understand our history rather than let it be forgotten and be co-opted by Nazis or other racist people. But secondly, what is really, really important, was it allows us to take better decision making about war because the harm of not going into war when we should have gone into war, because all wars are so bad according to that side, could be disastrous. In World War II that could have been Japan invading Australia and enslaving us and forcing us into this totalitarian society. So because of that, it's important to be able make the best decisions about war that we understand the circumstances. And because our side was able to prove that that was likely to happen when you had these commemorative events because they showed both sides, that was so, so important.

Very quickly, I want to talk about alliances because they say, well, you're going to have no alliances with countries that you fought against. As my second speaker pointed out, we have alliances with Japan, we have alliances with Germany. That is pretty untrue. Let's go on to the second point in this debate, which is about soldiers. Now what we told you here was that it's important to commemorate these people not only because the soldiers, because they went into war and they suffered so much we ought to remember their struggle. And secondly because of the families of these people, because if you see your son go to war and die and then you have a whole parade that shows just how important that person was and the sacrifice that they made, you actually feel a lot better about the decision that they made.

And the only response they told you here was, well, these veterans don't really care. I think that is, one, really assertive. I think veterans do care about being commemorated, because the reason you go to join the war is because you feel like you're in a fight for your country. You want to be proud and you want to fight for a certain set of ideals. You want to see that reflected back in society when they say, thank you, your sacrifice didn't go unnoticed.

And the second thing they wanted to say here was that, well, money is going to be taken to these events and diverted from PTSD funding. Firstly, these ventures don't cost that much money. But secondly, we know that yes, it costs some money to have Anzac parade. But when it helps veterans deal with their loss and deal with their struggle because they know that that was important and is reflected in society, that is really helpful to them. Also, they said you're going to get less funding for things like PTSD care. I'm going to give you a couple reasons why that is completely untrue.

Actually, under their side they get much less care for veterans. Firstly, because when they create this narrative that that side wants to perpetuate which is that, well, all soldiers are bad because they did these crimes, that means society is likely be less sympathetic to these veterans and less likely to help them. Means you're going to get less funding. Secondly, when people are out in public and having an Anzac parade, it creates a new cycle of caring for veterans and making sure that their needs are met, means likely to get more funding. And lastly, if you don't know the emotional impact of a commemorative event, then you don't see the actual harm people have suffered through so you don't actually help them and you don't actually give them the funding they need.

So we think on under our side, A, we help these individuals and their families because you get these commemorative assemblies, because you see these people actually having their struggle celebrated. And secondly, you know that when they suffer, when they have PTSD, when they've [inaudible], they're going to get better care under our side. So that side says that soldiers are so important in this debate, meaning we get better care for them. So because A, we get a better perception of war which translates into better decision making about war, and because we get better ideas about soldiers it is so, so important that we keep commemorative dates like Anzac Day.

[applause]

CHRISTOPHER PREDIC: Eden Blair will now deliver the adjudication and announce the results of this debate.

[applause]

EDEN BLAIR: Thank you. And I think we can all agree it is a truly exceptional debate. These debaters are representatives of all of New South Wales and also I think importantly of public school speakers and how amazing they are and how thoughtfully they are able to talk about such complex ideas. All of the adjudicators thought this was an incredibly strong debate from both sides and we were absolutely lucky to have seen it. So another round of applause.

[applause]

That said, there does have to be a winner. And I am going to keep you in a little bit of suspense because I know if I tell you too soon, then maybe you won't listen to all of my reasons. And I really do want you to. There's three issues that this debate has come down to. The first is about, what does the commemoration of war look like?

And we heard powerful arguments from both sides. From affirmative, we hear about how war can be glorified and how, especially throughout Australia where populations are majority white, that is celebrated and commemorated among white people in a way that glorifies the war and is exclusive to Australia and claims that Australia has exclusive ownership over ideas like mateship and honour. However, we do think that this was quite effectively rebutted by team negative. They tell us that some of the most powerful and public examples of war commemoration look at it through a lens of internationalism.

The second thing they say is that war is not necessarily about celebrating Australians or celebrating the race of white Australia, but rather about the human cost of war. It's about remembering a profound and horrible sacrifice. And the last thing they say is that it's important and principally important to remember those soldiers. So what they give us is a vision of commemoration where it is possible for it not to be so Australia first. And that idea that this is possible and the state is able to shape that type of commemoration colours the whole rest of the debate.

We have two other issues in this speech, or in this adjudication rather. The first is about, what's the impact of this perception of war on the rest of Australian society? What we hear is that perhaps the impact of this debate, and of the war commemoration, is that it changes the view of who is truly Australian. That if you see a historic enemy as your current enemy, it furthers further racism. This was one of the strongest points from team affirmative. We don't think it was ever fully rebutted by team negative.

What they tell us is, we're able to continue to have economic ties with our historic enemies. But there is racism that continues in our society. However, the way they do manage to mitigate this idea is by saying that it would get even worse if we stopped commemorating war. They say that if we allow non-state actors to shape our view of war as opposed to state actors, this racism would get even worse.

The second issue is about whether or not the debate can happen better on either side, because both teams recognise we need to talk about war and about when war is good and bad. We hear that debate cannot be productive from team affirmative and that people get shouted down for opposing wars because they do not respect soldiers. From negative what we hear is that we're able to see a human cost, a profound human cost, from war and that that debate is important to have. And that's where the first issue impacts the second.

Because team negative has shown us that the emotional impact of commemoration is not a bad thing, but it's actually an important element of what commemoration should be about, they are able to win this second issue as well. So, here in the end of the second issue we've seen that it does shape Australian society to be less racist to have a commemoration of war. And secondly, that it makes us think more clearly about when we enter future wars.

And then lastly, we have a question of whether this is mutually exclusive with a good education system. And at the end, I think they made some clear arguments on both sides about why this would or wouldn't be true. But overall, it was seen that education would be able to continue.

Lastly, what was the impact on soldiers? Both teams forward ideas that I think were really thoughtful and very interesting about what soldiers might think about all these commemoration processes. They told us that many different soldiers, I think from both sides, might have different opinions. At the end, all three adjudicators agreed that this wasn't able to truly impact the debate. Both teams said different but sometimes often not conflicting ideas about what soldiers would want, but that maybe they were possible under both sides.

So in terms of what soldiers would want, though, is more support for veterans. And team negative was able to show that that was more likely when this issue was maintained in the public eye and when the cost of what had happened to soldiers was talked about every year. So from this adjudication and on those issues, this debate has been awarded to team negative from Sydney Boys.

[applause]

LLOYD CAMERON: Well, we all enjoyed that debate. It was, as being said, at a very high standard. And I think it's only fair that we now look at what the individual speakers did. So if we could start with fast affirmative.

EMILY KIM: Well, I think she did do quite a good job of setting up the debate. I also think obviously this goes unsaid for all the speakers, but they all had a great manner of presenting. I think that's just a given. I think she did do quite a good job stepping through the logic behind each claim in a way that was quite clear and comprehensible.

I think that just a small thing that I would say is, some of it tended to be a little bit repetitive? I don't know if I was the only one who felt that way but I did think quite near the end she wasn't-- there was a point at which I think she stopped advancing her case. And I think it's important for first affirmative to spend the entire speech constantly advancing the case.

LLOYD CAMERON: Yeah, I'd agree with that. I thought those initial four points about national pride, emotional connections, one sided perspective, the rhetoric of heroic actions, I thought that was very well done. But then we tended to get variations on those themes, and certainly on the whole idea of the glorification of war. And like you said, it became a little bit repetitive towards the end.

EDEN BLAIR: I think that another thing that could be a tip is, I think it can be tricky when I think she used a lot of the language of saying always and never-- it always glorifies, it's never critical. And while this is very powerful in her introduction particularly, it can sometimes stop a speaker from dealing with what they know is going to come out from the other side, which is that it is not always and never, that there's some grey area. So it could have been helped by having some material about why they oppose even ones that exist in the grey area between always and never.

LLOYD CAMERON: Yes, true enough. I thought that mateship and bravery idea was a potentially very strong one, but it tended to be lost as the debate went on.

EDEN BLAIR: It did. It think it could have been expanded.

LLOYD CAMERON: Yeah. Whereas the Yassmin point was something that was still present in the final speaker, the third [inaudible].

EMILY KIM: Definitely.

LLOYD CAMERON: That was probably their individual most impressive example, would you?

EDEN BLAIR: I thought it was.

EMILY KIM: Yeah.

EDEN BLAIR: I thought it was very well done. And I also thought that she set up a model that was really effective. So I think it could be really tricky getting a topic like this to know how to model it and what it really means. And I think she made it. We had a really good debate because of how clearly she set up exactly what they stood for, that they stood for objective education and for having it taught and remembered through the education system. And they also took on a strong stance of saying, no more Anzac Day, no more war memorials. They didn't back away from the topic and I think we were all luckier for it.

EMILY KIM: Yeah, absolutely.

LLOYD CAMERON: Sure. Shall we move to first negative?

EMILY KIM: Sure. So, I think this speech did quite a good job responding to some of the key claims in first affirmative. I think one of those things is firstly this claim that the alternative to commemorating is this completely objective teaching of history. I think this did quite a good job concisely explaining why that is not possible and removing that difficulty early on in the speech. I also think that this did a good job bringing in a more nuanced characterisation of what commemorations look like that ultimately was never strongly responded to, or kind of accepted by the other team.

And I think setting it up quite clearly from first negative that, that is not actually what commemorations look like. And giving just a clear, simple list of what they think that constitutes, that set it up quite nicely for them the entire rest of the debate because they could constantly go back to that strong, clear, but also more sophisticated slightly, I think, analysis of what commemorations look like as they continued on in the debate. Do you want to say something good first and then we'll--

EDEN BLAIR: Oh, I also thought it was very strong in those reasons as well. I would have liked a few more structural reasons why these commemorations aren't always glorification. I think that both teams argued through very powerful examples. But it's always a struggle when it's not just through examples, I think.

LLOYD CAMERON: Sure. Very powerful beginning, however, with the way in which the 100th anniversary of Gallipoli was celebrated at the location with Turkish and Australian representatives there. And the distinction between what Symeon classified as necessary wars, such as World War II, and wars that he thought were not necessary, like Vietnam, that was clearly made. And in terms of what actually happens in the commemoration, when he talked about details such as the minute's silence and the last post, he was giving us an idea that it's not purely a rah rah glorification activity at all. But it's really quite a sad, mournful kind of occasion.

EMILY KIM: Yeah.

EDEN BLAIR: And I think the other thing I'd give as advice to him is to make sure you take the other side's points at their best. I thought the best, one of the very best points from the previous speaker was about how it shapes our view of who is and isn't Australian, as you said, and that we shouldn't see our historic enemies as un-Australian or our current enemies. And I think he somewhat said something that was an interesting and very illustrative example about how Italians live peacefully in [inaudible] and aren't yelled at on the street. But I thought that in many ways it didn't attack what was the nuance of that point, about how it subtly leads to racism particularly against Japanese people. And that was their first chance to respond to that powerful point. And I think all three speakers from team negative had a chance to respond to that powerful point and weren't fully able to do it.

LLOYD CAMERON: Probably the strongest thing he said was the idea that you referred to a new adjudication about the vital role the state plays in these commemorations. And if they aren't as involved as they are, then they can be hijacked by the extreme groups, by the neo-Nazis. So I thought that was a very impressive point.

EDEN BLAIR: Yeah. I think something else very impressive from this speech is that there was an implicit argument between the two teams going on about whether the very emotional quality of commemoration was a good or bad thing. And they had said something very powerful about how it made things biassed, it made people not think critically, it was un-objective. And I thought that he also gave a really good example and explanation of why we need that human element and we need to see each other on an emotional level. And I thought that was important for the rest of the debate, too.

LLOYD CAMERON: Very good. So, second aff-- again Emily I'm going to ask you to commence discussion.

EMILY KIM: Sure. So, I think the most interesting thing at this point is, this is when, in the debate, the discussion about necessity versus good sort of really came to its crux, I think, and began really being engaged with. I think the interesting thing that we were talking about is just that both teams immediately accepted at a base level that some wars were necessary so that it then became a debate of whether it is possible to separate that necessity from also implying that they are good. I think that this speech made an attempt to address that possible conflict by saying, well, the necessity of the action doesn't actually detract from the harms and consequences of that action. And therefore celebrating that is still kind of wrong.

I think that maybe that could have been dealt with a little bit better since I did think it had emerged by that point to be quite an important thing. I also think that there was an interesting point about international relations to be had here. I think that again, this could have been strengthened with slightly more depth or nuance. So I think it is probably true, and I think this did come up throughout the speech about this idea of subtle prejudice. And I actually think this was dealt with quite well, explaining how it might not be an outright racist sentiment that's being promoted at these events but the subtle message we get is, there was an enemy and there remains an enemy. However, I think that could have been a stronger case made by this speaker at this point in the debate that I thought was kind of slightly left unfinished for me, and stopped that from becoming a bigger issue in the debate that I thought they possibly, if they had made it slightly more important, that could have been beneficial to them I think.

LLOYD CAMERON: I thought the argument about Australia following America into conflict since World War II was interesting but it didn't really prove what she was hoping that it proved because Anzac Day tends to look back at, obviously, the disaster in Gallipoli in the First World War, and the Second World War where Australia was under actual threat. So whilst those points about Australia being a sort of American lap dog would probably be correct in themselves, I don't think they went as far as she intended to. What did you think?

EDEN BLAIR: Well, I also really enjoyed the speech. And I thought that her point, I really enjoyed her point about how we tell history in the classroom and how it's so good and how professional teachers are able to actually do a really good job of teaching history. I thought it needed to have more arguments about why exactly it is undermined by commemorating Anzac Day. I also thought that given the previous speaker had made such an interesting point about how soldiers can be separated from their actions, their bravery can be separate from the actions just as you just said, and about how we can kind of separate these two concepts out, that some pieces of rebuttal were perhaps missing.

But, I really enjoyed especially the argument that she made about subtle prejudice as well. And I liked how she flipped the conscription point on them and said, why would commemorate conscription? I thought that was a good way of engaging with them.

LLOYD CAMERON: Second neg.

EMILY KIM: Cool. So I thought this was a really excellent speech. I think the thing I enjoyed most about it is, I think it took some of the really strong concepts from the negative case that had been floating around so far and I think he managed to concretize them. So I think he explicitly named the points that they were winning, or that they were doing well in, and explained them in a very clear way as opposed to it being sort of an implied conclusion they were drawing, or something that seemed to be running as an undercurrent through their case. He actually named them. So some of those things were the idea that commemoration is largely regretful rather than celebratory. He just came out and said that straight away.

Also, the idea that it is important to recognise the value of bravery. He explained this quite concisely but just named it as that being their case. I think this kind of clear identification of what they were strongly standing for-- and he also picked out the ones that I think he recognised they were kind of winning. I think that actually really helped to clarify the negative team's case. And that was what really gave the speech an edge, I think.

LLOYD CAMERON: Yeah. He made that very important distinction between leaders and countries that was rather difficult to come back after that. And for me he was the outstanding speaker of the six. I don't think there's any doubt about that.

He talked about the appearance of a neo-Nazi person on Sky News. I think in our discussion we were a little bit ambivalent about the effectiveness of that one. Would you like to talk about that one?

EDEN BLAIR: I thought it was an interesting point. I also think it's sometimes really tricky to come up with good second negative material and I was really happy that he did. He made this argument that when we make explicit what freedoms we're willing to fight for, then we'll fight for those freedoms in every day and that they are good things.

I think what the real problem was, was that he was running out of time a little bit and went over it quite quickly. I'm sure he, if he was here, has many thoughts and could explain it to us again. But maybe it didn't come across perfectly just because we're doing an activity that has a strong time constraint.

LLOYD CAMERON: Sure.

EDEN BLAIR: I thought that this was also a very powerful speech, a very strong speech, that he delivered it incredibly well. I thought that if I was going to improve one thing from this speech it's that I think it was clear by this point in the affirmative team's case, their model, their idea was contrasting commemoration with education. And they had given reasons why education was mutually exclusive with commemoration. They said that commemoration overshadows what you learn in school, it contradicts it and makes people confused, that who would rather listen to their history teacher over what they're saying on TV? I thought that was quite funny.

And they had this idea that it undermines our education. And he simply says, well, we can have both. But that idea was actually more contentious than I think he realised. And that would be something directly comparing what kind of debate and discourse they're offering compared to the discourse of the affirmative team.

LLOYD CAMERON: He did, however, deal quite effectively with the second aff's assertion that once an enemy always an enemy by talking about the strength of Australia's trading relations with Japan. And he tried to give very current examples with his American black athletes taking the knee in sporting fixtures. Do you think that advanced the case?

EDEN BLAIR: I think it did help, although I did think that maybe they had other ideas that would be better suited for their sceond speaker point. For example, in his argument about in his second issue of his speech towards the end, he says this sentence that's something to the effect of that this also means if we commemorate war properly that people themselves are likely to be better soldiers, and they're likely to sign up for more wars if they know that they will be commemorated properly. And that people are likely to require better actions in war. So we had a point about how this changes the conduct of war, it changes sign ups. He says it in maybe one sentence. That could be a second speaker point in itself.

So I think sometimes we struggle to find second speaker points. But there's just ideas that are actually really interesting and worthy of a lot of time that you can really make it home by making it a substantive point. So I would have perhaps switched those two, made that second speaker point that was in its content perhaps just interesting examples, and just use them as examples earlier.

LLOYD CAMERON: True.

EDEN BLAIR: And then made that idea about how this changes the conduct in future wars, not just whether or not we go in but how we do it once we're in there, into a second speaker point on its own.

LLOYD CAMERON: Third aff-- Emily.

EMILY KIM: So, I actually really did enjoy this speech. I think she did quite a good job of responding to some of the bigger flaws that we identified that had arisen in the negative's case by that point. Some of the things I liked was the fact that she reiterated what Eden just mentioned about how they had sort of established and had gotten little response to why effective education is mutually exclusive with commemoration, how a purely logical approach is better than a logical approach saturated with all these things that detract from that. I also think she did a good job step by step going through each of those massive points in quite a concise way.

I liked that she, for instance, talked about how more discourse is not necessarily better discourse and how it's actually worse discourse because it polarises that debate. Or how she responded to this notion that we oppose leaders and not countries, movements and not people, by saying that that is probably the way we should address it and in fact the way we could address it if it wasn't for the fact that commemorations blur that kind of critical thinking, make it more difficult for us to recognise that nuance. So I think she dealt and made a really good effort at dealing with some of the more tricky points that had come up by that point.

Yeah, I thought it was a good speech. I think she could have potentially spent a little bit more time dealing with the impact on soldiers. She did have an interesting argument there about how this caused emotional conflict for soldiers when their own experiences of the war could not be reconciled with the way it was being represented through commemorations. But again, I thought it was-- yeah, it was very quick considering that this had been given quite a lot of weight throughout the debate. Yeah.

LLOYD CAMERON: I thought it was amusing, her dismissive way of saying that we don't read pamphlets at Anzac Day events, trying to attack the whole negative idea that commemorations aren't this glorification. And her quite valid distinction between the inclusive Gallipoli celebration and the kind of celebration that you get where she comes from, Wollongong and even smaller places, I thought that was quite valid.

EDEN BLAIR: Me, too. I really thought that that was very powerful as well.

LLOYD CAMERON: Yeah, it was. She continued the Yassmin shutdown point, and I thought she did that quite impressively. But I agree with you, Emily, about the soldiers point and the impact being potentially a very powerful and convincing argument but not really given as strongly as it should have been.

EDEN BLAIR: Yeah. I also thought there was a point in here, and I didn't get the chance to include this in the adjudication because of course we're trying to keep these things concise. So I really enjoyed that she made a point about the way we conduct our future wars. She said that it means that people are likely to be less critical of soldiers and of the army if we're commemorating war and that people are going to look up to the Defence Force. And I think that that shows just how many different ideas and how rich this debate was in ideas that we were talking about all sorts of things. And I think it was a really a testament to how rich the debate was overall.

LLOYD CAMERON: Yes. Well, another point that she made that I just recall was about the treatment of prisoners of war, which was a whole subterranean issue running through there that never really came to the surface but was potentially quite [inaudible] as well.

EMILY KIM: Yes.

LLOYD CAMERON: Anyway, over to our final speaker.

EMILY KIM: OK, so I think what this speech did quite well for me is essentially just hammering home and kind of reconciling some of those things that had been brought up as mutually exclusive by the affirmative team, possibly illustrating why they aren't. So things like, we can commemorate and educate. But also highlighting a point that I think the negative had been making quite strongly throughout their case, which was that when he said it is when you are actually seeing people crying throughout the minute's silence, when you see the list of names of those who died, that is when you actually fully understand the impact of war and the human cost of war. I think he did a really good job re-emphasising a point that I thought they were doing well on.

The same thing in terms of reconciling a thing that had been set up as mutually exclusive, things like we can respect soldiers without glorifying war, or we can pay our respects without necessarily celebrating violence. I think he did a good job re-emphasising those things. I think something that could have been done slightly better in this speech was I think he, at times, mischaracterized the affirmative team's case by on multiple occasions speaking about the affirmative case as if they had implied that, in the place of commemoration we will be teaching that all wars are inherently bad, and rebutting that kind of an argument that I didn't actually think had really emerged from the affirmative team. I don't think they ever said they would be teaching that all wars are bad, just that they would be teaching a similar message that the negative team is currently promoting just in only an educational sphere. So I think that could have strengthened some of his rebuttal as some of it was kind of misdirected, I think.

LLOYD CAMERON: Yes. Well he, I think, was the first person who pointed out that Gallipoli was a disaster. So if we're commemorating something that was actually a military failure, that in itself means it doesn't quite fit the way that the affirmative would characterise Anzac Day. You're quite right about what he said about the sadness of these commemorations, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, minute of silence, and all that kind of thing.

And he brought in some interesting ideas-- I just wanted to see what we thought as a panel-- about the apology to the stolen generation, about the acknowledgment of the Americans and the My Lai Massacre. Did you think this assisted the--

EDEN BLAIR: I wasn't sure how much it helped for him to say that we're able to acknowledge our mistakes. I think that the problem was that the link at the end of the point was missing. So maybe I think what he was trying to illustrate is that these commemorations aren't absolutist. They aren't just nationalist exercises. That people are able to acknowledge the mistakes of the past.

But I think just illustrating that it was possible seems like it's not that effective. Both of those are quite unusual apologies that took a lot of hard fought effort from people to-- obviously this is not in this debate and doesn't become a huge issue either. But I thought that in a way it didn't-- if anything, it kind of almost made it clear that these things were even more complex than team negative we're making it seem. That we do do incredibly horrible things in war, like the My Lai Massacre. And the fact that he brought it up made me think almost that it was a point against him, because the fact that that was part of the Vietnam War does make one think perhaps we should stop everything and just think about the horror of that event.

On Guy, I thought that he also had a really great speech. I agree with what you guys are saying. I think he showed what you really need in a negative speech and it is so hard to balance, which is new rebuttal and ideas and engaging in the debate, but also bringing back all of the material of their case. He brought back stuff that we'd heard it first, we hadn't heard it second. It was brought back, it tied everything together. For example, their point about how state actors need to shape this and about-- lots of points, I think, where he managed to sum up and rebut together. That's what I think we really look for in a third neg speech.

I thought that I agreed with Emily in that he sometimes doesn't respond to the true point from team affirmative. For example, when he said the reason that we don't celebrate-- well, that don't commemorate, rather, alongside Turkey is because we're here in Australia and Gallipoli is in Turkey, while funny, doesn't respond, I guess, to what was a very powerful point from Laura that these can seem like white people only events. And so I think that while it's very good, I guess, to point out the obvious when it's there, it's also important to think about what was the true point that they made? And make sure that you respond to that. That's what I thought.

CHRISTOPHER PREDIC: A team member of Smith's Hills High School will now congratulate the winners.

[applause]

TOM BEHL-SHANKS: [inaudible] was a very high quality debate. [inaudible].

CHRISTOPHER PREDIC: A member of the winning team will now respond.

ALEX DE ARAUJO: Well, firstly we'd like to thank everyone who helped make this competition possible, to Andy in the Arts Unit for your amazing work, to [? yussef ?] for helping us debate in this magnificent hall. I'm sure you'll all agree, certainly the nicest place we've ever debated and we really appreciate the opportunity. To the wonderful audience who came out today, we really appreciate it, especially the high kids. We know how tempting it is to skip school to watch a debate but that doesn't make what you did any less meaningful. It really really means a lot to us you came out to watch us. And finally, to Smith's Hills, thank you so much for giving us such an exceptional debate. You're all incredibly quality speakers and good luck for the rest of your endeavours in debating in the HSC and wherever you go. So well done and thank you very much.

[applause]

CHRISTOPHER PREDIC: I would like to call upon Marion Powells, the principal education officer at the Arts Unit, and John Olsen from the International [inaudible] Australia, who will hand out medallions and certificates. Mr. Olsen will present on behalf of Professor David Flint, President of the New South Wales English Speaking Union.

MARION POWELLS: First up, runners up from Smiths Hill high school, we have first speaker Uditha Jith.

[applause]

Second speaker, Isabella Matthews.

[applause]

Third speaker, Laura Charlton.

[applause]

And fourth speaker, Tom [inaudible].

[applause]

And state champions from Sydney. Boys High School we have first speaker, Symeon Ziegler.

[applause]

Second speaker, Alex de Araujo.

[applause]

And third speaker, Guy Suttner.

CHRISTOPHER PREDIC: I now call on John Olsen to present the trophy to the runners up.

[applause]

And Mr. Olsen will also present a [inaudible] trophy to this year's winner. Congratulations to Syndey Boy's High School.

[applause]