Video transcript
NSW Premier's Debating Challenge 2022 - Junior State Debating Championships Final

[intro music]

[applause]

NOAH SMITH: Yaama, Noah ngaya. Hi, my name is Noah, and I'm a proud descendant of the Gamilaroi people. Before we begin today, I would like to take a minute to acknowledge the Traditional Owners of this land, the Gadigal people, and pay my respects to Elders past, present and emerging, and take a minute to think back and acknowledge Country and the importance Country has served, the importance it has served historically for our people and it serves now for all of us here.

All of us here today, we all have a responsibility now to care for Country, to look after Country. And we have to also remember and think that under all the concrete and the asphalt that we see in places here, like the city, like the CBD, it's still all Country underneath. Country still has its stories. Country still exists. Country is still thriving.

And we have the responsibility now to make sure we protect and nurture Country. And it is so important to have young voices. And that is why the Arts Unit and all the work they do is also so important in making sure young people's voices is heard, in making sure we have say in our future, which is so important to make sure we look after Country as an entity and as Country in the Aboriginal perspective, but also our Country and our future as a whole.

So I'd just like to encourage everyone to take 30 seconds just to stop and think about Country and its importance. And take a second to acknowledge Country, acknowledge Elders past, present and emerging, and the importance they hold in Australia as we know it today. Thank you.

[applause]

OLIVIA WRIGHT: Welcome to the state final of the Junior State Debating Championships. This debate is between Sydney and Western Sydney. The affirmative team from Western Sydney is first speaker Cassidy, second speaker Nara, third speaker Mia, and fourth speaker Adhya.

The negative team from Sydney is first speaker Sirine, second speaker Vishruth, third speaker Jessop, and fourth speaker Molly.

The adjudicators for this debate are Indigo, Ellie, and Ally. The speaking time for this debate is 8 minutes. There will be a warning bell at 6 minutes, 2 bells at 8 minutes, and a continuous bell at 9 minutes.

The topic for the debate is that Australia should have a 4-day working week. Finally, please take a moment to ensure all mobile phones are switched off. Now please welcome the first affirmative speaker to open the debate.

[applause]

CASSIDY LAUGUICO: Australia in recent times has been experiencing a problem with balancing life and work. And this is due to the increased demands that we've seen for the workload of Australian citizens, especially in the workforce. Over time, especially because of COVID-19, due to the fact that many people that come overseas and work in Australia are not present within our current workforce. And we need to deal with this issue as the Australian population.

And furthermore, working from home has blurred the line between what is work and what is life at home, especially when most of us in this room have either gone to school online or have taken at least some part of online work within the past 2 years.

Now, by adapting-- and this is relevant to the 4-day week model that this debate is about, because this tries to address this issue of work-life balance and trying to address mental health issues and other issues that come about it. So the 4-day week model will apply to only full-time jobs based on salaries. So these are your typical 9:00 to 5:00 jobs that work in offices, come in on a regular basis.

And their salaries will not be impacted based on the time that they spend in the office because we believe that the quality of work and efficiency is justified within these 4 days to be improved and thus why we believe that the salary should not be decreased in this manner. And this solves and this addresses part of the issue of having the strict 5-day adherence to the 5-day work model.

And this does not impact casual or part-time jobs and individuals who earn wages, because we recognise that this is probably impractical for them as they specifically choose their times that they decide, yes, I will work at x, y, z because of their specific needs. And they need this flexibility. So we do not want to remove this flexibility for them and still provide them that sense of choice.

And this significantly helps the status quo. Because by adopting a 4-week day model, we allow for further efficiency within the office because of the shorter time frame. And because of the same pay, the same amount of money that you would receive on a salary would not change, and intrinsically become a key motivator into delivering high quality work, being more efficient in the office, and more importantly, helping assist with those in recuperation for the week and begin the next week.

So in my allocation, I will be talking about the economic benefits that Australia can experience and the efficiency that businesses can also experience and the success that can be done from that. And my second speaker will be talking about the mental health and satisfaction within the workplace.

And just in reference to our model, we believe that Australia should adapt to this because other countries such as Switzerland and currently the USA are trialling these types of models. And they have seen great success in terms of having better efficiency and profitability for these specific businesses within the economy.

So my first point, economic and efficiency benefits for businesses and the general population of Australia. So currently the status quo is a 5-day work week. A 9:00 to 5:00 job, typically, is the case for most people, unless they are working shift to shift where there's flexibility.

Now, what does this achieve? So in the current status quo with increased demands of work-life, this causes issues for imbalances of having too much of a workload, or having-- too much to do within that 8-hour job, or you're not achieving at your best, or you are not simply doing your job efficient enough. Because psychologically, you think that, oh, maybe I can relax a little bit because I have a whole 5-day work week, 8 hours week, so 40 hours to complete whatever I've been assigned for this week.

And this really causes a disruption in the work-life balance that Australians genuinely value. We've really placed a priority as a country that we believe that work-life balance is a ri-- is essential, and at least to a certain extent, Australians should have a right to it in some ways.

And by having this unbalancedness, this leads to an ineffective use of time because of the unclear distinctions of the workload as opposed to the life, whether they're working not a lot or whether they're working so much that it disrupts how they view life, whether that be them being called a workaholic or being labelled as just a person that doesn't do their job properly. This can impact what happens in terms of the efficiency and the success that businesses can face.

And the economic harms that come to this, so businesses may become not as efficient and therefore they might not be able to achieve the same levels of success that they could have in previous years, in the early 2000s, for example because they are achieving lower profits.

And lower profits directly contribute to the GDP and quality of life. Because the purposes of business is to supposed to increase the amount of choice and quality of life and provide innovations and inventions into the world. And by having employees working longer and mundane hours, this proves ineffective for allowing for innovation and invention to take place and allowing for quality of life and GDP to increase overall, affecting all Australians within the entire country.

Now--

[bell rings]

--under our model, we believe that we have 4 key benefits, which are a series that will follow one another. So the first benefit that we see in our model in terms of economic and efficiency benefits is that because of the 4-day work week, employees will become more motivated. And yes, I have addressed the salary motivations.

But also simply because of that time frame, I-- like most Australians, would probably agree that they would want to work a 4-day work week, work less hours, because that allows them for time to recover and allow them to be ready for the next following week of work, which would be another 4 days. So intrinsically, the human mind has this thing where we see a short amount of time, we want to act faster. We want to get things more efficient and more done. And in this way, we believe that employees of businesses will be able to be more efficient. But especially in this shorter time frame, they're able to achieve a higher quality of work.

And they're also able to achieve this higher quality of work because they are less tired. They simply have the extra day to rest and recover from the week. And this higher quality of work allows for further success that businesses can experience.

And an example of this would be the adaptation of technology within our current status quo. So currently in our status quo, a lot of businesses have integrated technology in order to make processes more efficient. And by making a 4-day work week occur within a new status quo, it would allow for more efficient processes to be created by businesses, by employees, because their critical thinking strategies are much more improved because they can think, because they have rested--

[bell rings]

--and allowing for further success and innovations.

My second benefit for this is less money is being spent on HR training. Because with this HR training, you need to spend money in order to train employees, in order to get them to be able to deliver the high quality of standard of work that you expect of your business in order to gain success. And by having higher employee retention and allowing for further success and innovations and by adapting this 4-week day model, 4-week day models allow for high employee retention because employees are more satisfied with their work.

It's less mundane for them to continue to work 40 hours when they could really only work 38 and still achieve the same amount of work. That feels more satisfactory for people psychologically and that allows for businesses to spend less money on hr training. Furthermore, from that, by spending less money for HR, that allows for the business to reinvest into itself and allow for further success in the business.

[bell rings]

Thank you.

[applause]

SIRINE NEFFATI: Good morning, everyone. Before I present my case, I would like to point out a couple of flaws in the opposing team's case points. So the affirmative team came out and said people's work-life balance are currently not suitable for their mental health and well-being.

As the negative side, we acknowledge that currently under the status quo, people's work-life balance are not the best as it should be and that it does need to improve. However, we do believe that it will not be improved under a 4-day working week, rather organic change, as my second speaker will continue to talk about. Organic change is much more effective to improve people's work-life balance rather than cramming long hours into a 4-day working week.

Your affirmative team talked about economic benefits and how people being more efficient in jobs-- and how people are doing-- well, if people are going to have too much to do in not enough time, then wouldn't that affect people's efficiency, not improve it? Well, under the negative team, we say that it would.

And the affirmative team talked about working long hours per week. Well, logically, this is more likely to occur under a 4-day working week rather than a 5-day working week as you are trying to cram that extra day lost from that 5-day working week into the 4 days, which gives potentially an opportunity for employers to give you more work given that you're going to have less time.

And the affirmative team spoke about needing time to recover in order to go on to the next week. Under our side, we believe that you will still have time to recover. And it would make much more sense, it's more logical, if you're going to be working longer hours, you're not going to have enough time for yourself. Rather than under the status quo with a 5-day working week, you do have that necessary time to yourself after a day of work.

Even if you're going to claim that these workers will not be financially impacted, which can only realistically happen if you're paid for the work you produce rather than the hours you work, which is a tiny proportion of workers, you're still cutting out 20% of their time to produce work, which will in turn mean they produce less work and get paid less. So why were we proposing to pay everyone less when inflation is exponentially growing in society?

The affirmative team talked about companies are going to spend less money on training employees. Well, under the negative side, we believe that it is a business' responsibility and obligation to invest in their employees, and it is a valuable investment to make, as happy employees produce efficient work and are more productive. So under the negative side, we believe that if you create the necessary positive workplace environment for employees, they will be productive, they will work, and they will produce. They will innovate, and they'll produce what needs to be produced for your company and for your business rather than cramming all that work into a 4-day working week.

And as I have previously mentioned, under our side, we do acknowledge that this is-- that there is an issue and that we are attempting to improve. And it cannot be improved by a 4-day working week. And it will be improved with organic change by a 5-day working week.

So now I would like to give a preview of how my speech is going to be structured. To begin with, I will argue our 3 claims, which is as follows. One, why the affirmative team sides harms vulnerable people of low SES and low job security.

Our second claim will be under whose side is economy going to be productive? And our third claim is under the opposing side's model is inherently impractical. Then our second speaker, Vish, will argue our fourth claim, which is why under our side, we benefit work-life balance.

We believe that people will have a potentially lower income due to missing out on that fifth day. As I have previously mentioned, there are a tiny percentage of Australians who can have their wages slashed by 20%. Now, just to clarify, this is not like a rate of statistic that we picked up off of Instagram one day. This is the math of the situation of this case, of this debate.

We've got 5 days, and we're going to have 4 days. 20% of that person's wages are going to cut off. And the logic is that people of lower SES and low job security simply cannot afford to have this happen. They need that extra day to get their income to provide for their families.

And the idea of a 4-day working week is a mechanism of the most privileged class in Australian society. This is an idea proposed by the born rich, an idealistic class. These people have an inherent lack of understanding surrounding labour issues in Australia and exclusively promote solutions which would spit in the face--

[bell rings]

--of the complete nuances said in this issue.

Essentially what that meant, what I just said is the idea of a 4-day working week to benefit people's well-being and mental health is rather flawed. Meaning, as I mentioned previously, just now, with that 20% being lost of people's income, and they're not able to receive that income, and with people who live paycheck to paycheck, every dollar counts. And we believe that with organic change, people's working conditions can be improved, which then resolves the issue of this debate, people's work-life balance, people's well-being.

OK. Now on to my second claim. So under whose side is the economy going to be productive? There are also wider economic issues that the opposition proposes. With less money going into the economy, it will strain our economic growth and productivity. This will pose a dangerous slippery slope into crisis, especially during our current economic status and of the current economic recession resulting from COVID-19.

So why would we have a more productive economy and society under our side? Well, we believe that we're going to have a more productive economy due to the point that I mentioned previously in my first claim of people's 20% wages being lost. Under our current status quo, the 5-day working week, people's wages matter. People's wages count.

And therefore, with money actually flowing into the economy, it can reinvest in itself and benefit itself and go round. As well as for society where people's well-being and mental health, having 5 days to easily balance out your workload over 5 days--

[bell rings]

--is much more beneficial than the 4 days that the affirmative team is proposing. Now on to claim number 3.

So the business model is inherently impractical. The third claim my team is arguing is that it is inherently impractical. The opposition's model is impractical in regards to essential workers. By excluding essential workers from the model, we ignore the fact that they are the workers we refer to when we talk about people whose work-life balances and mental health are compromised because of their overworking and intensive positions.

By introducing the change, we are doing nothing to aid the people who are impacted by the working days. There are frontline workers and doctors, nurses and police officers. They're excluding these workers. The affirmative team acknowledges the faulty logistics their change implements into our society in showing us flat out a 4-day working week proves no benefits for our most important essential workers. Essentially, in today's debate--

[bell rings]

Thank you.

[applause]

NARA GONG: The first thing that negative comes out and tells you is that they support organic change in the status quo. And that because we have this organic change, there's no need for our model. We think they haven't told you why there will be organic change.

We're going to tell you now why there won't be. We think in the status quo, the businesses are the ones who have the power to set working days, to set requirements for employees that employees have to meet. We think currently businesses have no incentives to change the way that they've always done it, to change what people see as the norm, which is a 5-day working week, which is why we think as the government, we need to step in to implement the 4-day working week. We don't think that they have organic change that they can rely on.

We just also think we see in the status quo that there's not increasing focus on work-life balance. We think you have issues in the economy, like in the workforce, not enough people participating, like increased burnout. And we don't think that there's been any organic change to address that.

The next thing they tell you-- note here-- note also that we give you at first aff. We tell you that efficiency is going to be improved, but we don't think we get enough response to that. We told you we had 2 mechanisms.

Firstly, people were just going to be less tired, and they were going to be able to work better in the days that they were at work. Secondly, we told you they were incentivised to find better processes. We think even if you didn't believe that, if you believed that, in the 4 days, people would be achieving less, we think firstly we still extended the time people spent in their careers, and we still extended the amount that they would want to spend in the workforce because they were just less tired on average and less burnt out.

Secondly, we think we allowed more people to be able to join the workforce. For example, people who had primary child care responsibilities, now that they only have to work 4 days, they were more likely to be able to engage there. And so we thought we had more people participating. So we think at our very worst, it evened out.

And so the differentiator then became which side got the other outcome, which was mental health. We think it is very intuitive when we tell you that when you just have more days that you can rest, your mental health genuinely does get better.

The next thing they tell you is that people's mental health doesn't get better because you have more work crammed into the days you are at work. Firstly, we told you that the problem is not this crazy, unmanageable amount of jobs, but that because you are by nature spending 5 days in an office doing basically the same task over and over again, we thought it was incredibly draining. We thought by the end of the week you'd lost most of your working capacity.

And we also thought, secondly, that you had just inefficient processes currently that people weren't incentivised to change. For example, we could have more adaptation of automation in technology under our world. So we thought that the problem was not that there was going to be too much work, but we thought that motivation and people's actual ability to work at their full capacity was what we helped under our world, which is why you did get more efficient work, and you didn't get this harm of more work crammed in.

The next thing they tell you is they just kind of assert that we're going to pay people less and there's going to be longer hours. Two responses, firstly, we told you the salary is just going to stay the same. Secondly, we think that the hours would obviously still be the same if employees did try to change working days suddenly to 9:00 to 7:00.

Obviously, we would try to step in because that just completely negates, just goes against the whole point of what we're trying to achieve. We thought if it truly was longer hours employees worked, they would get things like overtime and the regular processes would kick in. So we'd make sure there are still protections for employees.

They also tell us about stakeholders of low socioeconomic status who are going to be harmed. Firstly, we told you already people get the same salary. Secondly, we think it wasn't relevant because most of these people of low socioeconomic status did do flexible jobs, did do casual work, or part-time work because they had other responsibilities that they needed to tend to, for example, like family members, or because they didn't have the necessary qualifications to do the office jobs. We told you that the 9:00 to 5:00 office jobs, the full-time ones, are what we're targeting. Therefore, we don't think we impacted low SES at all.

Thirdly, even if you did have a large amount of low SES people under our model who were affected because they did do these full-time office jobs, we thought we did get better outcomes for them, given that they had the same money and given that they had more time to fulfil other obligations, like taking care of kids or maybe they could have more time to look for another job or things like that. That was also casual, on a casual basis.

The final thing they told you is that frontline workers are going to be somehow impacted negatively. Firstly, we think given how essential they were, we weren't going to force them to take mandatory breaks. Secondly, we thought that these part-time workers just operated on a shift basis currently.

That is to say, maybe if you were a nurse because of how intense your work days were, you wouldn't do 5 full days. But you were operating on a shift basis where you have one day on and one day off. So, again, we don't think that they were impacted under our model because we would just make an exception for them.

So now onto my one piece of substantive on how we get better mental health and employee retention. We tell you the problem in the status quo is that people are drained by the end of the work day. We think they're tired on Fridays, but they're still forced to come in. And so they end up doing less work. We think the tasks were mundane and that they didn't engage people's brains.

So what happens in our world? We think 3 things were likely to happen. Firstly, people just had more time off to recharge from work. We think currently when you have weekends, people still have responsibilities, for example, running errands, like transporting their kids to multiple activities. Note that this response to what they tell you about how we already have a good enough status quo.

So we thought giving them an extra day would be able to make a meaningful difference. They would be able to rest more and just generally recharge from doing work. Secondly, we thought that therefore people were able to find a better work-life balance. That meant you had a whole extra day to do things, like focus more on your hobbies. You could meaningfully spend time with your family, and you just had to worry less--

[bell rings]

--about work in the week. The third thing to say is that we thought work would become less mundane and more efficient because people were incentivised to find new systems to do things so that they would be able to catch up with their work. We told you, like the monotony of working in an office became less, much less of a problem, so you are likely to feel mentally stimulated.

So what were the benefits then? We think we had 3 key benefits here. Firstly, people were just happier. They had better mental health, because they had things like hobbies and they had time to themselves. We think this was a huge benefit that applied across the whole workforce who did full-time work. Secondly, we thought there were certain groups who would be extra benefited, for example, people who had other responsibilities, who had younger children they wanted to spend more time with, who had elderly parents they wanted to visit.

And thirdly, we thought that you got better employee retention because people got tired less. They didn't burn out as much because they had more recovery time. This means they were less likely to need to do things like take long breaks from their jobs, or quit, or keep changing jobs. We think they were likely to stay in the workforce for a longer amount of years.

Why was this important? Three key things here, firstly, we thought this helped businesses be more efficient because hiring processes took time and it left gaps in the workforce when people were constantly dropping out. Secondly, we thought that we wanted Australians generally to just spend longer years in the workforce or not be unemployed as often.

Because that meant they had things like good savings. They were regularly contributing to their super. So later, when they reached retirement age, we thought they were just less of a government burden. Thirdly, we thought that you reduced the costs that happen when you have people disengaging with the workforce, for example, like inboarding new employees, or when they rely on things like government welfare, the money that the government had to spend.

Therefore, we thought that we had benefits not only to mental health, but that those mental health benefits also flowed onto impacts to the economy and to the workforce in general--

[bell rings]

--which is why we were incredibly proud to affirm. Thank you.

[applause]

VISHRUTH ANAND: Ladies and gentlemen, what I think side affirmative does really well in this debate is absolutely assert everything they say and almost assume that their policy is going to be implemented and accepted by every single party in society today. They think it's going to be accepted by businesses who suddenly lose a day of profit.

They think it's going to be accepted by workers, who are not part-time, shifting between jobs. We thought that it was extremely ridiculous for them to claim that part-time workers or shift workers would be benefited under their model because simply, intuitively, they're not, right? Shift workers go between many different jobs, and that means that they work incredibly long hours. And what that means is side affirmative isn't gaining anything for these people.

What I'd like to do in this speech is provide some characterisation, provide some nuance as to the amount of backlash that society will provide in response to their policy, and how it actually won't be accepted at all, and how organic change and the status quo is going to be better as a whole. Three things I'll discuss in my speech today. Firstly, what does affirmative's world actually look like?

So they came out saying, with a big push, that in their model, full-time workers will be the only ones under their model. And the salary won't decrease. However, this is going to be extremely impractical. Because why would workers be incentivised now that they have to work one whole less day for the same salary?

It's intuitive. They don't have to put in any more effort, but they get the same amount of money. So actually, you're not really increasing efficiency or motivation.

And secondly, it's not actually in the best interest for the thousands of small businesses around Australia who run on very small profit margins. So we don't see how these businesses are actually going to be able to stomach this immediately lost day of work for the same salary. We just don't see how this is going to add up for small businesses.

They also came out with a big push about how efficiency is going to increase under their model. However, I think this is a serious mischaracterisation under their side. Because we think that businesses are likely to work their employees even harder in the shorter time frame.

Because intuitively, when you think about it, instead of working 5 days, these employees are now working for 4 days, and businesses still want the same yield. When you think about this intuitively, they want their employees to produce the same yield in less amount of time, which means they obviously will have to work more. We don't see how the position made this connection between working less and decreasing the amount of days they work. And if they want to keep the same salary, then businesses would automatically have to justify paying these employees the same amount by automatically making them work more.

They also came up with a large push on motivation and how this would also increase. However, as I've said multiple times before, we also thought that this was like a large assertion and employers would much more rather like to push employees to the point where they wouldn't be motivated anymore because it's just in their best interest. Businesses, at the end of the day, operate for profit. And to gain this profit, they would just push their employees to be motivated.

This also led me on to their point about employee retention. We feel if employees believe that they're going to get some sort of work-life balance benefit out of the opposition side, they would be shocked to see that businesses would not actually want this work-life balance. We don't see why opposition hasn't provided us any good mechanisms as to how work-life balance would be beneficial for businesses.

Whereas under our side, we see societal pressure and the power of unions actually providing businesses with an incentive to provide their employees with work-life balance because they know they're going to receive backlash. This is how we achieve employee reform, increased work rates. And this is how we take employee work-life balance properly and genuinely into the future. We didn't see how that was going to happen under their side.

They also tried to claim the economy was going to get better. Two things here. Firstly, we just thought that if you remove a day of operation, then you don't get money being circulated in the economy insofar as you just get a stagnant day in the economy. Nothing is done, no money is being circulated, and nothing is going through the economy.

Secondly, we just thought that this can't automatically manifest itself in the business environment. Because many industries, like essential services, need to function. And although they came out saying that essential services might not be part of their model, we still find loads of full-time workers in need of essential services. So we don't see how that contradiction is going to play out in [? inaudible ?]

Second issue here is why we improve work-life balance. I'll be integrating my substantive into this issue. They came out saying that employees should work in the office for 5 days. They came out with this strong characterisation. We didn't see how this was exclusive to your side.

As we know, online work and work in many different forms is also increasing under our side. We see businesses incentivised to provide workers with online work for the very reason that they're going to be motivated. Note that this doesn't happen when you implement their case, because now you just have a 4-day workweek.

These employees are going to be forced to come into the office every single day. They're going to be on call for all these hours. They're not going to get time with their family.

Note that happens under our side because there's mutual respect between employees and businesses. And they come to an agreement that both sides actually agree on. That doesn't happen under their side.

Secondly, they came out saying that employee retention would be high. We thought that intuitively, as I've stated before, 2 things here. Employee retention wouldn't actually be that high. Because businesses would actually have dissent between the employees.

This wouldn't be a proper contractual obligation. It wouldn't be agreed on to both sides. It would just be something that's been forced onto the employers and that they have to immediately listen to. We didn't see how this was just automatically going to play out and how businesses were going to accept this.

But even if we take them at their best and say that employee retention does occur, we just thought that this was generally not the best thing for the economy. Because we thought that more part-time and casual workers wouldn't be hired. You'd just get these people in these top jobs, getting the money, and working these 4 days. And people in casual jobs wouldn't be getting hired because obviously there's no incentive for businesses to hire new employees if they already have a bunch of employees working.

But secondly, on to my substantive, our substantive response to this, because we get, as I said, we get a better work-life balance for these overworked individuals. Because essentially, working 4 days a week means that these people have to work for longer hours on each day, which means that on the days that they work, instead of working 9:00 to 5:00, this would be substantially increased for the intuitive reasons I've stated before, and mainly to just outweigh the significant hour loss in the fifth day. And that means that not only--

[bell rings]

--are essential workers like nurses under a lot of pressure from an already struggling health care system, they're going to be even more overworked with the 4 day workweek. And that looks like more people coming into these hospitals, crowding these hospitals with diseases that nurses don't really want to deal with. And we didn't see how nurses would be suddenly motivated to deal with more patients, when there's more people coming through the doors simply because they didn't have the Friday to go to.

So what does this tell us? It tells us that on the comparative, these overworked individuals already have mechanisms to gain pay, under our side, to outweigh the rising cost of living that look like unions or societal pressure, which businesses were actually incentivised by. But under the opposition side, not only do they receive the similar pay, but they're under more pressure in these 4 days, rather than 5 days. And they lose like this crucial bargaining power with employees.

So why is this bad? Essentially, this means that the side affirmative doesn't actually gain any benefits on the grounds of work-life balance, but rather they just incur, a lot of mental degradation of these industries that are already under a lot of pressure. And it also means that when you look into the future, these employers will try to combat this large mental degradation, have no mechanism or have no escape mechanism to try to actually attack businesses because now businesses have this leveraging power.

So essentially, what side affirmative is giving to these businesses is just like a tokenistic thing to show everyone that they're actually providing work-life balance or whatever when intuitively it's not. And we can't blame businesses for doing this as well, because at the end of the day, all businesses need to make a profit.

Third issue, why is the status quo better than the affirmative's world? No adjudicator, this bargaining power that employers currently have in the status quo is entirely forfeited for 2 main reasons. Firstly, the 4-day workweek can act as a method of tokenism, as I've stated, for employers to claim that they advocate for this 4-day workweek, but then severely overwork their employees behind the scenes during these 4 days.

Let me tell you that the main reason why unions are so powerful as a tool of bargaining in today's society is because of the societal support they receive. Look at the teacher union or look at the rail union. The reason those have been effective in trying to balance out the cost of living with--

[bell rings]

--justifying how much money they're being paid is because of the immense societal support they had in trying to coerce and convince these businesses and the government to actually make a change. That was why it was effective, not just forcing this upon the businesses.

Secondly, employees have less flexibility regarding actual hours in regards to these 4 days. Because now that they've sort of legislated against this or mandated against this, employees have no flexibility within these actual 4 days to do anything. They have less time to gain this flexibility.

And intuitively, on a whole, we just thought our side was much better for both sides. Adjudicator, panel, ladies and gentlemen, as a result of the fact that they provided very minimal characterisation, sort of asserted their entire case, and the opposition forfeiting their employees' bargaining power that they have tomorrow, I'm very, very proud to negate them today.

[applause]

MIA CONNELL: OK. So 3 things in today's debate, firstly, along the issue of mental health and contradicting our mental health. The second issue being the increased revenue for business and the economic side of this debate. And the third issue being the impracticality of our model or the organic growth that the opposition says will happen in the status quo.

Firstly, starting with contradicting mental health, the opposition has come out and said that they will be splitting these days of work. No, we will be splitting the 5 days of work over the other 4 days, and we're increasing the stress and workload for long working hours. They also say that we're cramping these 5 days of work into 4 days. And that that means that these workers will be overworked in these 4 days.

One response here is the status quo of an 8-hour workday. Let's do zoom in. 8 hours, approximately one dedicated to lunch breaks and 1 hour of potential socialising, leaving approximately 6 hours for dedication to work. That's if your goal-- for goal workers as the negative team's best case scenario, if we split the 6 hours over 4 days over approximately 2.5 hours' worth of work and extra or the same each day.

However, under human mindset, we aim for bigger and more long term rewards rather than short term benefits. If in this case, then employers would then choose to work more productively in that shorter time frame, meaning that, no, they aren't working over time. They're simply working smarter and using their time more efficiently.

The second response here is that as the workweek progresses, each working day becomes less productive and more mundane. And this isn't just an assumption, it's a fact. In the status quo, a ratio of working days is to non-working days in 5.2. Under our model, ratio of working days to nonworking days, which is significantly closer to our almost perfect work-life balance. And so far, in negative, attacking our model isn't really helping their point of mental health at all. Because they haven't actually done anything to improve mental health whatsoever in comparison to the model we are trying to put across.

I'll then talk about how this theme is resolved in our model and also through our speakers. Our speakers have introduced their arguments to the harms of contradicting mental health in 3 ways. One's the positive work-life balance, 2's less career burnout, and 3, they are more mentally stimulated.

The opposition are trying to repeatedly show that negative mental health will occur by the characterisation that is being made by the negative. However, we tell you that this false characterisation being made is actually being resolved by the work-life balance that our model is creating. For example, we want all of these workers' work and motivation to go into their workload because they are ultimately being rewarded and given a break for these 3 days instead of 2.

We feel that throughout this week, this repeated endurance of work could cause mental health issues. However, in comparison to the opposition's world of this mental health stretching over a 5-day period with 2 breaks, instead in no way an attempt to have a fair work-life balance. What we need to understand, one key thing, mental health is bound to occur regardless of our work days on both sides of this debate. However, our side of the house is significantly less reducing the harm of mental health as we are providing the opportunity for a greater rest break or period.

We also want to note that every worker is different. The ways that individuals cope with workloads are also different. However, we are all understanding that mental health does occur from stress and work, but we, as the affirmative are and will reduce this issue of mental health and ultimately provide benefits from having a work-life balance through being more mentally stimulated and efficiently, which I'll also touch upon later on in my speech.

Moving on to the next theme of the increased revenue for business, the opposition comes out and they tell us that they said the model will cause a stagnant day in the economy. We still have businesses that weren't offices open, like restaurants open on or not on weekends in the status quo. They also come out and they tell us that there is a 20% loss and economy is more productive due to the circulation of money.

Our response is, one, our model will pay the same amount as we repeatedly showed through our speakers. And this same amount of money is circulated. So why not the adaptation to a 4-day workweek?

The opposition has come out and said that employees are working one day less than what it currently looks like in our status quo, meaning that revenge could potentially be gained from this one day is lost. The harms of this meaning that less GDP growth for the economy and the negative effect on businesses which will have a run out of negative effect for families and their individuals. Two responses here, one, under our model, efficiency increases already, which we have brought up in our first speaker's argument. Our sales will increase, undoubtedly. So they will see an increase in profit, GDP, and business performance and confidence.

Two, if they do not think revenue will be so different and will change so much, then there should be some kind of detriment that we can see in countries that have already implemented the 4-day working week strategy. However, instead, countries that have implemented the 4-day working week have had major benefits, which we can see in several European countries, such as Switzerland. Not only has European satisfaction increased, but also employees are less likely to leave, meaning less time and money spent on looking for potential employees, less time on interviewing, less time spent on training and other human resources.

As a whole, this means that businesses can focus all of their time on working incredibly productively with the same employees and the same experiences and the loyal workers being produced in the workforce. We tell you this through our speakers that under our side of the house, the economic benefit is raised in 3 ways. One, quality of work improves. Two, businesses become more profitable because of this improvement of work. And 3, the GDP and quality of life improves.

[bell rings]

So how do we improve under our side of the house? We tell you that the economic benefit will occur with the quality of work being produced. Example, a worker all week in their certain field, feeling tired, lack of motivation, and poor work drive would negatively reflect on the way that individual does. Then, in consequence, resulting of the economic downfall that this will bring to the business.

So in our model, when given 4 days in the workplace, the human [? inaudible ?] would naturally want to work faster and harder as an extra incentive to get this extended break that we are allowing. We feel that under the status quo, these people do not get the proper rest or break that they need so they can produce great quality work.

So what do we understand? We understand that these workers will be potentially missing a day's worth of work. However, we feel that this will then be brought back up, if not more, by allowing 4 days of work in a week.

Compensating a slow workweek of 5 days can be positively changed to a faster, hard working 4 days, which can then allow businesses to become much more profitable and beneficial from the work being produced. This then leads me on to my third point of the impracticality of our model and the organic growth that the opposition thinks will happen in their status quo.

So they first come out and tell that what happens with small businesses, the small profit major suffers. Businesses with such a small profit margin mostly have the founder as the only employee because they want to expand before hiring employees. So we feel like this point isn't relevant to the discussion of today's debate. We're talking about big corporations and businesses like Google, consulting firms, et cetera, who can easily pay the salaries.

Adding on to this small business, the opposition also want to come out and say that the way that small businesses operate will be severely impacted. Small businesses and the way that small business operate is based on their needs. For example, small businesses and businesses already have operating hours--

[bell rings]

--for when they want to work. So by losing a day does not really lose a day of profit. Next thing, the impracticality of our model. They said that excluding essential workers and that essential workers are going to gain no benefit from our side of the house.

Two key responses here, one, we would like to remind and bring to attention that these essential workers are people like teachers. They're people like nurses, et cetera, people that are almost solely responsible for the world issues impacting our people today. We also feel that there was a lack of understanding being made as we don't see why the opposition would want to include essential workers throughout this question when essential workers are the people who are needed on a daily basis.

Adding to this point from our second speaker, nurses and other essential workers are usually on a shift basis, not the 9:00 to 5:00 jobs that we are targeting. If the opposition did want us to include these essential workers, it's extremely illogical and a drastic consequences that can happen and that would happen. However, under our side's model, it's not the case.

Then they want to bring up that organic change is a better alternative to a 4-day working week when it comes to improvising mental health. Two responses to this.

[bell rings]

Thank you.

[applause]

JESSOP HARTLEY: Ladies and gentlemen, the up's case is entirely contingent on businesses having an incentive to actually achieve work-life balance. This does not occur under their side because employers are locked in a system which now they cannot bargain for more benefits. What they also fail to consider is the initial backlash that businesses provide to this legislation. Even if they don't, they didn't provide us any incentives as to why it is in the business' best interest to promote work-life balance in your world. Comparatively, under our side, businesses have an incentive as a result of the societal pressure, unions, and backlash which they create, genuine employee reform, and achieves actual work-life balance.

One of the most contingent issues in this debate is the issue of a salary. The opposing team has come out and said that salaries will not change under their model. However, it's of the utmost unrealistic expectations for businesses to allow the same salary for 20% less work.

Notoriously greedy businesses would be unwilling for workers to maintain salaries and benefits of 5 days, when only 4 are worked. The entire reason businesses exist is to turn a profit. And they will do anything they can to protect this.

Even if businesses were mandated to pay the same rates for a 4-day workweek for a 5-day workweek, this could cause even more damage to the Australian economy. Businesses would be unable to take an extra expense of losing a day whilst also losing a massive amount of productivity from workers. Businesses would go under, the economy would collapse, and workers would certainly lose all days of work, not just one, in the coming employment crisis from the opposer's model. In the affirmative world, salaries are either evaded by the lost days of work or workers lose their jobs through the bankruptcy of an exacerbation of the company's expenses. The opposition's model regarding salaries are a complete lose-lose.

A massive issue of this debate is under which side-- and why the opposition harms vulnerable people. Eliminating the fifth day of work deprives workers of wages, a massive amount of wages. Particularly with low SES people, every dollar from their paycheck counts. Millions of Australians all across society live paycheck to paycheck, struggling to already afford their lifestyles.

The opposition's proposal immolates a fifth of these people's income. What percentage of Australians can have their budgets slashed by 20%? I'll tell you, the 1%. The idea of a 4-day workweek is a machination of the most privileged class in Australian society. This is an idea proposed by the born rich, the white collar workers, and the idealistic upper class.

These people, as my first speaker mentioned, have an innate lack of understanding surrounding labour issues in Australia and exclusively promote solutions which spit in the face of the complex nuances that regard labour relations in Australia. Additionally, the 4-day work week disproportionately affects the very core of the Australian economy and society, small business owners. These people, your cafe owners, your hardware store owners, your corner shops, these people are already struggling to survive in the current labour climate, turning tiny profit margins, and are already under the threat of going under. How do we expect these vulnerable people to keep their stores open, not just on the 3-day weekend, but at all when faced with an assault on their revenue by increases in overtime and weekend rates?

The opposition's proposal may scratch the lizard brains of us all, but when considered rationally, it collapses in the face of its caveats. Sure, you'll be happy when you can sleep in on a Friday, but where will you be when you can't feed your children, heat your homes, maintain your cars?

Workers in the opposition's model will also suffer from more physical effects. Do we really expect businesses to slash their productivity by a fifth? And of course not. In the affirmative reality, businesses will impose larger hours and much longer and much more gruelling hours for days that workers will be working, leading to expansion in the worker burnout crisis, which is an essential issue of this debate the affirmative team is trying to solve.

Would we rather work 8 hours for 5 days a week? Or what about 12 hours 4 days a week? This results in a myriad of tangible damages and an excavation of the ones currently facing the 5-day workweek, such as sleep deprivation and especially burnout for workers.

By excluding essential workers from their model, we ignore the fact that these are the workers we refer to when we talk about people whose work-life balances and mental health are compromised because of their overwhelming and intense positions. By introducing the change, we're doing nothing to aid the people who are genuinely impacted by their working days. These are our front line workers, our doctors and nurses and police officers. By exploiting these workers, the affirmative team is acknowledging their faulty logistics that change elements of society and showing us that a 4-day working week poses no benefits for our most important and essential workers.

Another key issue is under whose side is productivity increased? Relative to both the economy and worker mental health, worker productivity will not be improved at all under the affirmative proposal. Worker productivity certainly doesn't improve under 12-hour, gruelling, stressful days and, once again, a broken economy. This mitigates the inaccurate claim made by the affirmative that worker productivity improves under a 4-day work week.

The opposition claims that-- sorry, the 3-day weekend won't apply to workers within restaurants or similar institutions. Once again, why are these workers being excluded from the model when they're the people who would reap the most of the short term limited benefits provided by the opposing model?

Another issue is under whose side is the economy more productive? There are also, once again, as my first speaker talked about, there are wider economic implications with the opposition's proposal. With less money going to workers, workers will be spending less, and the circular motion of income collapses within the Australian economy, and stagnating our economic growth and productivity. This pervades a dangerous--

[bell rings]

--slippery slope into an utter crisis, particularly during our current times of a cost of living crisis and the economic recession resulting from COVID. Under the proposition, both those crises will be made much worse, alongside with slashing people's wages by up to 20%, a fifth in these [? inaudible ?] crises.

There are also social impacts from a 4-day weekend. Are we supposed to love the idea of our children attending 4 days of school? Once again, whilst we're in a crisis of educative erosion in Australian society?

How about other essential services, as we just mentioned? Where will they be at the time when we need them the most? Certainly not where we need them to be.

The mental health issue was another key crisis in this debate. The opposition has claimed that worker mental health will improve amongst the amongst the 4-day work week. But this is entirely untrue due to 2 key reasons. People's mental health will suffer from the economic issues. Whilst an extra day of relaxation sounds great, a world where you have to pick up a casual Maccas job to feed your family is bad for your mental health.

Bad economies lead to bad mental health. And in the affirmative's proposal, this will cure both. This completely abates the claim of the desired outcome of the opposing team of improving workers' mental health and productivity. Additionally, any small, short term relaxation benefits will be mitigated and reduced by the cramped 4-day work week. Once again, worker burnout will be exacerbated in this reality.

Under the affirmative, they have claimed that the work-life balance of Australian workers will improve. However, the proposition they are arguing goes directly against their desired outcomes. Workers will suffer a mentioned increase in tangible issues from the 4-day work week and [? inaudible ?] 4 days of the week and using those 3 days proposed for a complete recovery from the absolute gruelling 4 days. The status quo offers a much more balanced lifestyle, with work spread over 5 days.

[bell rings]

A 4-day workweek leads to a crisis in the Australian economy, in worker productivity, and in, most importantly, worker mental health. These issues are related and affect each other deeply. To eliminate a fifth day of work is to eliminate this small business owners, to eliminate our economy, and to eliminate our economic growth, and to deeply affect both our economy and our society. Thank you.

[applause]

INDIGO CROSWELLER: Hi, everyone. Thanks so much for what's been a great couple of days. We're super, super impressed with the quality of debates this week. You're all obviously excellent.

A couple of announcements from the adjudication panel just before we jump into it. The first thing is about 2 separate opportunities that come up for Years 9 and 10 students in the next couple of years. The first is run excellently by the Arts Unit, which is the Combined High Schools representative team. That's a team for Years 11 and 12.

There's about to be a whole bunch of information on the internet about that in the next few months. So keep an eye out about that. But that's a representative team that Ellie and I have had the privilege of coaching for the last couple of years. It's a great opportunity to get some extra coaching and debate with some awesome students.

Second opportunity is also something that all of the adjudication panel has been involved in over the years, which is the NSW debating union team. That's a team of both public schools and private school students. You get a lot of extra coaching. You can get some information about that on the website, which is nswdebatingunion.com. That's something to look out for if you're in Year 10 or above. Again, opportunities for public school students in debating everywhere, definitely look into them.

In terms of how we saw the debate, this was actually a split decision. And it was obviously a very close debate, as you can tell from that. A couple of things in general feedback.

The first thing to say is that it's really important in these really high level debates to make sure that we're engaging with the way that the debate changes across speakers. So it's really important to make sure you're engaging with the way that the debate is set up right from the start.

The second thing to say is that it's also really important to quantify claims about really big concepts. So when we make arguments about things like the economy, it's really important to prove why the impact on the economy is going to be quite large, particularly given it's a very vague concept, which is very complicated and deals with everyone. So it's important to quantify claims about big concepts.

In terms of how we saw the debate, I'm going to deal with this in 2 questions. First, what effect does this have on workers, then the effect on business and the economy. On workers, the affirmative comes out quite strongly and tells us that this improves work-life balance in an important way. They tell us the impact of this has improved mental health.

How does the neg respond to this? The first thing they say is that, well, this doesn't affect a lot of workers, including the ones who it's most important for, like first line responders and things like that. The problem with this response is that it's largely mitigatory, and it's also conceded very early by the affirmative, who just say this debate is not about that kind of worker, which means that a lot of neg's material here just falls out of the debate because the scope of the debate actually becomes quite narrow and largely about professional workers who are office jobs in 9:00 to 5:00 capacities.

The second response from the negative is just to say that even for those workers who are affected by the change, you get worse mental health because those workers now have to work so much harder in the 4 days that they are at work. Their claim is that workers are now going to be pushed more intensely by their bosses and by the businesses that they work for, but also that they'll lose some flexibility and time to relax that they have across 5 days.

The affirmative responds to this by explaining, firstly, that there are existing mechanisms which will continue to operate in a 4-day work week, so things like caps on hours or overtime pay would continue to operate to ensure that workers are properly compensated for additional work they have to do outside of their scheduled working hours. But the second thing to say is that the loss of flexibility across those 4 days seems to be compensated by the affirmative in that you now have extra time off of work or outside of the office.

The next claim from the negative is to say that this is worst for the most vulnerable group of people who now lose 20% of their pay. There's a lot of very complicated maths which the bench struggled with. But--

[laughter]

--they say workers lose 20% of their pay because they're now working a day less and that these businesses would just refuse to pay them. I think the problem here is that it's not responsive to the stuff in the affirmative's model, which they are correctly and able to do in debating rules, which is just to say that businesses are now not allowed to change the salaries just because your employees are working one day less.

The best negative claim in relation to workers is about bargaining power. And this is an argument which says under the status quo, bargaining power is on the side of workers because they have support of unions who have the support of society. And therefore, you can bargain for better outcomes in your workplace relationships. They say that under the affirmative team's change, you lose all of that bargaining power because all of a sudden you've got a 4-day workweek and unions and social support apparently will just say, well, you've got it pretty good.

So what actually happens here? It seems that even the examples the negative gives of the kinds of unions and changes that you might get in comparison to the changes that the affirmative can just legislate into existence being a whole extra day outside of the office seem to have comparatively less impact given you now just have less hours at work. And so even the impact of the kinds of benefits that the neg wants to claim under the status quo seem to be less effective in improving outcomes for workers than the affirmative gets.

So at the end of this issue, we have an aff who's focused on a very narrow group of workers, the 1%, as the neg passionately explains. But the neg engages in harms in this debate on the low SES workers that seem to not really be affected under either side. So what does it do for the workers who have a change? We believe it's true that this probably makes those workers happier to be at work with a greater capacity to achieve positive mental health outcomes. And where the neg might prove they lose some bargaining power with unions and things like that, the aff has legislated immediately a relatively positive impact.

But what effect does this have on business, then? This is where some of the neg's best material is. And they say that, well, this is really bad for small businesses who already have slim profit margins and probably can't afford to lose workers for a day.

The affirmative's initial response to this is pretty weak. They say that small businesses don't often have employees and are normally just one person, and so they probably still can afford to have just one less day in the office. The better response, though, is implicit in affirmative's claim, which is to reject the businesses will have any negative impact from now having a 4-day working week.

Because the affirmative's best material on business and economy is to say that businesses actually benefit from a 4-day working week because you get more or at least the same out of your employees. That is to say that there are incentives for your employees to work more efficiently. They find better processes.

They're more switched on in the 4-days that they are at work. And also, businesses improve from those efficiency benefits, at least economically. And at the very least, businesses reduce their costs by increasing worker retention and not having to constantly rehire people.

And there's very little pushback on this being a significant saving, which is characterised as-- although it seems like HR probably wouldn't actually cost that much in the real world. The negative makes a series of claims throughout the debate about things like the effect of a stagnant day on the economy. But these are relatively unimpacted in terms of the scale of the effects they might have on the entire country, whereas affirmative can claim that at least businesses are likely to get better and happier workers who stay for more time.

So ultimately, the affirmative is able to claim at least the same, if not more, benefits for businesses and, therefore, the economy. And the affirmative team has won this debate in a split decision.

[applause]

OLIVIA WRIGHT: Thank you so much for that adjudication. Please welcome a representative from Sydney to congratulate the winning team.

MOLLY FITZPATRICK: So we just wanted to say thank you so much for such an intellectual and elevated debate. It was really tough to refute all of your points. And we just can't believe how well you did. You did such a good job. And we wish you all great luck. Good luck with your future careers in debate individually and hopefully as a team in the future as well.

[applause]

OLIVIA WRIGHT: And please welcome the member from the winning team to respond.

[applause]

ADHYA NAYAK: We just wanted to congratulate you on what was such an eloquent and solid and well-thought out debate. And I think your points itself, it was so hard to rebut them on our side, too. And we want to thank you for really putting your best effort into this and wishing you the best of luck for your future debates. Thank you.

[applause]

ELINOR STEPHENSON: Hi, everyone. So there's, I think, one last quite important announcement to make. So every year at JSDC, the judges are watching all of the debates very carefully to identify 6 speakers who we think are the best speakers of the tournament, and they form a hypothetical representative debating team. They don't do any debates, but they represent NSW in a kind of spiritual sense.

[laughter]

We're very proud of them, I guess is something to say. So I'm going to announce those people now. But just I first want to preface it by saying that obviously the set of 6 people should be extremely proud. It's very exciting to get to JSDC at all, let alone to be in the top 6 speakers of this tournament. So there is the team of the tournament, firstly from Illawarra South East, Ava Roberts.

[applause]

OK. OK, cool. Secondly, from North Sydney, we've got Jerry Yuan.

[applause]

All right. The next person from the North Coast, we've got Jay Bloomfield.

[applause]

From Sydney region, we've got Vishruth Anand.

[applause]

From Western Sydney, we've got Phoebe Grocholsky. Sorry.

[applause]

And the final person who I'm going to announce is, in fact, the best speaker overall at this tournament and therefore the winner of the Lily Gunther Shield. So congratulations from Western Sydney, Nara Gong.

[applause, cheering]