Video transcript
NSW Premier's Debating Challenge 2024 – Years 7 and 8 State Final

[intro music]

LOUISE ENNERS: Welcome to the state final of the Premier's Debating Challenge for Years 7 and 8. My name is Louise Enners. I am the timekeeper for today, and the chairperson is Elyse Smyth from Cammeraygal High School, too.

Before we begin, I want to acknowledge that we are meeting on the traditional lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora nation. And on behalf of the Department of Education, I want to show my respect to the Elders past and present of that nation, and of all First Nations peoples.

ELYSE SMYTH: The affirmative team today is from Sydney Girls High School. Their first speaker is Ketki Salunkhe. Second speaker, Hannah Hemmings. Third speaker, Thuy Vu. And fourth speaker, Iris Yang.

The negative team is from Coonabarabran High School. Their first speaker is Charlotte Roberts. Second speaker, Caira Armstrong. Third speaker, Georgia Heaney. And fourth speaker, Lily Weatherall.

The adjudicators for this debate are Jeremiah, Aman, Bella, Nikolai and Maurice. The speaking time for this debate is 6 minutes. There will be a warning bell at 4 minutes, 2 bells at 6 minutes and a continuous bell at 7 minutes.

The topic for this debate is that we should offer a financial incentive for families to move to rural areas. Finally, please take a moment to make sure all mobile phones are switched off. Now, please welcome the first affirmative speaker to open the debate.

[applause]

KETKI SALUNKHE: In my speech today, I'll be going through a couple of things. So first of all, I'll be starting off with my model. Then I'm just going to be wrapping up my speech with some-- sorry. First, I'll be starting off with my model. Then I'll be going on to some characterisation, some setup. Then I'll be moving on to my argument. I will wrap my speech up with some impacting and some weighing.

OK, so first of all, in our model, we will be having a financial incentive that will be scaled by the amount of family members in each family. So the reason that we're doing this is because it ensures that larger families receive the financial support that they need. Because we think that in comparison, for example, a family that only has one child needs a lot less financial aid to support their family in comparison to, say, one that has 3 or 5 children.

So this kind of raises the question. Why are families exclusively good for rural areas? Well, we have 2 main reasons for this. First of all, we think that families, especially with younger kids, are willing to participate in community and social events. So, for example, we have growing public gardens or fundraisers or helping out with the local soccer team. Second of all, we also think that often parents are more mature to help in the running of the city or the running of the area, and generally support the whole community.

OK, the second thing I'm going to be moving on to in the setup and the characterisation is why would people who have a well-established life in the city not move to rural areas. Well, we think there are 2 main reasons for this.

Well, first of all, we think that the reason why more young or struggling families are moving to rural areas, is because we think that families that have been well-established in the city have no really strong push or really strong incentive to move to rural areas. And we also think that in young and struggling families, there's often a stereotype, especially within migrants or people who are kind of entering this area, who believe that they can only succeed in the city. And there aren't really many job opportunities within rural areas.

I'm going to be moving on to some more characterisation. So we think that the main people who'll be moving to rural areas are likely young, struggling families. An example of why they're struggling is because the genuine cost of living crisis in urbanised areas, such as in the east coast, which is a relevant problem, I think, in the present world.

And examples of this are doubled grocery prices, higher prices in rent and pricing of housing as we move closer to these areas due to supply and demand issues regarding housing. We also think that there's an issue regarding education, especially in public and private schools need to cut down on enrolments. We think that this thus makes entering catchment areas or enrolling in these schools harder and a lot more expensive. So yeah.

OK. Now in this argument, I'll be proving that once families move to rural areas, the quality of life will improve. So we kind of have a few reasons for this. Well, mainly 2 main reasons. So my first reason is that there'll be less competition for jobs, but more demand for them, which helps entering job markets for young families a lot easier.

And we think that a couple of examples of this are, firstly, running small businesses. For example, you can run an ice cream shop or a small shop, which is easily also spread through word of mouth. And this also means that the pressure of going to more corporate positions or corporate jobs is lifted off due to less competition and increased local support. Because we think that people in these areas are more likely to actually want to invest in these businesses and actually want to support people who run these businesses, rather than them being kind of like the constant comparison in the city where you're more pushed to enter a corporate job, which is more lifted off once you kind of have this support within these areas.

Second of all, we also think that the quality of environment in rural areas can play a large role in the quality of life for these families. So we think that firstly, especially with families, it's important to have a good foundation in life. And having a good, controlled environment helps with this.

We think that in rural areas, there's a lot less pollution regarding light pollution, noise pollution and air pollution. And we think that at the end of the day, this can help families, especially younger families, kind of live their daily lives or just have a general better quality of life.

OK, now I'm going to be doing my impact thing. So we think that on the opposition side, many families are struggling in the cost of living crisis. And there's a lot of noise and air and light pollution due to the overdevelopment of urban areas, like we've already mentioned, meaning that it's also difficult to create a healthier lifestyle. We also think that there's a stress in cities to produce and supply for children, rather than letting them explore their childhood.

But even this also comes, like I mentioned, with the increasing cost of entering catchment areas or enrolling into schools. However, we think that under our side, when these families move to rural areas, the cost of living is lower, meaning that families are able to spend less money on essentials, which then gives them more leeway to spend more money on recreational activities or experiences and materials for kids to develop their habits and let them just be kids. Because now they have this leeway and this kind of financial incentive, which helps them achieve this.

We also think that people and young families are genuinely happier because city life often needs routine, which is hard for especially younger families to maintain. Whereas at least in rural areas, you have time to explore or makeshift time in your schedule. You aren't necessarily packed to a certain schedule, packed to a staggered schedule, which I think is especially hard for younger families to maintain. Whereas, at least in rural areas, you kind of have this time. You kind of have this experience that you can genuinely create, whereas in the city, this is just a lot harder.

OK, so I think at the end of the day, for these reasons, I'm proud to affirm.

[applause]

CHARLOTTE ROBERTS: Imagine you're a 10-year-old boy who lives in the city. You're in the basketball team, in the football team, and you're the school captain. You come from a big family, and it's in a financial situation at the moment.

And you eventually realise that if you're given this money to move to the country, in the country, you find lack of sport, lack of jobs, lack of opportunities and lack of students-- your exact idea of hell. These are just a few small things that most city people would hate about the country.

And I have 3 reasons against this topic. But before I begin my points, I'd just like to address the counter model we'd put into place. Instead of people getting paid to move to the country, we can put more funding into people that are in poverty or have disabilities or have large families, like the affirmative team have already stated.

We can fund these people. And rather than paying people who are already well off just to move to the country, you're still paying people, even if they've got a substantial amount of money. We can pay those people who have disabilities or are on a lower socioeconomic status.

And now, before I begin my points, I'd just like to address a few mistakes they have made in their proposal and a bit of rebuttal. OK, so the first speaker of the affirmative team stated that there will be less competition for jobs. But what they don't realise is if all these people are coming into the rural areas, these rural areas will become just as crowded as the city. All these people are moving to this area. Then there will be competition.

If all these people have the same job statuses, like you've said before, there will be fighting to get jobs. Because as we know, the country is small. And it's not large enough for every single person to have the exact job they want if they all have similar jobs, like they've stated. It just wouldn't work.

You also stated that the cost of living crisis is the biggest issue here. But what team A don't understand is that with all these people moving to the rural areas, they'll become super populated as well. And because they're in high demand, the cost of living, example groceries, will rise. When all these people are coming, they'll notice everything in high demand, and they'll make the prices higher, so that they can make money off this.

And now I'll just begin my speech. OK, so our first point is that the infrastructure in rural areas is lacking, and it won't support the amount of new people that come into these rural areas. And I have 2 reasons as to why this is true.

Firstly, in the rural areas of Australia, there isn't a lot of infrastructure. In the status quo, there are often only one hospital, one doctor's surgery, one supermarket, a bakery and a few small businesses and cafes here and there. In comparison to the city, which has 10 times the amount of these. There's so many things to offer in the city. Then why would they come to a country and overpopulate it all?

And secondly, rail infrastructure is so minimal, and often some small towns don't even have it. Rural areas often hardly ever have airports and a lack of planes. And people with disabilities can't easily visit specialists out in the country, as there is lacking or no support for them to travel to doctors or specialists that live hours away.

With our counter model in place, people that have disabilities or sicknesses who actually need the money will be given the money that the opposition wants to give to people moving to rural areas. The people with disabilities that we're going to give this money to are going to use this on much more important medical care, specialist appointments and support for their condition.

I have 2 reasons as to why we care. Firstly, if these people from the city want to move to the rural areas, they are going to have to need somewhere to live. Since these areas are small, there are minimal housing options, so the government will have to support by bringing in metal plastic, wood and resources to build new houses. This will obviously have a horrible impact on the environment. And this will have so much pollution.

And the affirming team may say that they can just create new jobs. But the country towns are small, and there isn't enough room for new flashy offices and buildings. And you can't just build them on our poor farmers' paddocks. These create plastic, physical pollution, air pollution, light pollution and sound pollution, which is horrible for animals, people and the environment.

OK, our second reason is about them becoming unfair to the people in the country. This is true for 2 reasons. Firstly, with all these people rapidly moving rural, interest rates will go up. This means rural folks who aren't getting paid to live there are going to have to pay incredibly high rent and, looking for a house, won't find one in their budget.

Secondly, people who live in the country are extremely hard workers. They work hard, and they have to pay a lot of money already. How come only city people are getting paid to move to the country, and country people are having to suffer and pay even more?

We care about this for 2 reasons. Firstly, everyone moving to the country, prices will go up. Country folk don't get financial aid, and they won't be able to afford grocery inflation nor higher school fees. These people are trying their best to get by each day, and we shouldn't make these things even harder for them.

Secondly, city people may not even like-- have low standards of rural people, and we know most might like rural people. But it is obvious fact that some won't, and they'll make it difficult for them. Example, they may harass them about buying their land and call country people out for doing things differently. We know not all city people will do this, but some will.

They can also put rural people out of business. The affirmative team may say that things won't increase price, but we know this is false. Because in the city, things are more expensive, and then rural, and with city people moving there to their town, they might as well just become a city itself. And these things will rise in prices.

Our third reason is about the lack of opportunities and jobs. This is true for 2 reasons. Firstly, like you stated previously, the lack of infrastructure will cause lack of jobs. Therefore, there was nowhere for them to go and they won't be able to sustain money with that. Secondly, in the city, there's scholarships, shops, teams, clubs, sport and great education.

Whereas in the country, there's usually none of these things. Maybe a few things here and there, but really, not enough for people to sustain. And we care about this for 2 reasons. Firstly, people will get bored. They have nothing to do. And doing nothing creates mischief and could actually bring more crime into rural areas. We don't want more crime.

And secondly, people at the beginning won't be able to find jobs. And without jobs, the money you wish to give them will then go into less than a week on houses, clothes and groceries. This defeats the entire purpose of giving them money if they're just going to spend it in a week, because everything is inflating. So we really just don't see the point of this, and we don't think it will work. Thank you.

[applause]

HANNAH HEMMINGS: Things I'll be going through in the speech today are one, our rebuttal, and secondly, on my point that this will improve the socioeconomic aspect of rural communities. So firstly, on rebuttal. What are they saying about rural opportunities and working at a rural place?

So firstly, they say that there's going to be so many more high prices and that there's going to be more overpopulation now that people are living there. This may be true. We think that infrastructure is likely to get better organically.

But why? For 2 reasons. Because firstly, the government cares more, and they have to care more because there are more people now. So even if they don't care straight away, more people that are moving there are obviously going to cause more facilities. And therefore, the government has to care in that sense because there's a large scale of people that are going to be moving there.

And so the people moving there are families that are struggling to get by in the urban areas, where there's a huge high cost of living crisis. Groceries are really, really expensive, and it's just overall really hard to live in an area where it's so competitive. We also think that infrastructure will get better, for the second reason, because that people moving to rural areas means that it's more likely that businesses will open, as well, like specifically small businesses, as well.

So in the urban areas, where everyone is just racing to get to these high-profile stores, like Woolies, that take up the central amount of groceries in that area, we think that this will be more distributed around. So we'll be able to support small stores, like mama and pop stores that don't usually get enough, that really rely on the rural community there.

But when people move here, it's that these stores, which we really, really care about, because they're currently the only people that are rural people. And there's not enough people that can support these communities. We think that this money will get distributed fairly widely, organically.

So secondly, and then moving on, what do they claim about our rural people and disabilities and people with sicknesses travelling to places and stuff? We have a response to this, and it's that people with disabilities aren't going to move to rural areas, most likely. Because in urban areas, people with disabilities and caretakers of people with disabilities know that rural areas aren't likely going to be the best option if you really need emergency care.

So this means that they're likely to be under schemes like NDIS or other schemes that are already supporting them. For example, funded housing, which really helps in urban areas. And we think that it's pretty likely that these people with disabilities will be moving to these rural areas, because firstly, there's funding. And then also, they obviously know that there's a lack of facilities, which will improve, which we'll be talking about.

And what do they say about too many people coming to the city is really bad for overpopulation, as well. This is like-- many people are not going to-- wait. So, if this is true, they can see that there's a cost of living crisis in the city, which is why people would move in the first place anyways. And our model can better help those people, as well.

So moving on to my actual argument, which would prove that this socioeconomic aspect of our rural communities will greatly improve. So firstly, why are rural communities currently not able to fulfil this socioeconomic aspect?

Well, firstly, there's a lack of people as one problem already, because a lack of people means people with less similar interests to work on things. So there's a lack of jobs to actually fulfil positions that a community needs. So like hospitals and stuff, even if there is some sort of pharmacy nearby, the rural community actually needs more support in these areas. But the reasons for this are-- we have a few reasons.

And that first reason is that more people moving means more money flows in this area. So families that move here are likely to spend money on local stores, as I explained. And also, even if there are some people kind of already supporting the stores, it means that it would get better for them. It would still be better for them to get more people into these stores and more people moving to these areas, as well.

But the second reason is that it also means the government cares much more about them. So there's likely to be more infrastructure, such as hospitals, because there's more people moving there. Obviously more medical care because even if there are some sort of essential service currently, it's likely to not get much attention.

Because in urban areas, there's such a high concentration of people and a huge number of beds being filled. So, for example, St George Hospital is currently undergoing a huge renovation as a part of the government's plan. But these rural communities with lack of infrastructure are likely to get ignored because there's less people.

And so why do we care? Because firstly, big cities get less populated, as well. So that means it kind of balances out the population between urban areas and rural areas.

And secondly, services in general get really good. A really good example of this is like teaching and learning gets better. So understaffed areas of school can get teachers that look forward to living here, rather than in this current world of rural areas where the teachers who work there likely just grew up there, except for maybe a select few that actually choose to go there. But even then, that's pretty small.

And this is really important for the younger generation, because we really care. We really want rural kids to be able to get the same emphasis of education, because there's a high concentration of people in these rural areas, as urban areas do.

So what do we want in the long term? Well, what do we win on? Firstly, long-term benefits. Because even if negative proves that some things are short-term, in the long term, infrastructure is likely to get a lot more better, because there's more people moving to it. So the government actually has to care about this area. So that's why I'm proud to affirm.

[applause]

CAIRA ARMSTRONG: The negative team strongly believes that we should not fund families to move to rural areas. This will lead to overcrowding, lack of resources, loss of jobs, negative environmental impacts, high expenses and overall loss of happiness.

Firstly, I will be rebutting what we thought was wrong with the affirmative team's case, and then I'll be going on to my substantive. Now, the main point the affirmative team had was why the country is better than the city, why cities are bad and why country towns will be made better by its influence.

Firstly, I would like to talk about why they believe that cities are bad. So they stated that there is cost of living crisis in urban areas. And while this is true, we think that cost of living will just go up in rural areas and help will be harder to come by, seeing as infrastructure won't be able to keep up with the supply and demand needs, making things even more expensive than they are in cities. So people will be worse off.

By implementing our counter model, we help families positively, rather than forcing them somewhere they don't want to go. And rural families will suffer, and as well, city people, as it will just go up. They said that education in the city is overcrowded and expensive. However, as I just stated, this will just make that effect happen in these rural areas. Not much will actually change it. It will just change where it's happening.

And also, this will mean that rural people, who don't currently have these issues, will then have these issues. So you're saying people will be going into these wards, and we can't afford to just keep on building more and more schools the more and more people that come in.

Another thing they said is that there will be less competition in business and corporate areas. However, we also disagree with this, seeing as there are currently very few normally corporate or business services in these rural towns. People will just be going into these. Normally, they only have like 5 positions available. These positions are already filled, so this means that these country people, who already have these jobs that they have worked for, will just be kicked out of it. And we don't think that this is fair.

They say that there is less pollution in rural areas. And as I keep on saying, these issues will just move. There isn't going to be less pollution. Things like the beautiful dark skies and the stars that we have in rural areas would be taken away from us. Light, sound and air pollution will just happen in these rural areas, which isn't fair.

Now, I'd like to go on about why they think that the country will be bettered by this. You stated that people with kids can support fundraising and stuff like that. We don't think this is a big enough issue to actually make this important. So I think infrastructure will be cared for, as the government has to care. We think this is very much a reach, and we think that a lot of the time, even if the government does care, they're not going to be able to keep up.

You said that only small businesses will be opened. However, early in your theme, you stated that people won't be rushing to Woolies, as an example. But you also said that there will be more infrastructure, which means that things like Woolies and Kmart and Big W are just going to move to these rural areas. And we don't see this will actually change anything at all.

Said that rural people need more support and will get it from this. As I keep on saying, this won't actually happen, seeing as these issues that they aren't currently facing are just going to be implemented. You say that rural kids need and will get better education. And as I said earlier, we think this is false.

The education will just become overcrowded for these people that don't currently have this issue. You're just making more people have the issues that you're saying are so bad. And we agree that they are, but we don't think that this means that the rural people should have to face this as well as the city people. It doesn't change anything for anybody, other than making it worse.

Now I'd like to go on to why they think cities are bad. The first thing they said, which was quite a small point, was that minorities feel that they can only thrive in cities. While this may be true, we also think that you would later have stated that these country towns would get better and more diverse, which may happen.

However, we don't think that this will happen. So many country people are more conservative, seeing as they have less diverse communities. And you might say oh, well, they'll improve. We don't think this is just going to so quickly happen.

You say that small businesses will thrive. Like people that come from the cities will build small businesses in small towns. Again, as I said earlier, things like Woolies and Kmart and stuff will just overtake this.

Now I'd like to go on to some miscellaneous rebuttal. You said that there will be financial support based on people with families. However, what you're not encountering here is that some kids need more money than others. Some kids have disabilities or illnesses that they need more funding for.

They shouldn't just be a thing of counting kid per kid. And you can't change this now, seeing as that was in your original model. You stated that these families will be funded based on the amount of children. And we don't think that this is considerate at all to families who need better financial support.

You said that people with disabilities aren't going to move and that they already have funding like NDIS. However, as we stated in our model, we think that more funding should go into NDIS, so those people don't have to move. These people are going to need to move.

So many people with disabilities can't afford to live in these countries, to live-- sorry, to live in these cities because they don't have access to work. And we don't think that they're just going to go to the city and magically get a job. Sorry, we don't think they're going to go to the country and magically get a job. And going back to you saying that they aren't going to move, again, we don't think this is fair.

The last thing I'd like to touch on is that you said that only families in poverty will be really affected by this, so there won't be much people moving. However, you later on said that lots of families are in crisis. And also, to finish off my rebuttal, you also haven't touched yet on why you think this is unfair for people who currently live in these rural areas, because they are not getting this funding.

Now I would like to go on to my substantive. As the second speaker for the negative team, I have 2 reasons against offering financial incentives for families to move to rural areas. My first reason is how falsely advertised these places will be. Why is this true? I have 3 reasons to explain this.

Firstly, if the government wants this change, they'll do anything to make it happen. Their billboards, ads, these people will be so strongly motivated to do this. Secondly, people will see this that are already financially vulnerable and not think too far into it. They'll go, oh, we're getting money for these places, we've got an improvement.

However, this won't actually improve their lives at all. They're going to be falsely advertising for this. And thirdly, it's so glamorised in media. You see so much media about people that are farmers, people that are cowboys, all these kind of things. It's not actually like that at all. It's a very different way of life than what is shown in media.

Why do we care? I have 3 reasons for this. Firstly, these people will be promised something unrealistic, and in reality, it will be under-resourced. And as my first speaker already talked about, there will not be the infrastructure for this. There will not be the capacity to hold all these new people that are coming into this because they've been falsely advertised by the government.

Secondly, they will be likely to be stuck there, seeing as they spent a lot of money to move there. The negative team may say, we gave them funding, so it won't be out of their pockets. However, we don't think that you're going to be able to fund them enough to be able to have a house, to be able to live comfortably until they get new work, which, as we already said, will be very competitive.

And thirdly, we care about vulnerable people, so funding should be more directed to them, rather than greater pollution. Thank you.

[applause]

THUY VU: I have 2 main things in this speech. First, on the quality of life in rural areas, and second, on the difference between our model and their counter model. So firstly, starting with the quality of life in rural areas, they bring us all these issues, very unrealistically, that building houses would take a bunch of resources and produce a bunch of pollution back to the environment, and that people would be put out of jobs.

So we thought we needed to recharacterise who we thought was actually going to move to these rural areas. So firstly, we had to say that established people were never going to move to the country in our model. We were never targeting them, because we thought that the money incentive was never going to be enough for these people to abandon their stable life in the city if they had good jobs, if they already had connections and stable housing in the city. We thought they would never going to pick up on this.

We thought that the people who are actually going to choose this were going to benefit from it because we thought that they were going to make a careful decision because it was a big change to their life. They were literally moving their whole family. We thought that because they were a family, parents had kids to care about. They couldn't make a decision on impulse. They had to think really, really carefully for the future of their kids, which they care about.

We thought that also, it takes time to pack, to decide where to move to, do all of these things. And we thought because of this, that people would have a lot of time to consider very, very carefully if this would benefit them. We thought that our people were going to have a better ability to make this choice under our side, because they had more information about it.

We already told you how under the status quo, a lot of people live in the city even though they are disadvantaged because there is a stereotype of, for example, migrants moving to the city only because they thought they had opportunities there, even though they could benefit more from city life. We thought that because they are so focused on trying to live a hard life on the city, they never actually try to see like the aspect of rural life. We thought that this policy actually meant that people are going to consider this. We thought that they probably knew now that the government was starting to care about these rural areas.

We thought that also, the money incentive gave them the ability to make this choice. Because without this money incentive, families weren't going to move here by themselves, even if they did have the information. Because we thought that having such low finances, they were not able to do this. But this money boost would help them kick-start their life in rural areas, which, as we told you, would ultimately benefit them.

OK, so back to problems with rural areas. We thought more realistically, rural areas have communities very, very spread out. They had lots of space in between. And so we thought that jobs was never going to be an issue. And we thought in the status quo, a lack of jobs was never going to be an issue. With the status quo, having no job for people to work in. We thought that was a very, very clear problem of lack of jobs.

For example, there's already a policy to encourage teachers with financial incentives, because they need more services there. And we thought we were only going to benefit this more because these people were lacking jobs. This probably meant that on their side, they got better education, better hospital services, better quality of life in general.

They also told us about the housing crisis, about how it would be hard to build houses. We thought at least these people here were able to afford houses. But at least they had space to build houses. So people could eventually live in these areas, have stable housing and be able to live a stable life. We thought it was always better that houses were able to be built, rather than in the city where people were unable to get good-quality housing due to overcrowding.

We thought also on the point, on the environmental point, that in rural areas where the environment is already very good, that as we already told you, not many people would be moving to these areas. We thought things such as noise, air and light pollution weren't going to get much worse.

Even if they did get worse, that rural communities were able to absorb this much more easily than cities, which already had too much of this problem, as we told you. We thought that rural areas had more trees. They were able to better circulate the quality of air. And this is going to be better able to be dealt with in a rural environment.

So at least at the end of this point, you should believe that rural areas weren't going to get that much worse. We thought that they were always going to get better, because the people who moved there will also benefit from that. So we thought the impact instead on families that move there is that they will have a better life because they can now consider this choice. We know that people who currently live in rural areas, who now have better services and better quality of life for them.

So at the end of the day, we benefit the majority of people, because we thought that people in cities now would have less like-- that people who needed to stay in the city would have less competition over housing, and there would be less cost of living.

Moving on to the difference between our model and their counter model. In their counter model, they tried to address poverty. Sorry. They tried to address, firstly, disability, as the second speaker told us. We thought that the problem we were trying to solve here today was the cost of living in cities being too much for some people to manage, and that they would probably function better in rural areas.

We thought that we also meant rural areas would be developed. We thought even if they were funding poverty in rural areas, that the cause of poverty in rural areas was largely because of the lack of people and resources being circulated. And we thought that funding was never going to be able to replace it, because they actually had a lack of supply. They did not have enough people to fill these services, to fill these jobs.

We also thought that because of the lack of people, the government did not care as much about them as they cared about the majority of people in cities. We thought if we balance this out, governments would have more incentive, because we have mandatory voting in Australia. The government is likely to care about this.

So at the end of this debate, we thought we benefited in rural environments. We thought we benefited people who already live there. We thought people who move there would make an informed decision that they were more able and likely to make this good decision, and that they would be better off in these environments.

We thought families living in cities would now have a lot of pressure taken off them. And so we thought at the end of this debate, we only benefited rural areas, and because our model had more direct impact-- because our model also benefited people living in cities.

[2 bells]

Proud to affirm.

[applause]

GEORGIA HEANEY: OK. There are 2 main parts of this debate, and that is the economic part, the infrastructure and the overpopulation in this. And the social and how this will bring diversity and new ideas to rural areas.

Now, we see the main issue with the affirmative team's side of this debate is that they are only prioritising cities. Now, in our model, we are prioritising rural areas, as well as cities, by trying to fund people with poverty in our counter model.

But I think it is really important to understand, this debate isn't about our counter model. But we'd just like to say this is such a better alternative because their target audience are to their families. But the families that don't have just one kid.

Now, they're also saying, the affirmative are also saying that they're going to be bringing these new workers and new teachers and stuff. And we see a lot in the affirmative side that this will positively affect the teacher shortage.

Now, this is completely false. Because if we have families and a lot of children, there's obviously going to be more children than actual teachers. Now, teacher shortage is such an issue. But the affirmative saying that this is actually going to help that issue is completely false because there's not enough teachers that are actually coming in because of their target audience in the debate. So that point just completely doesn't stand.

The first thing that the affirmative team say, that parents and children are beneficial to rural areas because adults are good at running things and kids join in on events. Now, this is wrong for 2 reasons. Kids will be disappointed in the lack of options.

We see that in rural areas, there's obviously different activities and different options. But if you grow up in a city, you're obviously not going to want to get involved. And even if you do, you're going to be disappointed and maybe even like a bit embarrassed, because you haven't had the resources to learn about farms or stuff that might be only in rural areas.

As well as other social factors, the affirmative team say that this model will positively affect rural areas like this. Now, the affirmative goes wrong here for 4 reasons. The first one being that most rural areas want to stay small and keep their skies free of light pollution. These rural areas are places that people from cities can visit and say, wow, I can stargaze and do these activities. But living there is just going to cause pollution and rubbish and ruin these places.

We see in the affirmative side, they talk a lot about overpopulation in cities. There's such a big issue. But if we're looking at the effect this is going to have on rural areas, as well, we need to prioritise and talk about how we can help everyone and not just dump all of this rubbish and too many people in these areas that we need to care about.

First, the affirmative say that families make these decisions for their kids. Parents, and we know that everyone has to have a job, and everyone needs to work, and parents have to prioritise their jobs. So we understand that these kids are going to be put in a position where they have to be in these areas, which means they'll riot and they won't be happy, and they're going to bring negativity to these rural areas that are so valued and loved.

We see a lot in the affirmative side, and especially in their rebuttal, talk about our counter model about disabilities and people with illnesses and stuff. Our counter model is helping people who have poverty and have genuine medical conditions that really need this. And this doesn't consider people with severe illnesses like cancer, where it's extremely likely they are actually financially suffering, rather than these parents.

So we see these people that are really suffering that have illnesses like cancer or diabetes, and they're having to put all this money into something. And we just completely don't consider these families, because it is highly probable that they need this money. And if they can use this money by going to rural areas, it is actually really negatively affecting them, because they don't have the resources in these rural areas to help them.

Now let's talk about the infrastructure and economic and overpopulation parts of this debate. The first thing the affirmative team said, that overpopulation is an issue in the cities. Now, as I've already spoken about, there are so many better ways to go about this, rather than just dumping everyone in a rural area.

The first thing the affirmative team stated, that even the rural areas, like these farms, it'll only be affected in the long run. So all the farmers' progress should just be all for nothing, because we know that these have lots of farms and large land masses that these rural country towns have worked so hard to get to a stage where they are helping the economy and the systems in our Australian society, where it's providing meat or crops. And we know that city people will probably come down and use this land for their houses, et cetera, and their own resources will be used up for that.

Now, the opposite spent a lot on the cost of living in large cities. This was inconsiderate to the cost of living in rural areas, because these people coming down will just make the cost of living go up substantially. So this isn't the solution to the cost of living. And we think it's really important to consider that. Because it's not only affecting the rural people that are already there, but it's also affecting them because it won't be long before the cost of living just completely rises again.

And that is on the thought that these people won't just take the money, go to the rural areas and enjoy it and stay there, which is extremely rare. Because these people are brought up in a city environment where they might have different ideas. And while we do think it's really important to note that a lot of city people and farmers can coexist and correlate and talk to each other on certain issues and positivity in the world, but it's really important to note that these people are very potentially going to just be going there, take the money, go to the rural area, live there for a little bit and just bounce straight back. So that doesn't actually help the overpopulation issue at all.

Now, the affirmative states a lot of small businesses will be supported. And this is incredibly false, because small businesses will be taken over by like Kmarts, Targets and fast food services. And we care so much about these cafes, because these people work so extremely hard. And it's just like a known fact that fast food services are taking over these cafes already in the city. So why would we want to bring this onto like rural farms and rural culture?

It was said on the affirmative side of the debate that they didn't want to move comfortable families to the city. But they also said that people need to branch out and see the country, build houses on people's properties, create businesses and educate and have it less crowded in the city. But if the affirmative wishes to do all these things, a substantial amount of people need to move for these reasons. And it contradicts their point, saying a small amount of people will actually move.

Now, there's a big issue on the affirmative side of this debate, and they're saying that this will positively affect overpopulation. But you're just going to be overpopulating rural towns. And that's on the supposition that these people won't just move straight back to the cities. They also say--

[multiple bells]

--that this is like funding people who really need it.

[applause]

MAURICE LAM: Hi, everyone. My name is Maurice. I'm part of the adjudication panel. Just a quick fun fact. I was also on this stage in 2017 with the same championship. And in fact, I'd also be as scared to go up against these teams today. So, a big congratulations for these 2 teams again for reaching this stage.

[applause]

The panel agreed that this was a very high-quality debate. And in fact, our main piece of general feedback was that we were very impressed with the deep level of analysis on social issues and how they may traverse over long periods of time done by both teams today.

So on to the adjudication now. The panel thought that there were 4 main issues that both teams were going to be addressing today. The first issue today is talking about who is actually going to be moving to these rural areas under affirmative team's model.

What did affirmative team tell us? They tell us that they're targeting a very small subsector of Sydney families that are-- not Sydney, sorry. Of city-dwelling families that are probably struggling with things like cost of living, that aren't really attached to their jobs, such as they want to settle down long-term in the city, and that they probably are people with children and need to think long-term about their children's future.

Negative team respond to us, saying that because of how this model is then implemented, a lot of these people are going to be not very educated about what rural life actually is like. And in turn, they're going to set high expectations for themselves when they arrive in these rural areas, only to be disappointed by things that were mentioned later on in the debate.

I think by the end of this issue, the panel agreed that the group that we were talking about today probably wasn't going to be the whole of the city populations just flipping the switch and then driving inland. We think that these are probably going to be some smaller groups of families that were probably enough to enable a lot of the changes that both teams are going to be talking about today, but not enough such that it's going to be a mass migration inwards.

So then, the second theme that we're going to talk about today was prices. And the panel agreed that this was a theme that was done especially well by both teams. So what did affirmative team tell us? They tell us 2 main points about prices.

First is that there's a very high cost of living crisis in city areas. This is due to a lot of different factors. And the second thing they tell us is that, by moving a lot of these city dwellers and this large population inland, they're able to contribute to these businesses inland-- sorry, in rural areas, not just inland, sorry-- and be able to cycle this money around, especially with this financial incentive and this extra money coming in.

And they also tell us that they're more likely to start things like small businesses or be able to help out these small businesses, mostly because within rural areas, you don't really get the same amount of corporate jobs, which will be freed up in city landscapes.

What did negative team tell us in response to this? They tell us that with very strong economic analysis, that this probably leads to a supply and demand issue that probably ends up costing prices in rural areas anyway. They tell us that because of this new migration towards these rural areas, you're going to cause overpopulation, which means increasing demand for an already small supply of resources and materials within these rural areas.

What this means is that, by the end of this point, we thought that it was probably true that a lot of these city migrants, I guess, a lot of these new city migrants will probably experience the benefits of lower prices initially. But then in the long term, because of this trend of supply and demand, we'll probably end up with the same prices, if not worse, in these rural areas in the long term. So this does fall towards the negative team.

So then onto the third thing then. What is the impact on these rural areas in the long-term with aspects other than prices? Affirmative team tell us 2 main things. First is that this new program is able to bring in personnel for people to fill jobs and fill resources. They tell us that a lot of understaffed areas will probably start filling in all these areas, because there's just like a new population coming in.

They also tell us later in the debate that this will actually incentivise governments to be able to improve the infrastructure in these areas. They tell us that because there's things like mandatory voting and that there's a new population growing in these rural areas, governments now have an incentive to improve the infrastructure in these areas, such that they can appeal to these voters, things like that.

What did negative team say in response, then? They tell us 3 main things again. First is that long-term, when you shift a big population into these rural areas, you're going to be shifting a lot of these problems that were seen in the cities into these rural areas.

And they tell us that there's no real infrastructure to be able to handle and absorb this massive migration right now, and that the current infrastructure is going to be strained to the point where a lot of people already living there aren't-- I'm sorry. And that building a lot of this infrastructure will cause things like environmental degradation, and then not really be able to enjoy the benefits of these rural areas.

They also tell us it's very unfair for the current people living there because of the things they've already experienced. So a lot of the people who already live in these rural areas now need to experience a culture change, now need to experience and risk a lot of these things that they're proud of, such as the environment, being eventually taken away from them because of this new migration in.

The panel thought that by the end of this topic, it wasn't really clear why the infrastructure was going to be better without taking on a lot of the risk negative team bring up to us. And I think negative team worked very strong in telling us that in the long-term, a lot of the appeals of these rural towns were very likely going to disappear under this program.

So onto the last idea now. Do city families end up with a better quality of life? I think both teams actually agree here that the quality of life of this subgroup of city people were probably the main concern of this debate. And there's also some agreement that we also want to improve the rural lives, as well.

Affirmative team tells us that again, 2 main things. First is that there's less of a routine and there's more of a relaxed environment in these rural areas. What this means is that they're probably more likely to be able to do things with a less routine schedule. A lot of the children coming into these rural towns probably have a lot less competitive standards that they need to meet compared to in the city.

What did negative team tell us in response? There's 2 main things that they tell us. First is that a lot of children who have experienced living in the city, or kind of yearn for the city, probably have a range of backgrounds and needs that aren't really filled by the kind of rural areas that have less resources. A lot of the times they tell us that kids are just used to doing more, having access to more things, which means that it's very unlikely that they're able to be satisfied in these rural areas, thus bringing an aura of negativity towards them when they move in.

They also tell us, and very intuitively, a counter model or an alternative solution that could achieve equivalent things towards the issues that we mentioned. They tell us that with this counter model, they would rather put the money going into this program into poverty-stricken areas, into people with disabilities, and into people who are actually struggling with quality of life in the city.

We think this is very smart because it achieves a couple things. First is that it is able to claim a lot of the benefits affirmative wants to claim about things like quality of life and cost of living. And it's also able to mitigate the risk that affirmative team brings on with things I mentioned earlier, such as the impact on rural areas and the kind of culture shift in these rural areas.

So by the end of this issue, and by the end of this debate, the panel recognises that affirmative may have some potential benefits come in the short-term to do with rural areas and the people with cost of living issues in the city. However, we thought that with the counter model and the other issues in the long-term, such as prices and rural areas having their culture changed and their dynamic changed, it wasn't enough to mitigate a lot of the risks that were brought on by affirmative team. So by a unanimous decision from the panel, this debate falls to the negative team.

[applause]

ELYSE SMYTH: Thank you for that. Now, please welcome a representative from Sydney Girls High to congratulate the winners.

[applause]

IRIS YANG: Firstly, I just want to thank everyone involved in making this whole camp possible. It was really fun. It was really helpful for debating, as well. And the past 3 days have been a great experience. And also, thank you to everyone for coming and watching this debate.

And then also thank you to you guys. You guys are a really good opposition, and you guys are amazing at debating, and best of luck for all your future debates. And also, thank you to the adjudicators for giving us that detailed adjudication and feedback across these past 3 days, as well.

[applause]

ELYSE SMYTH: Please welcome a member of the winning team to respond.

[applause]

LILY WEATHERALL: Firstly, I'd just like to thank all of you for coming here and watching us today, and the whole organisers of the event. This was so helpful to us and our debating skills, and we really are proud and happy to be here, so, thank you.

We'd also like to say congratulations to our opposition. You guys were such amazing debaters, and this is definitely one of our most high-quality great debates that we've had over the duration of this experience.

And then finally, to the adjudicators for giving a very detailed and thoughtful response. We really appreciate the feedback. To the timekeepers and the chairpeople, thank you. And to our coaches, thank you for training us. And finally, to the audience, thank you guys for watching us.

[applause]