Video transcript
Plain English Speaking Award 2018 - NSW State Final

[intro music]

ANDREW LASAITIS: We're recording, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the NSW Teachers Federation Conference Centre for the state final of the Plain English Speaking Award for 2018. My name is Andrew Lasaitis. I'm the speaking competitions officer for the Department of Education. Let me begin by acknowledging we're on the traditional land of the Gadigal people of the Eora nation.

I pay my respects to elders past and present. And extent that respect to other Aboriginals here today. It's wonderful to have so many families, school supporters of the contestants here as part of the audience today. I'd also like to extent a special welcome to our special guests. Firstly, Mr Ken Bock from the Australia-Britain Society. Ms Marilyn Jenner from the English Speaking Union.

Unfortunately, emeritus Professor David Flint AM, he's the NSW president of the English Speaking Union. He's unable to be here with us today. However, Mr John Olsen from the International Churchill Society Australia will be part of the presentations on Professor Flint's behalf. So thank you, Mr Olsen.

Also, Ms Rosemary Davis, director of Arts, Sport and initiatives for the NSW Department of Education, and Ms Marianne Powell, principal education officer at the Arts Unit. Also, I extend my welcome to principals and teachers from the finalists' schools. And also members of the finalists' families. And I think one of the finalists' family members here today has come the furthest of anyone to one of these events ever.

He's come straight from a plane from Los Angeles. So I thank him to be here as well. This is a statewide competition in it's 41st year. State semifinals were held in the Maiden Theatre of the Royal Botanical Gardens this year in June. And from the 300 plus contestants who began this journey, 6 were selected for today's final. Four regional finals were held at the Arts Unit, Lewisham, in late May.

And on the 16th of June, all of these contestants with the non-metropolitan winners met up those state semifinals. I would like to thank all those schools that hosted the events leading up to today and congratulate all students who have participated in this competition. The Plain English Speaking Award would not be possible without the generous support of a number of sponsors.

Firstly, BBM Youth Support, The Australia-Britain Society, and the English Speaking Union. To all of these sponsors, thank you for your support to help young people in NSW develop their literacy skills. Our chairperson today is 2018 state semifinalist, Jason Baena-Tan. And our timekeeper is Pattie Chung. Both students are from Concord High School. And please welcome Jason.

[applause]

JASON BAENA-TAN: Thank you, Andrew. The adjudicators of today's final are Emily Kim, Patrick Caldwell and Tony Davey. Emily Kim was the winner of this award in 2017, and went on to win the national final held in Melbourne. She travelled to London to represent Australia at the international final in May of this year. She was a member of the Combined High School debating teams in 2016 and 2017 and reached the semifinals of the Australian Intervarsity Debating Championships.

Patrick Caldwell won the NSW and National Plain English Speaking Award Final at the Asia Pacific Final in 2002. He went on to be runner up at the international final in 2003. He also won the Australasian Parliamentary Debating Championship and was a finalist at The World Universities Debating Championships on several occasions.

Tony Davey was a high school debating champion when he attended North Sydney Boys High School and has coached the Combined High School debating team. He's the chief adjudicator of NSW debating and public speaking and has worked with speaking competitions at the Arts Unit for over a decade.

We now come to the prepared section of this competition. Each speaker will speak for 8 minutes on the subject of the contestant's choice. There will be a warning bell at 6 minutes and 2 bells at 8 minutes. A continuous bell will be rung at 8 minutes and 30 seconds.

TONY DAVEY: So, Hi. My name's Tony Davey. I am the speaking competitions assistant for specifically debating and public speaking in the Arts Unit of the NSW Department of Education. This is us as a panel chatting through the different speeches that you've seen in the Plain English Speaking Award State Final for 2018. We were the actual adjudication panel. We adjudicated a couple of hours ago.

And now we're going to give you our thoughts on each speaker, both their prepared and their impromptu speech. Before we do that, just a couple of priors. I want to talk to you, first of all, about how good these speakers are. And the answer is they're really, really, really, really good. These are 6 of the very best speakers of their age in NSW by a super long way.

And we are not going to spend the next half hour saying that over and over again because that wouldn't be very, very helpful. We've actually already given feedback to some of the speakers themselves, and it was overwhelmingly negative. So we don't sit around saying this was great, this was great. They have a really good sense of how good they are.

We will be going through the stuff that we thought could have been fixed, the stuff that was less successful, the stuff that stood out to us as dropping the speech down a little bit. Don't think that because everything we say today is this sucked and this sucked. That we don't think these were pretty obviously 6 amazing performances from some of the smartest people that we have ever come across. So that's, I think the thing number one to keep in mind.

We do actually really like these guys and their performances. We're now going to list off the things that we think could have elevated those performances.

EMILY KIM: Yeah. We also wanted to flag before we start that you won't hear us talking too much about the manner of the speakers, so the way in which they presented. That's because if we did we would basically be saying the same thing for each person, which is the manner was great. They were very eloquent. At this stage of the competition all of the speakers know very well how to present in a manner that is clear and understandable to the audience.

All of the speakers did a great job holding themselves in a dignified manner, using the right amount of gestures, speaking at a good volume. So we probably won't be repeating that for each speaker.

PATRICK CALDWELL: Hi, I'm Patrick Caldwell. I'm the third adjudicator, and I was the 2002 NSW and National winner, and sometime university debater. The thing I want to mention is that you should be aware that the feedback that we're giving after each speaker is specific feedback responding to what that speaker has done in that moment. And this isn't a substitute for a public speaking workshop, even if that thing were to exist.

You can't take all these ideas, smush them together, do everything we've said, and automatically be an amazing speaker and to deliver a great speech. It takes a little bit more work than that. And also takes the recognition that, as we say, certain guidelines and certain rules of thumb, really good speakers also know moments in their speech writing when they can break those rules deliberately for a really, really good effect in their speech.

And the experience that you get through doing a few competitions really helps with that process. And then the last thing to say on that is the single best piece of feedback we can give you for working on your public speaking is to do debating. We can all say this is people who've seen more debates in public speaking competitions and being in more debating public speaking competitions than any human being in history ever really probably should.

Debating, hands down, will build you the intellectual rigour you need to get up knowing that someone's about to stand up and tear your arguments to pieces to make sure that you do the legwork, so that you can later on in your career break a few rules about how to put a speech together, use interesting language about kind of crafting the content you want to get across. But in its core, the material that you're presenting to the audience is well-thought out, it's interesting, and it's something that probably explores the issue that you really want to be talking about.

TONY DAVEY: So in summary, A, we do like these people even though we're going to say mean things about them. B, we don't care about their manor, because their manor is awesome, and we're not going to bother to say that every time. And, C, we're going to give you lots of advice. Don't just cookie cutter that advice into a speech and think that you've got a great speech. Speech writing is a lot more nuanced than that. So here we go.

JASON BAENA-TAN: Our first contestant is Sophie Shead. She is in Year 12 at Hornsby Girls High School. Her likes include babies and novelty costumes, and she dislikes asparagus. She is concerned about the unequal access to health care many experience and feels that it is an injustice from which other injustices stem. The subject of Sophie's speech is 'Up for debate.' Please welcome Sophie Shead.

[applause]

SOPHIE SHEAD: Just a few weeks ago the Liberal Party threatened to privatise the ABC. A political move termed total madness. Fortunately, it doesn't appear that ABC privatisation will be happening any time soon. But the anti-ABC sentiment underpinning that suggestion has been a political fixture for a while. Our government loves to paint the media organisation as rife with left wing bias and unbalanced pro-labour reporting.

In part, to justify the $254 million in funding cuts the ABC has suffered since 2014. But without fail, the ABC and its supporters offer a myriad defence backing up with statistics and data. The fact that our beloved broadcaster isn't nearly so one-sided as the liberals might like. But it does provide a platform for balanced debate and relatively even coverage of both sides of politics. And I don't contest the veracity of those claims, but I do question their importance.

The value and necessity of balanced discussion and debate is urged upon us every day by commentators, academics, and politicians of every ideological persuasion. But I suspect that it might not be that simple. I am going to argue that despite what our annual ABC kerfuffles might suggest, balanced debate isn't always a good in and of itself. Take climate change, because the truth of a warming planet is so firmly established, you do not get the most useful and interesting or constructive discussion by giving equal air time to both sides.

Certainly, climate policy that favours green energy or higher electricity prices at the expense of the short term interests of the poor needs to be interrogated by very reasonable right wing consents. But the truth of anthropogenic climate change, which shockingly 25% of the Australian public still contests, should not be open to debate for the simple reason that that debate is stupid and pointless. Ideological balance is often good, but I contest the assumption that it always is, because some things are just true, some arguments are just better than others. Some ideas are just indefensible.

Of course, we should be rigorous in determining what fits those categories. I'm not trying to claim that there is a simple or necessarily partisan answer to social problems, but the issue with arbitrarily balanced perspectives and politics isn't by partisanship. It's a refusal to acknowledge that sometimes truth just doesn't lean towards the centre. Ultimately, the oft contended democratic need to listen to both sides falls flat at the point at which the parameters of one argument are themselves irrational.

This points to a phenomenon termed false balance, where journalists or commentators mistake impartiality for treating all arguments equally as opposed to taking into account how individually deserving those arguments might be. False balance is, to put it another way, a failure to recognise that a position merely being held does not automatically imbue that position with legitimacy or a right to be heard, or at least a right to be heard to the same extent as better or more plausible arguments.

However, our criticism of false balance often only extends to debates as clear cut as the truth of climate change or the danger of vaccinations. I would argue that we need to be more discerning about the debate we enable, even where lines get a little more blurry. Because in some instances, it isn't just about giving equal airtime to unequally good ideas, but rather giving equal airtime to unequally good purveyors of those arguments that poses a roadblock to constructive discussion. British journalist Reni Eddo-Lodge's 2017 book 'Why I'm No Longer Talking To White People About Race' illustrates the way the parameters of some conversations have been established, so as to placate or include one side or group, but end up worsening the discussion they facilitate.

Debates about racial inequality have been dominated by white people. An example of which we saw earlier this year when an all white panel on the morning show Sunrise discussed and supported the adoption of indigenous children into non-indigenous homes. Debate requires a diversity of voices, but when one group of contributors is so clearly less well-placed to contribute, the insight they provide is likely to be less interesting and the policy they suggest less appropriate, as it was certainly the case on channel 7. There is an obvious experiential limitation on what white people can bring to a discussion of race and racism, or what anyone can contribute to a conversation about struggles they have not experienced.

A limitation which calls into question the definitive usefulness of balanced voices. And importantly, pointless debate isn't just pointless, it's often actively harmful to its participants. Jamila Michener, author and professor at Cornell University, recently expressed on Twitter the exhaustion of having to answer the questions of a student, who Michener describes as nice, engaged, and genuinely curious regarding Charles Murray's 'The Bell Curve' and its arguments about the cognitive inferiority of black people.

Of course, my exposition has been comprehensively refuted. And at face value, the idea of inherent intellectual differences between ethnic groups is bizarre. But nonetheless, Michener notes the way she, as a black educator, is often used as a sounding board for racist ideas. In my capacity as a teacher I have been asked to respond to arguments that black people are lazy, angry, criminal, and more. Saddeningly, she writes that these questions come from students who really want to know, and I try to answer them calmly and as a social scientist.

That's fine. It's the job, but it's a depressing part. Because ultimately, it means that the value of people like me is constantly up for debate. These kinds of conversations are obviously one sided with no potential for new insight. But most of all, they pose real personal damage to the people forced to participate in them. But even where both sides have legitimate positions and both voices are qualified to speak, considerations of context and public good may suggest that some unbalancing is called for.

The United Kingdom's vote to leave the EU was won by a very small majority, 51.9% to 48.1%. Since then, the government and victorious leave campaign have been debating the respective merits of the soft versus hard Brexit. The fact that almost half the population wishes for neither of these options has been forgotten by politicians who conduct their debate as if only the result matters and not its margin. And as almost every neutral observer has concluded, the softer the Brexit the more prosperous Britain will be, which suggests that the combined wisdom of the whole nation is greater than the selective wisdom of half of it.

And that this debate, however balanced it may be, is likely to produce a poor outcome. Though interestingly, the Tories framing of current discussion about the kind of Brexit the UK should make seems to assume a landslide victory. It would both be more useful to and more representative of the UK populist to debate soft versus softer Brexit as opposed to hard versus harder. Perhaps we need to be more critical of our mythologising of any and all debate as democratic necessity. And rather re-examine what we consider to be good debate.

I would suggest that is not debate that covers the most ideological distance or maintains the strictest balance of ideas, but rather debate the prioritise as truthfulness, inclusivity, and useful, and interesting results. Because no matter where you stand on who should control the ABC, I'm sure we can all agree that debate should serve the people who have it. And to do that sometimes we need to throw things a little out of balance.

[applause]

TONY DAVEY: So I think that Sophie's speech is complicated, it is sophisticated, it's really, really clever. But for mine, it is a little bit heavy on examples at the expense of the kind of more personal or more unique or more wry stance and take you might have to kind of turn this into less of an essay and more of a speech that really sticks with you.

PATRICK CALDWELL: I think that's fair. I think the majority of the speech, probably the first 5 and a half minutes could easily have been short of a couple of examples. And it actually condensed quite a bit around 2 minutes of really, really impactful material. But then with some more relatable examples with that kind of personal touch, would have been something that the audience could've really gotten next to a bit more. For me the issue overall with the speech was kind of a logical tension that came out towards the back, where the first part was quite a good expression of whether we want certain policies to come in or whether we don't, and how we evaluate those in a media environment.

And then the back half is more about the extent to which we participate as a democracy in those decisions. So used the example of Brexit and whether the UK should have a hard or a soft Brexit and whether we should consider the entirety of people's opinion. The test becomes a bit different. It becomes a test of whether we take everyone's opinion into account, and the first half of the speech is actually about whether we should care about the opinion because it's just wrong in the first place.

TONY DAVEY: Yeah, I disagree with that last bit a little bit, but I've already said a thing. Emily, say a thing.

EMILY KIM: Just echoing what you already said. I think this speech was really intellectual, and I think that was both its strength and its weakness. I think it was its strength in that I think Sophie did a lot of hard work exploring a complex topic in a very nuanced way, acknowledging kind of the various facets of that argument. But I think-- I agree that it could have been a little bit more personal. I think at times it was a little bit dry and possibly a little bit rapid and heavy on the analysis for somebody maybe who wasn't so familiar with that topic.

TONY DAVEY: Yeah, so for me, that tension that Pat talks about in act 3, I think she actually navigates it quite successfully by talking about it in quite a nuanced way. The problem is that it's so hard to do that in a nuanced way in a speech, that you have all of these different writers and all of these different exceptions and all of this careful speech. Instead of setting aside some time for like, yeah, something personal, something that explains it to the audience in a way they can remember through an anecdote, through something else.

JASON BAENA-TAN: Our second contestant is Jinyoung Kim. He's in Year 10 at The King's School, and the youngest contestant here today. His favourite saying is 'Twice the pride, double the form,' from Count Dooku in 'Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith.' He feels that the world has come a long way breaking language barriers for migrants in hopes that now we are able to break the social barriers as well. The subject of Jinyoung's speech is 'Camp fire stories.' Please welcome Jinyoung Kim.

[applause]

JINYOUNG KIM: I don't use violence. That's your people. Those are the words of Milo Yiannopoulos to a Muslim woman in the 2.4 million view YouTube video 'Milo Leaves Australian Muslim Activist In Sobbing Heap.' As Emma challenged Milo's claim about Islam's inherent violence, he began belittling her, even saying you should go live back in the Middle East. Once again, it was the self-claimed provocateur, but really just immature commentator at work.

His words, like the destructive flames of a campfire running out of control. And whilst we've always had internet trolls, it's only been recently that they've been able to access real political power. 10 years ago someone like Milo would have only ever been an outlier. But increasingly, he and his followers are symbolic of an ever-growing trend away from democratic debate founded on understanding and towards political polarisation. The glaring problem with our divided society is a lack of empathy.

Empathy allows the fourth generation Australian families to understand an immigrant's struggles assimilating. It allows me, a male, to at least try to understand what misogyny can be like. And it allows all of us to take another person's perspective. The prescription for this lack of empathy seems to be public debate. Media figures engaging in the sharing of their opinions, publishing more articles or any product in the marketplace of ideas.

But empathy isn't grand or intellectual, it's intimate. It's about the human to human sharing stories and personal experiences. It's about connection and tolerance. It's about physically being next to a person, looking them in the eye, and acknowledging vulnerability. Stories magically convert unrelatable experiences into a common emotional currency. I think we can learn a lot by looking at some recent social and political examples where we've achieved meaningful communication.

At the All About Women Conference, transgender Hollywood director Lana Wachowski spoke about actors hesitating to be alone in the same room with her. Even more poignant than the story itself was the reaction from the listening men. At first, you could see in their raised corners of lips that they harboured disbelief. In 10 minutes they were in rapture, heads cupped in hands and nodding periodically. They changed their minds. Last year, Der Spiegel people conducted interviews during the 2017 election.

Supporters of Alternative for Germany, a right-wing populist party, were asked if they wanted a refugee ban. At first, 84% said yes. They were then asked if they wanted their refugee neighbours to be deported. Then, 58% said yes. Sadiq? No, not him. He's helped us with our garage sale. We are personal creatures, and we only change our views based on our experiences.

That's why there's been a market failure in the marketplace of ideas. Debate based purely on the need for each political team to beat the other or public debate has created a relationship between the media and the public poisoned by scepticism, cynicism, and doubt. Lana Wachowski was only able to have a heartfelt discussion with her audience because she wasn't in a position above them, and she was being refreshingly honest.

She had acknowledged her vulnerability, and she was engaged in a conversation. A campfire conversation where she was open to being questioned and having her mind changed, as well as changing the mind of others. Intimate debate allow us to understand each other because each party is both the speaker and the listener. Because 'Guardian' fanship aside, if Miss Wachowski had told a story in the format of a 'Guardian' article, I think we all know it wouldn't have had the impact that it did.

Trump's mantra of let's build a wall was so persuasive to Americans because it was easy to understand. It was a magical incantation that told the simple story of Mexican immigration. And while some of the supporters were made up of racism, much of it were made up of people who are willing to believe that a simple fix would solve all their problems. These people's minds were never going to be changed by data and political lingo.

But there is a chance they could change with the re-emphasis on personal stories and mutual understanding. Media should be brought down into a palatable scope. Instead of these jargoned articles, we should more often explain context potential causes and outcomes. Scholars talking about the relationship between the Iraq war and the rise of ISIS have had very little influence on the way we think about the war. Maybe if we listen to anecdotes from British soldiers leaving after they've completely razed Banias, we might be able to understand how Britain may have grown ISIS.

So everyone should tell each other more stories. Physically sit down for conversations more often and share perspectives. I could talk about the time when I first came to school, not knowing how to speak English. And I'm sure others could talk about the time they were coming with odds with their sexuality. You may say, but analytical news articles are more important. Well, yes, both analysis and story is needed, but so is a healthy balance between the 2. And that's not happening.

Nowadays, the media equivalent of stories, personal anecdotes, and opinion pieces are being treated as unimportant. With so many facts available with just a Google search, society's increasingly viewed stories not as revealing, but disproportionate. Our faith in statistics and analysis technology has led to a general mistrust of stories. In fact, the top 10 major news corporations in Australia over the past 15 years have reduced their editorial and opinion segments by 23%.

The dangerous assumption here is that facts are treated as facts when they are clearly not. Readers interpret them for their own confirmation. And because so many different data outcomes exist for the same subject, data is often jargoned, scientifically skewed, or just fabricated. We also ignore that without engagement and a sense of relevance, people have no incentive to read the media at all. Even the fact that our society is moving away from conventional analytical news to fake news shows our disengagement from conventional media.

Finally, stories strengthen this conventional news by establishing a standard of what can be held as reasonable. Consider you as somebody who doesn't have an informed understanding about indigenous people. In other words, we Australian citizens, you read an absurd article like 25% of indigenous people have no intent of ever having a job. You may as well disbelieve it. However, if you have heard a previous editorial talking about the systematic job discrimination that is suffered by indigenous people, you may have changed your mind.

For our society to overcome the intolerance, news, public debate, and discussion shouldn't be like an abstract space, but more like a camp fire. It's the connectedness, the feeling of really understanding and appreciating every one of profound empathy. And in a way, our society is just a really, really big campfire, just a lot more people huddled together, sharing thoughts. Let's bring that same magic to our conversations. Thank you.

[applause]

PATRICK CALDWELL: So for mine, just like a weak kind of thing out of the gate is that the opening of the speech talks about the massive threat of people like Milo Yiannopoulos. But kind of the speaker does himself a disservice by saying, look, we've got a whole 2.4 million people who've viewed this video on YouTube. If the opening has been just to make us believe that he's like a massive threat to democracy in civil society. Something that's being seen like fewer times in any dog video in the internet doesn't sound like something that's necessary like meeting that bar.

So over the course of that speech, in different ways started recurring to me through some of the phrasing that he was using, like it's a market failure in the marketplace of ideas. I didn't buy, necessarily, there was this massive threat to our democracy because there weren't enough stories being told. And then ultimately, in like the back half of the speech, I didn't quite buy that the problem that he identified was also going to be the solution. I doubt that he thought it through.

TONY DAVEY: I think that those smaller problems you had with the opening I am less worried by. I thought the use of the campfire in that different running out of control way at the beginning didn't quite work. Although I liked the practice of using the topic and using it a few different ways to kind of introduce people and keep them guessing and thinking. But yeah, the problem with it is that he wants more stories and more personal connections, but at the same time, he wants like less Milo and less Twitter sphere, where those personal connections seem to be what's happening.

So the conclusion of the speech is, we need more stories of the right kind, but less of the stories of the wrong kind. He's against all of the data and analytics, and he is pro-personal connections, but those personal connections often happen in a Twitter sphere, where everyone hates each other and he's connecting in bad and unhelpful ways and telling unhelpful stories like yelling at Muslim women.

EMILY KIM: I agree. I actually think I really enjoyed some of those examples. But I think there were possibly a few too many in the sense that sometimes it was example at the expense of exploring those kind of tensions. Like I think more time could've been dedicated to actually analysing the theory behind those examples and what interconnected them, rather than just going through them generally describing the examples.

JASON BAENA-TAN: Our third contestant is Ashna Hegde. Ashna is in Year 12 at Sydney Girls High School. Her role model is her mum. And her favourite saying is, 'If you don't succeed at first, then skydiving probably isn't for you.' She hates losing arguments and the incorrect use of your. The subject of Ashna's speech is 'False altruism.' Please welcome Ashna Hegde.

[applause]

ASHNA HEGDE: Most of us wear one on our wrist or carry a device that has one on it. You may have one in your pocket, handbag, or briefcase at this moment. I myself can see multiple on the walls of this very room. In our possession we have one of the most important things that contributes to the fight against HIV/AIDS in Africa.

A strange thought, I know, but the reality is ending the prevalence of a disease that has already killed 15 million people in the African continent is so deceptively simple as you might have already guessed, a clock. According to a study conducted by Brown University in 2016, in the country of Ethiopia there is little shortage of AIDS medication, but rather an issue of adhering to the strict dose schedules required for this medication to be effective. Hence, the need for a clock.

But NGOs are so enthusiastic about finding a cure to HIV/AIDS that they support research and employ medical volunteers, overlooking the basic needs of a clock to make this effective. When hearing a story like this one, a few questions arise. Mainly, why has this ignorance occurred in the first place? Is it because our basic human nature is to help others for ourselves rather than looking at the needs of those we are helping, or what is commonly known as altruism?

Definitions of altruism begin at the Latin alter, meaning other. Moved to the French, autres, meaning other people. And finally, at the English altruism, which is conceptualised as an unselfish regard for another, a selfless interest in someone else's well-being of your own. But this is not so much a lesson in etymology, but an interrogation of such definitions that have given rise to a misconception of what it means to be altruistic. Indeed, a definition so narrow in its standpoint regarding unselfishness and selflessness makes it easy to recognise and actively encourage actions that fit this definition only.

Examples such as random acts of kindness, volunteer work, or even extreme cases, such as martyrdom, have all successfully gained the label of true altruism, and thus, the approval of modern society. Anything else in which an individual may derive small personal benefits is then logically considered false altruism, or outside the scope of altruism at all. Recent discussions have taken form about a so-called paradox of altruism with many people, including media articles and psychological theories, such as psychological egoism, arguing that humans have inherent selfish motivations.

And questioning these motivations in many things that help others. When Mark Zuckerberg and his wife pledged 99% of their shares to charitable causes, an article in one of America's leading scientific journals asked, what was their real motive for being altruistic and delved into the so-called selfishness of altruism? So it no longer became about their donation, but whether or not they were altruistic in giving it. Such criticism is rooted in a definition of altruism that has enabled a culture of questioning why people want to help others.

Consequently, de-legitimising and disincentivising certain actions because we consider them incongruent to this definition. But are they? Let's go back to the example of clocks in HIV/AIDS. Right now, it is considered altruism for an NGO to dedicate its resources to helping sufferers of this illness. And we applaud these altruistic intentions. But what if this cure was undertaken by, say, a corporate pharmaceutical company?

This is not unrealistic with many corporations nowadays changing the way in which they engage with the not-for-profit sector. And these companies often have resources, funds, and medical experts at their disposal that may help them understand the necessity of clocks in HIV/AIDS relief. But people would be fixated on analysing the corporation's true intentions, whether they had ulterior motives, what benefits they were accruing. It may no longer even be termed altruism, but a business venture.

And thus, not receive the recognition, even though it may be doing the same or even better work than the NGOs we revere. In simple words, an analysis of altruism in terms of unselfishness and selflessness focuses excessively on the altruist and their intentions, losing sight of its most important stakeholder, the person who is being helped. The fact is there are many ways to be altruistic in our society, that while it may not be completely selfless, do have large amounts of benefits to people.

But in our definitional consideration of altruism, many people are missing out on valuable help simply because the action of helping them doesn't fall under this definition. We need a new conception of altruism. One that focuses on the beneficiaries and the best way to help them, regardless of whether these actions are unselfish or mutually beneficial. A revision of how we see altruism would recognise these.

Affording them the noble status we currently give to things we perceive as true altruism. And hence, encouraging more people to partake in them and increasing the number of people that are helped. As I've discussed previously, perspectives on altruism could be expanded to include corporate philanthropy. According to research conducted by various fund-raising consultancies, there's been significant changes in the last decade with how businesses are engaging with the not-for-profit sector with over $15.8 billion being donated to charitable causes.

But according to a survey conducted by the same study, only 5% of people supported corporate philanthropy. But couldn't the actions of a company, such as Coca-Cola, for example, who through their foundation have empowered women, provided access to clean water, and supported education in the developing world, deserve recognition for their efforts as part of the narrative of altruism? Or we can look instead to where there's already been a renewal of the meaning of altruism, such as the burgeoning movement of effective altruism.

Labelled Generosity For Nerds, the new effective altruism movement is about balancing helping others with one's self interests of using their resources to the best potential. The result, effective altruism organisations such as giving what we can in which members have pledged 10% of their incomes to charitable causes. Companies such as giving what we can and those that have similar structures are enabling anyone from college students to Wall Street bankers to provide financial assistance to those in need where they otherwise may not have.

Therefore, effective altruism is proof that a loosening of conceptions of all altruism can in fact improve engagement with its causes, and increasing the number of people it can benefit. Objectively, ways of helping others may not be completely selfless or unselfish, but we shouldn't be diminishing the value of these actions because they don't fit into a discussion of what it means to be altruistic, the modern discussion. Particularly, when they are still able to achieve their purpose of helping others.

We shouldn't draw a comparison between NGOs and at a company that is better researched and equipped, perhaps understanding of the nuances of clocks in the relief of HIV/AIDS in Africa. We shouldn't discount the possibility that 2 agents can have meaningful effects on the lives of people regardless of what their intentions may be. Rather, we should board in perceptions of altruism to recognise the multitude of ways in which people can help others.

Doing so isn't a trivial definitional change, it in fact shifts the focus of altruism from the altruists and their intentions to the person on the other end, the person altruism should have been about the whole time. Such a change, makes altruism more productive, inclusive, and thus, able to help those who need it most. Thank you.

[applause]

EMILY KIM: I think that Ashna chose an interesting topic and something that she was clearly interested in and passionate about. I think that's great. I think the biggest thing was Ashna needed to do possibly a little bit more work making us care about that topic as much as she clearly did by illustrating to us why there was such an urgent need for us to be discussing this topic, what was really at stake here, what was the loss we would face if we failed to discuss this topic, if we failed to take on her stance. I thought a little bit more time could have been possibly spent on that, maybe just into or even throughout, or maybe right at the beginning.

And also, I think a little bit more work could have been done acknowledging stronger arguments that could have potentially arisen from her opposition in terms of stronger critiques of that kind of altruism, stronger critiques of corporate altruism could have arisen, I think possibly she could have acknowledged those rather than attacking some of the weaker arguments on that other side.

TONY DAVEY: Yeah, I think that tension was a bit more noticeable than that even. Do you want to do it?

PATRICK CALDWELL: Yeah, I mean, I think that the-- for me, the content of the speech ran into this huge obstacle was that when she said that instantly as soon as Mark Zuckerberg announced, and his wife, were donating 99% of their wealth to charity there were questions that arose. I never read a single article that was about those questions. And I don't anyone who is receiving--

TONY DAVEY: She did quote the article.

PATRICK CALDWELL: That's true. But I didn't read any. But even then, I don't think anyone who is receiving any kind of aid as a result of that donation really cares where the roof over their head or the food on their plate is coming from. And I think that it was hard to bring the audience on board to thinking about those charitable donations in those terms. I think that there was material that is available to her in the avenue-- and as adjudicators we've spoken about this in our discussions, of massive corporations doing things where we maybe should question their motives.

That when Coca-Cola pays a royalty to breast cancer awareness of about $1 million, and then gets a massive advertising benefit of having pink caps on all their bottles for a month, that that buys them a publicity that they might not otherwise be entitled to. And when that's coupled with massive degradation in the environment because of the palm oil source they use in their manufacturing processes, that we should maybe question whether Cola-Cola ought rightfully be entitled to the kind of good publicity that they feel they're entitled to. But I would distinguish that from the kind of problems that she enumerated in the speech, in thinking about things like Mark Zuckerberg and his donations.

TONY DAVEY: Yeah, that's right. So I felt there was a little bit too much the world is up in arms about altruism. And I wasn't sure that we were that up in arms, so that was an interesting idea. I don't mind people exaggerating problems in order to explore things. But, yeah, I was more worried about not talking about green-washing at all, not talking about the way that these corporations might be worth questioning. Even though that was clearly the point of the speech. I'm happy for her to make that-- to ask that question and then fall on the side of, no, we should be taking Coca-Cola's money. So I would've liked it to have been explored. Right?

PATRICK CALDWELL: Yeah, sure.

JASON BAENA-TAN: Our fourth contestant is Sophie Mok. Sophie is in her final year at Pymble Ladies' College. She hopes to complete her Gold Duke of Edinburgh Award, walk the Overland Track and get her provisional licence. Her favourite saying is 'Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all.' The subject of Sophie's speech is, 'Time we have a conversation.' Please welcome Sophie Mok.

[applause]

SOPHIE MOK: My grandfather was a determined, stubborn, borderline obsessive kind of man, and my childhood has sparkled with stories of his relentless projects. There was the time he converted his whole back yard into an aviary, only to discover that his children were actually allergic to birds, and he had to change all of it back. Or there's the fact that he loved dogs so much he once owned more than 20. Or the fact that once he discovered a dish he particularly liked he would cook it night after night for his entire family without reprieve for weeks on end.

Whenever my grandfather did something, he did it to extremes. And unfortunately, one of the things grandpa did was smoke. So in many ways, it was unsurprising when last year my family learned that he'd been diagnosed with cancer. Look, I know that's a bit of a mood killer. In a context where Western medicine has given us the unprecedented ability to avoid illness, cancer remains as an ever present reminder of our ultimate mortality. And let me point out the elephant in the room, we are all uncomfortable with the idea of death on some level.

Even as I speak, I can feel some people shifting around nervously in their chairs. But today, as uncomfortable as it might be, I want to challenge everyone in this room to start developing a more honest relationship with death. Because it is incredibly important for us to recognise that in order for an experience to be valuable or enriching or even worth talking about it has to be unequivocally happy. Death is devastating, but it also provides us with one of the clearest insights into what it means to be human. And gives us an opportunity to connect with those we love.

When my grandfather was first diagnosed, like so many other families, our initial instinct was to find out how we could beat the disease. And that instinct was backed up by the countless web sites, doctors, and supporter groups who would describe cancer as a battle and look at survivors as if they had bravely fought and won. And I don't want to take away a single thing from anyone who has been through something such as cancer. But my concern is that by solely focusing on how to beat diseases like cancer, we are potentially shutting off conversations about what to do if you lose that fight.

It's worth noting that our culture at this point in history is relatively unique in our overriding fear of death, whether it's Greek gods choosing eternal fame over a mortal life, or Vikings, who believe that death in battle was a sure ticket into the halls of Valhalla. Different cultures at different times have had immensely different views about death. Often, they were more concerned with the manor of their death rather than just survival itself. Even in modern times, journals written by American soldiers in World War II, marvel at Japanese soldiers who refuse to surrender, even when death was certain.

Showing that there is a plurality of perspectives we can take when dealing with questions of life and death. So why is it that modern Western culture is so afraid of mortality? Perhaps it's the result of the secularisation of the West, meaning that less people believe in an afterlife, making death more final and more scary than it once was. But I also think it's got to do with the vast array of medical treatments made possible by modern science and the mirage of hope they offer to so many. Chemotherapy, radiotherapy and immunotherapy are all relatively recent developments and can be tremendously effective for some cancers and for some people.

But the reality of treatment is that it can also be brutal. And for many, only offers the slightest chance of success. Zooming out for a moment, the philosopher Lucretius once described the hum of dying as deprivation. Death takes away all the things that might have been. And I think this goes to the heart of way, treatment choices are impossibly difficult. How do you weigh up a 20% chance at a longer life against the possibility that palliative care and pain management might provide a higher quality of living, but a shorter survival span?

I know that in my experience it was an incredibly complex and almost impossible decision for my family to make. But if we are ever going to be able to make these decisions, we need to be able to have honest and confronting conversations with our loved ones to find out what they want to prioritise at the end of their lives. It is only when we are able to have these conversations that we can connect with each other over this fundamentally human experience and reflect on the events and people we cherish and show our gratitude for them. In certain places that allow euthanasia, living funerals have become common, where eulogies are told and stories told in the presence of the person who has chosen their moment to pass.

In many ways, the concept to a living funeral encapsulates the idea I'm trying to communicate today. That death, although devastating, does not have to be tragic. The playwright Arthur Miller once distinguished tragedy from misfortune by arguing that tragedy isn't when something sad happens, but when something sad happens the audience knows could have been avoided through different choices earlier in the plot. Like if Romeo had waited for Juliet to wake up before drinking poison. The greatest tragedies are those events which could have been avoided.

Ladies and gentlemen, I hate to point out the obvious, but death is the one thing none of us can avoid. It used to be death and taxes, but honestly it just doesn't seem to be all that hard to avoid taxes these days. Given that we can't avoid death, maybe the real tragedy lies in trying to avoid it against all the odds. The Dalai Lama once said it would make no sense to check into a hotel room for a single night and spend the whole evening rearranging the furniture.

Ladies and gentlemen, I want us to start jumping on the beds and maxing out the mini bar and staying up late at candle light telling stories to each other in the knowledge that eventually we'll have to check out. Questions of life and death are tough. And it would be easy to see them as personal, not political questions with individual rather than societal answers. But we should furiously defend the political importance of the personal. Just recently, Victoria made euthanasia legal for terminally ill patients.

It is a complex policy area, but unbalanced. Giving people that highest and final dignity of choosing how, when, and where they move on is something we should extend to all citizens of Australia. These kinds of options will always need careful thinking and plenty of protection. We want to empower people to make their own decisions. Not pressure them down a particular path. But we can offer better options than we already do.

And creating these options and leaning into these types of conversations about death will let us hear the voices and stories of the people we should be listening to most on this question, those who are dying. The famous Australian author and academic David Goodall recently chose to fly to Switzerland in order to take advantage of their end of life treatment despite not having a terminal illness. He said of the experience, at my age, one wants to be free to choose death at the appropriate time.

I have absolutely no regrets. And ladies and gentlemen, we shouldn't have regrets either. And yet, when my grandfather finally passed away, I did have some regrets. Regrets about the things we could have talked about. The things maybe we should have talked about. The things I know he would have wanted to talk about, but things we never brought up.

And so while no single one of us is likely to have the answers, we all know the questions. And I think it's time that we stop thinking about them and talking about them together.

[applause]

TONY DAVEY: I really, really liked Sophie's speech. I think as a group we ranked it towards the top. Equal top. I'll talk about the ending. I thought that it was a mistake to end this speech without coming back to a broader picture of a stubborn grandfather and say-- like, I thought it was super clever the way that this speech wasn't about voluntary euthanasia, but it was a very long and interesting journey to get to that question. So I loved all of that. But then it was about voluntary euthanasia. And it was about this overpowering figure of a grandfather.

And I was like, he was just suddenly dead, what I wanted to hear was, even though it might have been a bit confronting from her, what were those discussions like? At the end of the speech it makes sense to then be talking about like, here is what we chatted too with him, here was his position on quality versus quantity of life and where we ended up, and here is how we resolved it as a family. And that was a weird thing to not come back to, I thought.

PATRICK CALDWELL: Look, one thing that bugs me about what I thought was an excellent speech was that there were just lots of quotations that I felt kind of pulled away from the impact of the speech. And it was kind of a confusion of whether something is a worthy concept and should be included in the speech versus whether we needed to reference that every time. So the idea of death being a deprivation of everything that we hold dear doesn't get better because Lucretius said it. It's just a good concept that I think Sophie could have explored a bit more on this speech.

And the idea of checking out of a hotel after re-arranging all the furniture doesn't get better because Dalai Lama said it, it's good because it's a really helpful conceit for us to think about our lives in the way in which we live them. So for me, probably stripping out some of those little add-ins and just relying on the concept and having a bit more time to explore them means that we'd have more moments where she's using her own words, like when she says, well, it's time to fiercely defend the personal in the political arena, and using that kind of language to get us closer to the idea that she wants us to get next to, rather than focusing on necessarily the person who has issued the quote.

EMILY KIM: Great. So I agree with everything that's been said, of course. And I think touching upon that idea of bracketing her speech with that example of the grandfather. I think the reason why that was so urgently and particularly needed in this speech is because the topic was quite an abstract one. Discussing death can be kind of heavy and metaphorical and something that's difficult for us to concretise. I think that example that she put at the beginning was very helpful in concretising that topic earlier on.

I think bringing that back at the ending would have helped bring back a speech that became increasingly abstract. Not necessarily that that was a fault, but back to into something that was easy to grasp, and kind of had a clear consequence in a clear way that that tangibly played out in Sophie's life.

TONY DAVEY: Yeah. We should come back to like-- there was so much in this speech that everybody loved. The picture of the grandfather was great. That play on tragedy being both sad and avoidable and what that means in terms of death, I thought was great. The living funeral stuff, the jokes about death and taxes. These were all really well done.

PATRICK CALDWELL: And I think impressively-- a really excellent and not at all forced expansion from that very personal narrative to the political narrative and that closing after the speech, I thought was excellent.

TONY DAVEY: Yeah, I agree.

JASON BAENA-TAN: Our fifth contestant is Charlee Sutherland. Charlee is in Year 11 at Crestwood High School. She likes avocado on toast and dislikes being told that she can't buy a house in Sydney because of her love of avocado and toast. Her favourite saying is 'The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways. The point though, is to change that.' The subject of Charlee's speech is 'Six million reasons why.' Please welcome Charlee Sutherland.

[applause]

CHARLEE SUTHERLAND: Recently it was suggested that the war memorial recognise the efforts of the Australian Border Force for their contribution to the protection of our nation against violent extremists, according to the Border Force creed. As Australians, we need to be taking a long hard look at exactly who we're letting into the country. And we should ensure that aspiring new citizens and visitors are hardworking and committed to making Australia a better place. After all, Australia is a free, prosperous and harmonious country.

But it is these aspects of our society that homegrown terrorists and violent extremists seek to harm. And I have to agree with the brave Australian Border Force. These threats to Australian society are both real and growing. I'm just not so sure they're keeping the right people out or addressing the dangers that lie within. Australian social media personality Blair Cottrell is a self-confessed neo-Nazi. Not just your standard run of the mill racist, but an actual anti-Semitic, anti-Islam, Hitler loving neo-Nazi.

As a zealous white nationalist, his rhetoric could come straight from the playbook of 1930s European fascism. According to his recent Facebook post, there should be a picture of Hitler in every classroom in every school, and his book should be issued to every student. Typically, neo-Nazis and conscious images of the Romper Stomper-esque skinhead counterculture of the 1970s. But whilst would seem that up until this moment in history, we've accepted that the ideals of Nazi Germany were the epitome of evil.

Modern day fascism couldn't be more mainstream. Today, in many countries across the globe and increasingly confident far right is emerging. In Trump's America, terror stalks the streets and children are separated from families and thrown into detention centres as a vicious violent and emboldened fascist movement takes hold. In Europe, banners calling for an Islamic Holocaust were seen in the streets of Poland at a 60,000-strong white nationalist rally.

And this is from a country that saw some of the holocaust's worse atrocities. Here in Australia the United Patriots Front, Reclaim Australia, and the motley crew of other shadowy organisations that have come out of the woodwork in recent months should be a cause for serious concern. And here is why my concern with who we're letting into the country comes in. According to Milo Yiannopoulos, because he is a gay ethnic Jew who's married to a black man, he feels he's well within his rights to dress up common racist, sexist, and Islamophobic tropes in urbane witticisms.

Whilst working for Breitbart News, Milo rubbed shoulders with alt-right fascist. And was filmed serenading an audience of neo-Nazis at his local karaoke club whilst they 'seig heil-ed' only metres away. Despite this behaviour, Yiannopoulos was allowed into Australia last December to perform his troll academy tour, which was fraught with alt-right rhetoric. He praised British colonialism, saying that in life there are winners and losers. And Aboriginal Australians were the losers.

He also joked about how refugees dying at sea makes for good shark food. And the rest of his jokes were dedicated to extolling the virtues of classical Western culture. But what was really frightening was the size of Milo's audience, young liberals, frat boys, overgrown gamers, and ageing Trump fanatics, came to his shows in the thousands. And Milo isn't the only undesirable being allowed into the country far-right Canadian activist Lauren Southern has recently announced of a speaking tour of Sydney and 5 other capital cities this July.

She recently called it controversy after being banned from Britain for promoting racist, homophobic, and Islamophobic material. The response to these speakers from the far right is always freedom of speech. But when we consider that the type of people who were taking up the call to act on this kind of bigotry, a self-confessed neo-Nazis, then we have to wonder how these particular visitors fit into the promotion of social harmony that the Australian Border Force is supposed to be protecting.

Consider, for instance, the very recent attack on the Anglican Parish of Gosford, which was invaded for the second time by a group of neo-Nazis under the leadership of Neil Erickson, who was, perhaps, made most famous for accusing migrants of being un-Australian whilst waiting around the Trump flag and wearing a hat that said, Make America Great Again. Stupidity aside, these men are dangerous. And they should be recognised for what they are. A very real threat to the safety and social harmony of Australian society.

Home grown terrorists, if you like, inspired by a visiting alt-right fascist extremists. But Father Rod recognised these men for who they really were. He said, if these men were Muslim, who walked into a church service with a sword, even a sword, it's hard to imagine that they wouldn't have been charged with terrorism. And he responded to the invasion swiftly and intelligently. The church sign on the day following the attack read, we do Hail Marys, not Hail Hitlers.

Forgive my ignorance, but in all this debate about free speech, when did we stop believing that Nazis were bad? When you defend free speech you might find yourself in the difficult position of defending people who say awful things, but perhaps not dangerous things. I think that most of us would agree that free speech has its limits. After all, you can't shout fire in a crowded room because somebody is probably going to get hurt in the panic stampede.

And that's because your right to say what you like is trumped by your responsibility to keep other people safe. Ironically, this is also the creed of our government, who claims to be placing the safety of its citizens over the rights of outsiders with the potential to incite violence. So let me be clear, this is not an argument for the censorship of people who wish to engage in reasoned debate. This is simply a reminder that some people use the cover of free speech to spread hatred, violence, and disharmony.

They tell us to ignore it and it'll go away. They tell us to protest peacefully, so we don't stoop to their level. Whilst they continue to use their right to advocate for the death of our friends and neighbours under the same model that their political ancestors used years ago. Allowing them the cover of free speech and a platform through which to spread these murderous ideas is tacit approval of Nazism.

They tell us that the main weapon of terrorism is fear. And the only way to defeat that is to continue living our lives without fear. Well, the main weapon of the Nazis are words that seek to threaten and to silence. If we choose to remain silent, they simply won't go away. We need to speak out loudly, publicly, and intelligently through whichever platform made available to us to defeat those who attempt to silence us with ghosts of hatreds past.

After all, we have a pretty powerful history lesson about what happens if we choose to remain silent. So like the Australian Border Force, maybe we really should be considering who we're letting into the country. And we should be tackling homegrown terrorism of a different kind. We need to start telling people, like Milo Yiannopoulos to go back to where we came from. And we should seriously question anyone who echoes the kind of hateful rhetoric of the Nazis. We need to shut down the kind of alt-right fascists who call themselves Nazis. And if you need another reason why, I'll give you 6 million reasons why.

[applause]

PATRICK CALDWELL: So I think the thing for me for Charlee's speech is it's obvious that she has a high level of knowledge about this subject and is deeply passionate about it. I think for me, the speeches delivered would have absolutely killed in a room that was populated exclusively by people who already agreed to the same level that she's on board with, the speaker, for what she was talking about. But in a room that's a little bit more mainstream and is more representative people who are going to be angry if someone cuts in front of them in the line for coffee, but maybe not as upset that someone is holding neo-Nazi rallies in far parts of Australia.

I think it needed to do a little bit more work to bring everyone on board. So for instance, I'm not that familiar with people like Blair Cottrell and neo-Nazis in Australia or anything like internationally. I know they exist, but they don't make a huge impact to my day to day life. If someone is going to bring a speech that exclusively focuses on them to me, they're going to have to do just a little bit of work, not just explaining why something is a bad idea, pretty much everyone on the room's going to be on board with that, but explaining why we should care to the degree that the speaker wants us to care.

And I think there were moments in this speech where there were some unhelpful things that kind of took away from that. So implying that 60,000 people who voluntarily go to a neo-Nazi rally in Poland should be substantially different from saying there are serious policy issues with ISIS in America and how immigration in America needs to be reformed on both the policy and a practical level. But lumping those 2, I think, was probably a bit heavy for this audience and probably a bit unhelpful for discussing those ideas.

EMILY KIM: I agree that I think the speaker particularly needed to be a little bit conscious of the fact that, again, not everyone in the audience may agree with the topic that you're bringing. I think what Charlee could've really benefited from is something that, for instance, that we saw Sophie do earlier, where if you know you're bringing a topic that may potentially be a little bit less approachable or a little bit less digestible for your audience, to open in a manner that welcomes the audience and encourages them to hear you out and to hear what you have to say from possibly a more friendly perspective.

So less of kind of an opening that launches us straight into what we're afraid of, and potentially doing a little bit more work at the beginning to kind of ease people into the notion that we're going to be discussing, something a little bit heavy, something a little bit unfamiliar. That possibly could have helped with the arguments that were to follow, which could have been a little bit new and unfamiliar for some of the audience members.

TONY DAVEY: Yeah, so for me, 2 things. The first thing is that the speech starts from a premise of this being a very large, very present problem, and kind of assuming everyone in the room agrees with that. And it's kind of similar to what everyone has said already. I'm just not sure that I buy that. And a more nuanced approach to that premise talking about, hey, this really is a real problem, would have been more helpful, I think.

So asking herself and then kind of chatting through. Is what we're seeing with neo-Nazism kind of the death throes of the far right who's lost every cultural identity war and is basically now just angry? Or is this a real and growing beginning of something that we should be far more worried about. So I'm not sure-- I think if you explore that you could more successfully have a starting premise of the speech, which is neo-Nazism is a real thing that is massive, and we need to fight for it by looking at the different views about might actually be causing this neo-Nazism.

And towards the end-- look, it feels like the whole speech is basically about how we should be stopping people with these kinds of unacceptable views. That's fair. From coming to Australia. And if that is the point of the speech, you just need to game out a little bit better in act 3. What would that look like? What are the potential repercussions in terms of adding fuel to the fire of the alt-right?

Will they just say, yeah, they are oppressing our freedom of speech again. There's stuff to game out there about what that band would actually look like. And that was kind of just left there. Yeah, we should be letting these people not come here-- should be banning them. But no kind of look at what that would look like.

PATRICK CALDWELL: Yeah, I think, probably like-- probably a moment to just give a piece of global feedback to these speakers and anyone who's thinking about doing their own speech, I think that a lot of public speakers allow themselves to skate a little bit by not stepping through what the outcome of their proposed solution is going to be in any one speech. And then helpful head-space to get into is think about what this speech would look like if you're the first speaker in an affirmative delivering this in a debating scenario. Obviously, a little bit more combative.

You're going to have to include just a bit more logical defence of the kind of ideas you're bringing to the table, rather than saying, look, we absolutely need to do it, and not giving us as many reasons why of what it would look like and what the consequences might be. And then saying, if you disagree with me, I'll give you 6 million reasons why it's a good idea and relying on the emotional weight of 6 million murdered people in a Holocaust to carry the day. As a rule, you know that when you've gotten to that point, you've probably lost the room.

TONY DAVEY: Yeah, and I think-- it's difficult because you don't want to-- you don't want the point of your speech to be Nazis is bad. And that's not fair. That's not what the speech was about. The point of the speech is, why the heck am I still having to say that Nazis are bad? But that tightrope could have been better walked.

JASON BAENA-TAN: Our final contestant today is Justin Lai. Justin is in Year 12 at Sydney Boys High School. His sister is his role model. And his favourite saying is, 'I don't like art, only artists.' He would like to influence and be involved in creating a healthy and productive discourse about mental health in school students in order to combat the stigmas in our society. The subject of Justin's speech is, 'The thin yellow line.' Please welcome Justin Lai.

[applause]

JUSTIN LAI: I think there are some things in life that are genuinely confusing. For example, I might be going to an art museum and looking at an installation made from toilet pipes and bricks. It might be seeing Elon Musk and his rumoured musician girlfriend, Grimes, at the Met Gala this year. I mean, seriously, I don't think anyone saw that coming. It might be seeing an Asian guy with facial tattoos, jewellery and loose fitting street-wear, rapping about his favourite convenience store.

Well, maybe not the last one. You see, whether it might sound awfully strange and unfamiliar, it's actually been part of an emerging movement, which has been steadily gaining momentum over the past few years. Enter the wave of Asian hip hop. Now, Asian hip hop has typically struggled to break into the Western mainstream. I mean, the closest anyone came previously was MC Jin and his song 'Learn Chinese' in 2004, a rather, shall I say, one dimensional view of Asian-American identity in a genre that, well, at the time, was still growing.

Back then, Asian culture was something to be sacrificed and exploited for fail. For lack of a better word, it was expendable. A token with which you exchanged to gain greater access into the social mainstream. However, the dimensionality of some concepts of Asian-ness has expanded since then. Becoming more complex intruder life. With the increasing globalisation of the world, one of the most traditional and conservative cultures is opening its borders to a consumable mass media.

And these influences have been very apparent. Sonically Asian hip hop was influenced from trap and notably American sounds, but often incorporates the traditional sounds of oriental music. Things such as the harmonising of voices in Chinese opera, the plucking of the mandolin. Culture is something that's now no longer a trade off, but an inexorable part of this musical identity. And I think I'm being honest when I say that I love this music because it's bold.

Whether it's flexing fashion brands or simply conversing about the everyday, it's a music that is challenging, conspicuous, and most of all creative. It's a music that breaks the lines that we've drawn in the sand. It's a music that, most importantly, by its very nature, confronting our entrenched perceptions of Asian people. The very fact that people would find the idea of an Asian rapper so confusing, I think speaks to that.

Because where rappers typically being a vehicle to voice dissent towards institutions, rappers such as Chinese group Higher Brothers discuss 7-Eleven convenience stores and their conversations on social platform WeChat. On the other end of the spectrum, Indonesian rapper Rich Brian mimics the lyrics of gangster rap in his song 'That Stick' because he wants to, quote, unquote, 'sound scary.' Close to home this looks like artists such as Joel Ma and James Mangohig in their show 'In Between Two' dealing with the richly textured lives of Asian immigrants in an attempt to break down stereotypes and to reconcile with history.

All these artists paint a picture of what it means to be Asian in a dynamic and globalised world. Representation that is sorely lacking in a culture and a lifestyle often deprived of diverse perspectives. But I think there are many issues with being Asian in hip hop. Indeed, there are many issues with being Asian full stop. And that's because hip hop is seen as the music of the underdog, the voice of the marginalised. And as a result of this, we've distilled our perception of these artists into 2 main categories, black and male.

To speak out on certain issues and to glorify a certain lifestyle there has to be an aggression, an angerer, hyper-masculinity that we often perceive exists within African-Americans and everything people perceive Asians to not be. Writing for ABC News in February 2013 Christina Lee observed that no matter how close these rappers come to mainstream success, they must confront the idea that they don't belong in hip hop. This is a concept that speaks volumes about the issues of cultural representation and of stereotype facing the Asian people today because the world still views us as the silent majority.

Passive, unassuming, and often effeminate. Take a look at previous Asian hits in Western music. You've got the dandy-like side galloping along to 'Gangnam Style', and more recently the emergence of Korean music groups such as BTS and Red Velvet. The complete antithesis of what hip hop is believed to be. And its often believed that these Asian rappers are simply trying too hard to fit in. That their extravagant lifestyles, larger than life bravura, and all around demeanour are just an attempt to mimic the maximalist successes of more visible Western hip hop styles.

That they've been forgoing racial and cultural authenticity in exchange for a quick dose of fame. There is a hypocrisy that emerges here. Asian hip hop that is deemed too Asian is quickly rejected by Western audiences. But when it parrots black culture and traditional rap influences, then cries of cultural appropriation comes to the fore. I think it's kind of concerning that the problems Asians face have a degree of universalities with them, because society is happy to put boxes into certain identities that Westerners are comfortable with.

I mean, that's certainly not the first time that that's been the case. Just think about your stereotypical Asian career paths, you're doctors, you're lawyers, you're scientists. Think about how less than 5% of leadership positions in government, universities, and top companies are held by people of a non-European background. Think about how Pauline Hanson warned about how the honest suburbs of Australia were being swamped by Asians.

It's a familiar tightrope to walk, ladies and gentlemen. The thin yellow line between standing out too much and not standing out at all. And I think that's the problem with a musical world all too unreceptive of contemporary Asian hip hop. We often forget the universality of the genre and its ability to provide a voice where there often is none.

For African-Americans it was an opportunity to speak out against trenchant social injustices. And for Asians, I think it's become the fight against the stereotype, against the hegemonic perceptions that deem us quiet and weak. Because, when was the last time you saw an Asian guy with coloured hair and tattoos? I mean, when was the last time you saw an Asian artist of any sort on Sunrise or Today, instead of your typical doctors and mathematicians?

The dialogue needs to extend beyond simple representation, because we need to rethink the way we perceive Asians, not only in music, but in society as a whole. This sort of music isn't some cheap and tokenistic method to turn to the spotlight, but instead a way to involve ourselves within the global race dynamic, within cultural relativism, and within mainstream media representation. At a time with a line between race and culture are beginning to blur and to breakdown, why should we segregate and enforce stereotype?

Popular constructions of Asian-ness and blackness, when they continue to hold us back from negotiating a truly multicultural society. And hip hop has become the bridge between cultures that has transcended continents. The flag under which 2 vastly different societies can exist under. It's led to a fascinating convergence, a melting pot of different ideas and sounds all mixing to create a truly multicultural music.

So maybe the next time you see something that you would consider genuinely confusing, for example, a new single band, an Asian hip hop artist that you not necessarily have heard of before. I think you should give it a listen. Understand that it's born from a respect and a reverence of the genre, but I think most importantly, a desire to break the mould. And who knows, maybe you'll discover something that you haven't before and something that you like.

Because in a world that reckons all Asian people still look the same, maybe that's not such a bad thing after all.

[applause]

EMILY KIM: We all really, really enjoyed Justin's speech. It was something I genuinely just had not really thought about. And I think he also did a great job of what, for instance, say, Sophie did, which was taking a topic, hadn't really heard of it before, potentially unfamiliar, maybe something not everyone thinks they want to listen to, but then making it into something we are keen to listen to. So he did a great job kind of breaking it down in a digestible way assuming that a lot of the audience members aren't going to be familiar with the topic and breaking down some of those concepts, balancing out some more obscure or familiar examples with well-known names and faces that we can kind of relate to more and kind of grab at something that we are familiar with in an otherwise unfamiliar topic.

I think the only thing for me for Justin was just-- I think potentially he could have-- I don't think this is necessarily a big problem. But I think, firstly, he could have used a bit of a different introduction. I just think he could have-- firstly, I think he should kind of pace out his introduction a little bit, not be afraid to really go through a nice example, make a few references to what he's going to talk about.

I just thought the introduction didn't necessarily do justice to the fantastic speech that was to come. I think he could have linked it a little bit better to the content that was to follow. But I think, aside from that, I think the rest of the speech went on to be really great and powerful. And I think he did a fantastic job.

TONY DAVEY: Yeah, for sure. He did. It was a goofy floppy start that didn't make sense. And I wasn't quite sure why he was talking about it. And the conceit of it was, there's lots of weird stuff, oh, but wait, this isn't that weird at all, which is a super strange thing to start with. Also, the point of having a kooky, somewhat sideways beginning is, yeah, to introduce what might be a more complex and sophisticated speech. It's a bit difficult.

But there are plenty of kooky personal things he could have been saying about Asian hip hop itself, because it is such a weird starting point. But he didn't need that, right? I think the best way to think of it is, when you write that kooky, somewhat awry kind of opening that teases us into what you're talking about, rather than telling us about it. That's a good thing, right? The test of whether it's going to work is whether you would want to bookend it.

I reckon that kind of thing-- if you're running something kooky, the test of whether it works is whether you would like to come back at it at the end and mention it and remind the audience that that's where you started. And he never even considered it, right? Because it would have been weird. You wouldn't come back at the end of this speech and go, so how about that couple at the Met Gala? We've moved on from that, mate.

So good kooky openings still stick with you. And when you are reminded of them at the end, maybe they mean something different now, but they still need something relevant. This was just like 30 seconds of gags to start, and then the great stuff.

PATRICK CALDWELL: Yeah, I mean, kind of another twist on the same story is I agree with all of that. And for me, the opportunity was really lost with that introduction was something that could be absolutely sort of go back to at the end of that speech. Where you have this expectation of people in the viewing public of what they see on television and what they assume about that person. And where this speech kind of went was that when you see a black guy on television in a music video, you assume it's a hyper-masculine rapper.

When you see an Asian guy on television, you assume that that's not a hyper-masculine rapper, and we buy into stereotypes about who we see. That's great stuff that you set up at outset of that speech. And I think could have made a really, really good bookend to this speech at the end where he starts talking about, like, knocks on Sunrise that we don't get enough Asians on Sunrise who are doing non-Asian stereotype things. So they're there for a music video, not to do maths for us on television.

TONY DAVEY: Yeah, give medical advice.

PATRICK CALDWELL: Yeah, medical advice or accounting kind of tips. It would've turned the last part of that speech into a bit more of a call to action. Not Sunrise is bad because of this, but this is what Sunrise could be like. And leaving the audience with a sense of how their thinking has changed over the course of the speech, and how society might change if we aggregate that thinking and we all start to think about people differently, not just Asian-Australians, but people from all walks of life. And don't make those same assumptions when we see them in the street or on television, that that would have been a really powerful way for the speech to go. Having said all that. I love the speech.

TONY DAVEY: Wait, but one last thing about it. I will talk about this with him. Consistently using the word Asian like that as if-- I think it opens up to the challenge that you're talking about a monoculture. And that's not what he's doing. What he's saying is non-Asian society sees Asians this one certain way. So him using the word like-- him kind of clumping Asians together, you might say, works. It's fine. Is what he's saying is, we see this very different group of people as clumped together.

But I still think he could have made sure he nuanced that out a little bit more carefully for us, so that he's not open to that charge of treating Asia like a monoculture, which he didn't. To be clear.

JASON BAENA-TAN: This concludes the prepared section. The finalists will now leave the auditorium, and will return to give their 3-minute impromptu speeches. Each finalist will speak of the same subject after a 3-minute preparation time. We are now ready for the impromptu section. The finalists will speak in the same order as they did in the prepared speeches.

There will be a warning bell at 2 minutes and 2 bells at 3 minutes. The subject for the impromptu section is 'Desperate measures.' Please welcome back our first speaker. Please welcome Sophie Shead.

[applause]

SOPHIE SHEAD: Trump did what Obama did not dare do. And I'm not just talking about being a little bit more experimental with hairstyles, or a little bit less into doing things like reading briefing notes. What Trump did was he sat down and had a meeting with the cruel and dictatorial-- with a leader of a cruel and dictatorial regime, Kim Jong-un. And what Trump did was obviously crazy.

And we were rightly shocked. And Australia rightly ridiculed him for something that was like an unbelievably unwise political move. But in reading through comments on Australian social media and reading through Australian op-heads written about the meeting, I felt a little bit uncomfortable because it kind of brought home to me how desperately we are-- how the desperate measures we go to in intellectually separating ourself from people and a country and a political culture that is actually probably a little bit too similar to our own.

Because the problem there is, I think, if we were given the opportunity, perhaps we would have met with the leader himself as well. And obviously, Turnbull isn't nearly as crazy as Trump already, but our political landscapes are becoming more and more mirrored in a way that we are getting more and more desperate to allow ourselves to forget and ignore in ways that are often really, really damaging. So Australians love to flaunt how different we are to the US in that we have universal health care and we have gun laws that we can be proud of.

And I don't want to undermine the value and importance of those policy achievements, but the intellectual gymnastics we have to do in order to show ourselves to be different and better than the US are desperate measures that we're going to, which don't actually prove anything because we're becoming more and more similar every year that the political clock ticks on. Because it is true that we might have gun laws to be proud of, but we are constantly trying to dismantle Medicare in, that is to say, the policy achievement that Australians love to pride above the US. That we, again, might be ahead in certain areas, but we are certainly far ahead of them in things like incredibly brutal refugee policy, in locking up children who seek asylum in our country, and in ways that completely match the cruelty and brutality of the things we were so shocked by in another country's soil, in the Texas facilities earlier this year.

And that is why we are becoming increasingly intellectually desperate in our public discourse and in our media to say that that is the US over there and this is Australia over here in the ways we are different and the ways our political discourses in climates separate. But ultimately, those attempts are futile. And however-- and the desperation of those measures and those intellectual gymnastics is all just testament to how similar those climates are becoming. In that, even if we didn't meet with the leader of North Korea, our political climate is becoming more and more like the US every year.

And it's easy to say and feels comfortable to say that a country that is far away, we are different from them, and their problems are greater than ours, because it makes the problems and fracturing of our own political landscape feel more trivial and feel less fatal. But ultimately, we should be more careful with the measures we go to do that intellectual gymnastics and separate ourselves from people and a country we are becoming more like, because America is on the horizon.

[applause]

PATRICK CALDWELL: I spent the majority of this speech thinking 2 things. One was, why isn't the entire speech about Kim Jong-un negotiating with Donald Trump? Because it turns out that ordinarily-- I mean, I wouldn't send Donald Trump to negotiate over the price of oranges that I pay on a weekly basis. But in a scenario where we've got no choice because he's the president and Kim Jong-un has nuclear weapons, maybe that's a desperate time calling for desperate measure and talking about the necessity or wisdom of doing that or otherwise.

For me, that then set up the speech living in the spectre of that opening that was kind of like, well, desperate measures, across a number of different policy areas, gun laws, health care, and Medicare, never quite lived up to the question of nuclear holocaust. And if it was just the intellectual gymnastics that we have to do about those desperate measure, because Australia is maybe a little bit too American, for me, avoiding nuclear war seemed like something that we should care about a little bit more than whether Sydney is a little bit too much like Houston or Texas or New York, New York.

TONY DAVEY: Fair enough.

EMILY KIM: Yes. So I agree. I think the direction that she ended up taking with the impromptu possibly was slightly lacking. Firstly, in terms of the link to the topic I thought was a little bit of a stretch. Only because I think she could have done a slightly better job enunciating the kinds of desperate measures we take. I think it is probably true that Australia does sometimes take pride in being different to America, but I wasn't quite clear what kind of desperate measures we were talking about here.

Like at what point did our efforts to distinguish ourselves from America become desperate measures? Why were we so desperate? I was also asking like where that had arisen from. And as a result then, how do we then address that? Because I think in order to address that kind of intellectual gymnastics, I think we need to know where it is born from and why it has come about so strongly.

And I also thought we could have done a little bit of a better job kind of highlighting more what's at stake. Because at the end of the speech, the only kind of call to action that I really understood was, therefore, we should stop denying that we're like the US. And I wasn't really sure. I think she could have taken it slightly further in terms of what were the consequences of that kind of realisation.

TONY DAVEY: Just in terms of the writing when-- I think, when in an impromptu, you have a chance to use the topic in a fun slightly glib superficial way at the beginning and then come back to a deeper understanding of it in a different context. That's something-- like that's a chance you shouldn't miss. So why this wasn't, we live in desperate times, and we need desperate measures. And that's why it's cool that Trump is going. And then a much more nuanced different kind of desperate measures, which is the lengths we'll go to distinguish ourselves from America.

Playing that up explicitly seemed like a great writing idea that you should use. If you ever get the chance to use the topic in maybe 2 different ways, a fun opening way, and then your serious ending way. That's probably a really good way to do it. And she maybe just didn't quite do that, even though it was mostly there.

JASON BAENA-TAN: Please welcome back our next speaker, Jinyoung Kim.

[applause]

JINYOUNG KIM: To anyone who's a baked cake before, you know that when you messed up when you put way too much butter in that mixture. The best thing to do is not to like immediately panic and try to add more sugar, add more milk, but take a step back and almost just try to deal with the situation in a passive, calmer way. I think our society calls everything desperate measures. And not only do we over-diagnosed the need for these desperate measures, but we act rationally upon them, leading to negative effects on society.

So first, why do we over diagnose these desperate measures? And what are some examples of these that we can see in our society today? Well, one example in which I would say you over diagnose this is the refugee intake in Australia. We say that this is such a pressing issue that it's going to ruin Australia when in reality it's just a couple of people, and it's not going to put that much strain on the social welfare system.

Our entire political cycle is dominated by urgency. And through this we've generated the apathy of people. It means that in every single news article we read, we read that this is an urgent significant issue. And sure, many of them do. But a lot of them don't. And the big problem we have is we always call them urgent.

And this may not seem so bad. But it also means it crowds out the need for really urgent news to be conveyed. Because I'm sure about 30 years ago, it would have been immediately necessary news that in this year that it was the second time the Ebola crisis struck. But now, we don't even hear about that because we're captured in more-- like more urges, needs, that we consume as media. So we over-diagnose it as a result of fighting the people's attention.

But I also argue that the measures in which we combat these, the measures in which we try to resolve them, are as a result, very rash. Because when we feel desperation, we feel a necessity, an urge to do something. So for example, when it comes to the refugee intake in Australia, it seems like it's way too much. So instead of really examining on a rational level what would be best, we say, this is a crisis, we must take necessary measures and deport them all the way to oversee detention centres. I think this is really damaging.

But an issue that is especially being caused by modern society because of our rise in technology, because we are consuming more and more information daily. And that's something we need to fix. But how do we try to resolve something that is imposed upon by media? The first thing I would claim is that it's not. It's really up to us to consume media in a different way.

I would contest that the way we consume it is so reactive that everything does seem so urgent. But the second thing is, also, a call out to media. We need to stop pretending like everything is urgent because some things are more important than others. And some things are in of desperate need, but some things aren't. And those things that are desperate, really do deserve their attention. So the next time I'm going to bake cake, I'm not going to try to fix it and end up with this molten pile of lava. But what I'm going to do is I'm going to take a step back, realise that cake probably isn't the most important thing in my life right now, and just really deal with that situation. Thank you.

[applause]

EMILY KIM: We all thought that Jinyoung did a really great job in terms of making a clear effort to really respond to the topic that he was provided with. So he had a relatively clear link as to how he intended to go about addressing the topic of desperate measures. Potentially, he, again, needed to be slightly more explicit in terms of what those desperate measures actually look like. So as he interpreted it as being over-diagnosing problems. And therefore reacting in overly exaggerated ways.

What were some kind of examples of the ways in which we over-diagnose things? At what point are we over-diagnosing something again? But we were really pleased that he had made that kind of a clear effort to actually respond to the topic at hand.

TONY DAVEY: Yeah. So it felt like it was a speech about desperate measures, but still with its own message, which was take a chill pill, society. Or something like that. And maybe where it drops a little bit back compared to some of the other speakers is that it doesn't-- it doesn't develop as complex a message. Although it does a better job, maybe, of being about desperate measures. And, therefore, something that doesn't leave the audience going, well, that was great, but why is that called desperate measures?

So a balance of those 2 things would be great. Something that did develop a complex and sophisticated response to a message, but also that threaded the idea of desperate measures through it the whole way would be perfect. He's threaded it through really well, I thought. But maybe the conclusions he comes to are a little bit less sophisticated.

PATRICK CALDWELL: Yeah. And I think if he's going to have less sophisticated conclusions, one thing he probably need to do is make the conclusions actually really, really clear. There are different things in his speech-- like we've both been saying, which is that he needed to really itemise what over-diagnosis of problem looked like. And he also really needs to itemise what desperate measures look like. Kind of could cobble it together from what he was saying in the back half of his speech about there's an overall increase in technology and available information, and that's leading to like a panic sensation in society.

There's a moment where you need to be really, really clear about that. And then at the end where you're going back to the strange cake analogy and saying, everybody needs to relax, it's just a cake. That really hits home just a little bit more. Because it turns out we actually just don't have to care about it. It's just a cake. We can relax and move on with our lives. It's going to be a more immediate mental link to whether we care about Australian refugee policy and that kind of thing to the degree to which we should--

TONY DAVEY: Yeah. I didn't mention that. The cake basically worked though.

PATRICK CALDWELL: Yeah, it worked in the end. I think it was weird at the start.

JASON BAENA-TAN: Please welcome back Ashna Hegde.

[applause]

ASHNA HEGDE: As an HSC student, when I want to choose my subjects, I was instantly drawn to subjects that were very rational and thought based. Extension to math, legal studies, chemistry. Maybe it was my own personal influence of having a math teacher for a mum, maybe it was our society that increasingly influences-- emphasises the importance of rational thought and thinking to the function of society.

Indeed, when I chose extension to English in addition to these rational subjects, it was a desperate measure to instil some sense of creativity. Some sense of my own invention, having my own voice represented in my HSC subjects. And indeed, the recent incorporation of arts into the acronym of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics has been dubbed in a similar way. An interest in educators to instil a sense of creativity, instil an appreciation of creativity in art in a world that is increasingly focused on rational fields.

But is it this desperate measure? Is it attempting to save an appreciation for arts in a world in which this is diminishing? Or is it, in fact, an acknowledgment of the vital importance of art in creativity in the function of our society? Indeed, I can point to various examples where arts and creativity have, in fact, empowered members of our society in the empowerment of women through arts and creativity.

We can look to examples such as in Kenya and Nigeria, where the increasing use of creativity in education has, in fact, drawn women back to the education system, where they otherwise may not have been going. Including the teaching of self-defence as a way of de-legitimising in breaking down social stereotypes in rape culture in these country. We can look to examples such as Fiji, where women are engaging in fine arts in their creation of cultural artefacts as a way of breaking out of systemic poverty and discrimination in the wake of natural disaster.

In a sense, we shouldn't be considering arts in the influence of creativity and the stressing of the importance of creativity in art in our education system as a desperate measure to avoid a world that is increasingly being dominated by rational field issues such as economics and math and science. Instead we should be seeing it as our society's way of acknowledging that arts and creativity play an increasing importance in our society. That they empower women, they empower their citizens to think differently. The inclusion of arts in our education system shouldn't be considered as a desperate measure, but rather acknowledging that arts and creativity have huge and vital importance to the way our world functions today. Thank you.

[applause]

TONY DAVEY: There's a lot of really interesting things in here about the use of art in education and how important it is. The problem that I have with it, again, at a really high level, right? Is that the idea of desperate measures feels more like a jumping off point, which gets left behind a little bit in order to write a reasonably successful speech about the importance of art to education. And I think if I'm a layperson in the audience watching it, I'm just kind of wondering a little bit-- I'm not like completely confused, but I'm just kind of wondering how this speech about the importance of arts in education on stem is really a desperate measure, like, how did we get here?

And I think that theme of-- I think you could deliver a speech about this where you talked about the way that our education system is so mark-conscious and so about math and science now and grades, that we're forgetting to teach creativity and art. And that we really are at a crisis where we need to take desperate measures, like making art compulsory through Year 12 or something like that. So it could be a speech, but it felt more like desperate measures. And that linked very quickly to the idea of art. And then it was just about art and education, rather than desperate measures. Is that fair?

PATRICK CALDWELL: I think that's very fair. I think, probably, the one thing for me to mention is just use that as a bit of a jumping off point for one thing that it's probably worth feeding back to for all people watching this video and thinking about how they approached the impromptu. I don't think that Ashna did it at all. I think that her impromptu was her thinking about things that she felt very passionately about and kind of weeding them together as best she could. One thing that we see time and time again is people coming in with a speech that they're going to deliver no matter what the topic is, and just trying to sandwich it in.

Treating the topic as something to-- as we said in the adjudication, to just say it at the start of the speech and then politely say it at the end. The topic that we give has concepts that have to be engaged with by the speaker. So if you were to send off a friend of yours to go and get 2 litres of milk from the shops, they could come back with any number of different kinds of milk, full grain milk, skim milk, soy milk, almond milk. They would all nonetheless be arguably milk.

If they came back with a canoe, they have failed to live up to the mission statement that they set up for it. Just like if you kept giving a speech that's supposed to be about desperate measures, there's myriad ways that you could talk about that. But at some point in the speech you're going to have to talk about the circumstances that push you towards taking desperate measures. You're going to have to talk about what specific desperate measures that you're talking about. And you have to get to like a metered bar there.

And then you probably want to do a bit of evaluation of whether those measures are a good idea or a bad idea. And if you haven't stepped through those things, you haven't met the essential requirements at that speech.

TONY DAVEY: You're home with no milk.

PATRICK CALDWELL: Yeah, you're home with something-- a canoe. And that's not something that can readily go on an English breakfast tea. All right, so if you're a speaker who's out there thinking it's OK to have a pre-prepared idea you're bringing into the impromptu and sandwich it between the topics said politely twice. That is the opposite of what you should be doing in an impromptu speech. And it's easy to pick those speakers at the end of the competition. The speakers that have done that, they're the ones going home without trophies.

TONY DAVEY: And to be clear, a bug bear that's worth talking about and really, really important.

[interposing voices]

Sorry, that's not necessarily about Ashna though. We think she's almost tied that idea of desperate measures through the speech. So just needed to be a little bit clearer.

PATRICK CALDWELL: And I think the moments where she got close is when she was talking about things like self-defence classes for female students in Kenya and Nigeria and that's a radical response to a problem that is already very extreme. But ideas like that were moments where she got close to that idea. But the speech on the whole was just a little bit short of the kind of urgency of situation or urgency of response that really engaged with that conceit of the topic.

EMILY KIM: Yes. I agree. I think even at the simplest level, say, Ashna could have even just said, because arts education is so important, and right now teachers are back-flipping to get into the curriculum. We should create measures so that they do not have to take these desperate measures. Like it could have even been that simple. And I think that is kind of symptomatic of the fear that sometimes speakers-- that they feel like it's too obvious that they're just talking about something they're passionate about.

Obviously, you shouldn't ignore the topic, but it's OK to talk about something you're passionate about. I think the important thing is zooming out of that a little bit. Like obviously you're very interested in that, but if you potentially take a bit of a wider glance at it, you can actually see ways in which that can logically and reasonably be linked to the topic and to take those links, I think, is the biggest step. Like this doesn't now mean you have to abandon all the things you've wanted to talk about all your life. It just means, take a little bit of a different perspective to what you've always thought about that topic.

And potentially, that will help you to come up with those links that maybe aren't there. As in Ashna's speech, we saw those potentials for links there. It's just about looking at that topic from different angles. That topic you've treasured for so long and want to speak about, so that you can actually see those links and take them.

TONY DAVEY: We definitely don't want to turn it back into like speeches that are desperate measures this. Another thing about desperate things. Desperate measures that. That's not the point. But taking desperate action should be the central theme of your speech about education. Or the central theme of your speech about women's rights or what else we've had so far.

JASON BAENA-TAN: Please welcome Sophie Mok.

[applause]

SOPHIE MOK: I will go to desperate measures to protect things I care about. Whether it's sheltering my dog from the blistering cold by wrapping my body around her, or protecting my fries, which are being stolen by my brothers, by waving around my fork in a fencing like manner. But there are many things-- there are many things which we must go to desperate measures to protect. And one of the things in recent times that we must take desperate measures-- that we must take desperate measures to protect is to ensure that the banking royal commission leaves its mark.

Leaves its mark, so farmers and families will not have to face the horrors they have faced in the past years. The investigation has revealed many terrible events and actions of fraud by the banks, which have majorly impacted people's lives. Whether it's farmers losing their equipment, their homes, their entire livelihoods, or families that were charged on behalf of dead relatives. Many people have been very negatively impacted by immoral actions of the banks. And this royal commission into banks has been much awaited.

But the problem with this-- the problem with the banks and why it's taken so long to have a royal commission and why there's so much to investigate is that because many people were worried about the reputation of the banks. That doing this sort of investigation would defame banks. Would make them seem untrustworthy. But if you think about it, banks were being untrustworthy, banks were being immoral.

And we hold an unfair standard. And we weren't holding them to the correct standard as we hold people, say, in the military. We need to hold banks to a higher standard. That they need to be moral-- they need to be moral financial businesses, and that they need to ensure that they act in an ethical manner. Because often we blame things such as financial fraud upon the victims themselves, when, in fact, these victims often can't understand the complicated terms and conditions included in a banking agreement.

So, therefore, we need to make sure that this banking commission does hand out harsh punishments at the end-- it recommends harsh punishments for all those involved, the banks and their workers. We must go to desperate measures. And can't cop out with an easy solution. With only small punishments in order to try and preserve the reputation of these banks. And we must hold these banks and these financial businesses to a higher standard because it's people's lives. It's people's livelihoods, their children, their education, that we must protect.

So therefore, we must go to desperate measures in order to ensure that banks and other financial institutions do not breach our trust and ruin people's lives again.

[applause]

PATRICK CALDWELL: I think that speech kind of did that thing of having an awkward kind of clumsy introduction to material that the speaker wanted to talk about. I think in this scenario, the speaker adhered upon material that actually does really lend itself to a desperate measure speech. There's amazing content in a royal commission, which is historically in Australia the kind of thing we bring in when all other available measures have failed.

Like historically, we have sent a guard from being commissioner of a police force into prison off the back of a royal commission. We've given the people votes off the back of things like royal commission. Massive changes happen, but it's happened in a scenario where no other means available to us was going to deliver that change. I think that in this case-- in this particular scenario, I think the speaker kind of missed a lot of that really, really valuable content, and why a royal commission can deliver those things.

And instead started talking about stuff that, for me at least, didn't nearly come up to the level of urgency that the topic desperate measures really, really should empower a speaker to talk about. So the real responsibility was for media to be covering the royal commission in a way that it might not otherwise cover it. Like Channel 7 really needed an incentive to talk about how CEOs of massive banks had kind of screwed over the Australian working population, or that wasn't going to happen in the event.

To me it was a kind of a strange disjunct between something that seemed on its face to be really, really urgent and worthy of Australia's focus. And then a kind of a milk toast quizzling problem with the idea by saying, oh, well, all we really need to do is make sure we pay attention to the newspapers.

EMILY KIM: I don't have that much to add to that. That's pretty much what I wanted to say. But I think the only thing I would say is I think this is another good example of what I was just saying about how sometimes when you are so invested in a topic you lose sight of even the obvious links that are there. So again, just to take a step back from something that you've wanted to talk about. And to make sure that you're exploring all possible ways and facets of exploring that, so that you're actually using that idea in the best way. Doesn't mean you have to abandon it, but make sure you're utilising it in the most useful way.

TONY DAVEY: And, look, for me, I just feel like if Sophie had stuck more to that idea of desperate measures and come back to it at the end. Here it also helps her out because it gives the speech, I think, a greater depth of insight towards the end. Right now the speech's message really is, banks are bad, we've learned bad things about banks, let's learn bad things about banks. Where as if you come back to like desperate measures at the end and you say, here's what I think we should be doing then.

We should be nationalising some banks people. We should be taking these desperate measures. We should be--

PATRICK CALDWELL: Imprisoning CEOs, et cetera.

TONY DAVEY: Right? It gets you both, a better link to the topic. But also, it gives you some insight on a message at the end of the speech. So it would have been a handy one to come back to. As it was, it felt a little bit-- it was a good summary of stuff we know. The banking royal commission has found out some heinous stuff. And what it needed was-- here's where we should go. We should look up some people real quick.

JASON BAENA-TAN: Please welcome back Charlee Sutherland.

[applause]

CHARLEE SUTHERLAND: Someone called her a late bloomer. She didn't have her first kiss until she was 17. And like most girls, she had a grandiose ideas about what her first time might be like. She lost her virginity 5 years ago this week. But not in the way that she anticipated. Her name is Saxon Mullins, and she is the woman whose case put consent on trial. Now, I don't know about you, but I believe that desperate times call for desperate measures.

And I believe that we need to be taking these desperate measures to change the conversations that we're having around sexual assault. Despite various high profile activists describing him as a nice respectable boy with a promising future, 20-year-old Luke Lazarus was initially sentenced to a minimum of 3 years for raping Saxon Mullins outside his father's night club in 2013. But in April last year a retrial judge found Lazarus not guilty, despite acknowledging that Mullins did not consent, but acknowledged that Lazarus was of good character, and had a genuine and honest belief that the 18-year-old virgin was a willing participant.

We hear it time and time again. Not only with Stanford University rapist Brock Turner, a swimming star whose life didn't deserve to be ruined by 20 minutes of action. But the Steubenville rapists were nice, respectful boys with promising futures. It almost sounds as if society is excusing the behaviour of these boys by saying that sometimes nice men make mistakes and it's a bit of a desperate measure to convict these men of rape and to put them into prison, so they can have consequences for their actions.

So when we diminish the culpability of rapists on the basis of their good character, we're somehow implying that their character and their actions can be separated. We're almost saying that one little mistake should not direct the course of the rest of their wholesome lives. When we diminish the culpability of rapists, we make society dangerous for both men and women. Ladies, think about how many nice men you know. Going by the logic of a court system that describes rapists as nice men who've made a mistake, how many people can you actually trust?

Sounds like a bit of a desperate measure, I know. And gentlemen, how do you feel about being lumped into that category of a nice man on the surface, who could be potentially dangerous if you misread a situation and make a mistake? A liberal MP this morning made an excellent point on the radio. And she said that desperate times do call for desperate measures. And we need to take these desperate measures to change the conversation that we had around sexual assault. Rather than just looking at legislation, we also need to take that desperate measure and really have an entire societal shift when it comes to the way that we deal with sexual assaults.

Charles Sturt University introduced a really excellent program that taught students about consent. And it taught students that no means no. And it really reinforced that in order to make sexual advances towards someone you need enthusiastic consent. So maybe it's time that we start diminishing the culpability of rapists on the basis of their good character. Because somebody who chooses to rape a woman is not acting out of character. Instead, they're expressing a central part of their character.

The part that makes them feel that they can use a woman's body against her will or to hurt and to dominate for their own gratification. The scowls of blame and outrage need to start to being in favour of the victims of these crimes, because we are fast approaching a crisis point with the way that masculinity is constructed and excused. We need to take these desperate measures, because raping a woman is not a mistake. It's a definite choice.

[applause]

EMILY KIM: I think Charlee did a good job kind of working through a difficult topic, but I think the biggest issue for me was it kind of left me wondering what was new about this particular speech. I think this was a speech that I heard explored pretty much in the same way a few times before. And I think it would have benefited from a personal or unique angle on that kind of a topic. I don't think this means that a topic on rape culture and nice guys can never be explored again. Obviously, it can be.

But I think there are different and fresh ways to do that that might have helped that speech. I also, again, was not super clear what the desperate measures that she wanted us to take were. There weren't really any concrete measures that she kind of explained. I could sense that there was a need for desperate measures, maybe, but I wasn't sure what those were.

TONY DAVEY: Classic desperate times, but no desperate measures. And it feels like there's-- much, like I said about Sophie-- there's some obvious stuff where if you come back to the idea of desperate measures in the end and announce a few desperate measures that you really, really like to end this problem of nice guys getting away with sexual assault, you've got a more successful speech anyway, so it's tied in better. Plus you've actually got something to say, like, let's have radical quotas for female judges to make sure that this kind of thing does not happen anymore.

Let's have different ways of dealing with these crimes. So there are different things you can do in the court to make prosecutions more successful.

PATRICK CALDWELL: Or like the Stanford the case that she talked about, something like the presumption of jail time for someone who's found guilty of sexual assault and mandatory sentencing the date rape forbids the possibility for someone to give them lots of references of about how nice a person they are.

TONY DAVEY: So for the left to be standing for mandatory sentencing is a pretty drastic and desperate measure, right?

PATRICK CALDWELL: But I think that the way the speech kind of played out was that, by the end of it, she'd identified that there are massive problems with the way society treats views on women and views on sexual assaults specifically, but I think everyone in the room was kind of on board with that. We probably agreed there was a problem. And then went to the point that like, well, what we really need is a couple of measures, like education, about needing to get enthusiastic consent. And everyone kind of nodded along with that.

And I think is a rule where if you're in a room where everyone's kind of nodding along with you and agreeing with you is like the next logical step, that by definition just isn't a desperate measure. If it seems like the next thing that should happen in the ordinary course of events, you're not proposing something that is radical enough that is driven by the extremity of the scenario you find yourself in. That ordinarily wouldn't be considered, but it's something we absolutely have to do now in order to make sure that our society is a place we want to live.

TONY DAVEY: Yeah, fair.

JASON BAENA-TAN: Please welcome back Justin Lai.

[applause]

JUSTIN LAI: The WHO recently classified video game addiction as a mental health disease. And to my parents, who often took desperate measures to prevent me from playing these games, it was, when they found out these news, a very, very satisfying, I told you so. Because they constantly espoused to me the fact that video games such as Fortnite, video games such as League of Legends prevented me from growing socially, emotionally, and mentally. But I think this rhetoric is kind of reflective of the desperate measures that we take in broader society to combat the apparent social harm that video game poses to our youth.

Things, as such as articles in 2016 in the New York Post by Dr Nicholas Kardaras, who compares screens to a digital heroin and likens their effects to the potent side effects of cocaine. But I think there's an inherent problem with these sort of discourses surrounding new forms of digital entertainment and digital leisure. I think the first one is combating this sort of idea of addiction itself, which is the fact that we just don't have a comprehensive and consistent measure to analyse things such as mental health diseases, things such as conditions.

But importantly, what characterises a video game addiction, what characterises the features with which we can apply those principles. We think that there is a massive kid disparagement and a sort of difference between the metrics in which different societies, different sciences use. And I think in terms of that, we tend to, as a result, forget something that is secondly much more important. And I think it's the role in which video games play in the future of the leisure and entertainment system.

Have a look at things such as the implementation of policies such as virtual reality and augmented reality. Things that can only exist through the interactive medium and the platform of video gaming, which necessitates the hands-on expression of the player's actions within a conceptualised world. Think about the social good that video games can do. We're not just talking about the merits of a place on great forms of created content.

We're talking about the ability for it to bring people together to a sharper common cause. We're talking about the ability for it to combine the best aspects of social media and bringing people together and the best aspects of recreational and shared experiences and the fact that it can create solidarity. And I think it's important when we are characterising this idea of what video games bring to the table in the future. I mean, just taking a look at our conceptions of science and our conceptions of what the future looks like, especially in science fiction.

And we're increasingly seeing, especially going as far back as the '60s and '70s and 'Star Trek', an increasing user interface, an increasing immersion within technology. And I think that's something that is very apparent in video games and is something that's very apparent in the emerging technological developments of our society. So I think it's sad that we're reaching for these desperate measures to characterise video games as a social harm, when it's a fact, a harm doesn't exist at all. I think a measure that we do need to take is, in fact, embracing this as a social good, which we can bring people together in an age where that is more important than ever.

[applause]

TONY DAVEY: I totally buy act one of Justin's speech where he is like, when we start calling these entertainments as bad as heroin, as bad as cocaine, we are overreacting and saying we're imagining desperate times for our kids, and we are drastically overreacting and taking desperate measures to try to get kids to stop playing Fortnite, or something like that. So I thought that was really neat and well done. The second act of the speech, instead of being, here is why gaming is good, needed to be an exploration of, here's where this desperation and this fear came from, and how we can unpack it for our parents.

So instead of, gaming's awesome, it will save the world, if it was, this fear comes from often a lack of understanding, for instance, parents are worried that their kids are being anti-social, whereas, in fact, on Fortnite they are maybe being hyper-social and chatting to each other a lot. Parents are just simply unaware that their friends are on there as well. That maybe we could-- and then talk about how that could defuse the need for these desperate measures.

But as it was, it kind of did-- act one was great, but it was a jumping off point. And then act 2 wasn't about desperate measures at all. And that dropped it back a little bit for me. Is that fair?

PATRICK CALDWELL: Yeah. I think so. I think the act 2 for me in this speech was basically a number of really, really awesomely explored versions of explaining why video games are actually really, really awesome. And I think that that is like half of the battle. The second half is talking about how they're really awesome, and so we should give them more credit than they've been getting, how these desperate measures aren't really warranted, how it's too much of an overreaction and a kind of a moral panic by treating things as digital heroin. There's lots of material that's available in that.

He's talking about like how video games are really powerful and bringing people together, kind of ended up being great as far as as it went, but it ignored stuff about how everyone thinks Facebook is really innocuous, that if we learned anything in the last 18 months, as it turns out, Facebook probably has a bit of a downside, that it's kind of given an election to Russia in the United States and other things that maybe it shouldn't have done. And the things that we think maybe are innocuous and amazing are, in fact, the opposite of that. So having a more nuanced approach to how we treat technology and how it comes into our lives was a real opportunity for him in the second half.

And I think he kind of ignored some of that material just because he's a speaker who clearly loves his video games and loves talking about them, but just needed to take that next step in explaining how that's relevant to our moral packing or our society's understanding of those games and what we should be doing.

TONY DAVEY: Or because he's only got 3 minutes to give the speech.

PATRICK CALDWELL: And that.

TONY DAVEY: It's going to be less nuanced than--

[interposing voices]

Yeah?

EMILY KIM: So I, of course, agree with everything that's been said. And then I just have something small to add. I think-- I think in that act 2, where he spent so much time talking about how great video games were, I think that was actually also a direct price to pay for that, which was that I think it did kind of lack a little bit of nuance in acknowledging that at the farthest end there can actually be video game-- like even just one sentence or 2 sentences. Because I think-- not only myself, but I'm sure a few people in the audience would have seen their fair share of articles or something kind of actually acknowledging-- sorry, that video game addiction can exist.

So the way he was speaking about it, it kind of almost implied that there was no way in which video games could ever be harmful, or it could only ever be a good thing, which I think it largely can be a good thing and can be really entertaining. But I think in the back of my mind, as somebody who's kind of read just a normal level about this, I kept on wondering what about those cases I have seen of actual video game addiction? This can be as simple as just being like, and yes, people can get addicted to video games, but in the same way that you can get addicted to peppermint apparently.

So even just acknowledging it briefly and giving a quick response to that, I know the time is limited, I think would have helped bring that nuance into that second half of the argument. I also just wanted to add that I actually really liked the opening of Justin's impromptu. I think this was a good example of where you do take that kind of quirky, easygoing, lighthearted opening, but it's strictly relevant to what you're about to say. It was funny. It got the audience comfortable. It was a good job.

PATRICK CALDWELL: Yeah, I agree.

TONY DAVEY: Cool. Nice.

JASON BAENA-TAN: The adjudicators will now leave the auditorium to decide the winner of the Plain English Speaking Award for 2018. I now invite Mr Ken Bock from the Australian-Britain Society, Mr John Olsen, also, from the International Churchill Society to present on behalf of Professor David Flint from the English Speaking Union, and Marianne Powell from the NSW Department of Education to the stage.

[applause]

Please welcome back each of the contestants. Sophie Shead.

[applause]

KEN BOCK: There you are. Congratulations.

JOHN OLSEN: Well done.

SOPHIE SHEAD: Thank you so much.

[applause]

JASON BAENA-TAN: Jinyoung Kim.

[applause]

KEN BOCK: Congratulations.

JOHN OLSEN: Well done, sir.

[applause]

JASON BAENA-TAN:

Ashna Hegde.

[applause]

KEN BOCK: Congratulations.

ASHNA HEGDE: Thank you.

JOHN OLSEN: Well done.

MARIANNE POWLES: Just wonderful.

JASON BAENA-TAN: Sophie Mok.

[applause]

KEN BOCK: Congratulations.

SOPHIE MOK: Thank you very much.

JOHN OLSEN: Good job.

[applause]

JASON BAENA-TAN: Charlee Sutherland.

[applause]

KEN BOCK: Well deserved.

JOHN OLSEN: Excellent.

MARIANNE POWLES: Fantastic. I hope I get a chance to vote for you again.

[applause]

JASON BAENA-TAN: And last but not least, Justin Lai.

KEN BOCK: Well done.

JUSTIN LAI: Thank you sir.

JOHN OLSEN: Good job.

JUSTIN LAI: Thank you.

[applause]

JASON BAENA-TAN: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back [? inaudible ?] Ms Emily Kim, who will now announce the Plain English Speaking Award winner of 2018.

[applause]

EMILY KIM: All right, so first things first, of course, as always. I want to say thank you to the competitors today's for giving us such an enjoyable day of speeches. This brings back a lot of memories, both good and bad. I had a great time. It was really, really great to see all of you exploring such interesting topics, or very different ones. That's fantastic.

And, of course, you guys have heard what it took-- what process it was for these 6 people to get here, so I think we should give them another round.

[applause]

So I'm going to just quickly talk to you about what we as the adjudicators really enjoyed about the speeches today, what we thought possibly could have been done better all across the competitors. And then I'm going to leave the winner until the end, like X Factor. OK. What do we think was most successful about the prepareds What we really enjoyed in the best of the prepared speeches today was that people brought us a relatively unique topic.

When you're sitting down to listen to somebody for 8 minutes, that is quite a long amount of time to dedicate to listening to somebody talk about one single topic, so you want that topic to be something possibly slightly fresh, something you may not have really heard about before. We thought that that was done relatively well today. We thought a lot of the speeches brought us things we just had not really sat down to think about before.

But what we thought they did really well was even when you were bringing us a topic that was possibly a little bit new, maybe a bit niche, maybe a bit uncomfortable potentially, is that the speakers did a great job of turning that into something that was relatable and engaging, usually by bringing a slightly personal twist to it. This doesn't mean your entire speech had to be anecdotal. But it did mean that often the speakers who did bring us kind of a personal touch, something from their own experiences, or were able to spin the dialogue in a more approachable and friendly way.

Those kinds of topics that may have been slightly niche or unique or confusing, were more digestible to us as an audience, who may not have ever thought about those topics before. We thought that was something that was done really well. And also, is actually quite a key part of public speaking. I say this from personal experience. I have often spoken about quite uncomfortable topics before, things that might seem a little bit frightening, or weird to the audience.

The number one thing I've been told for adjudicators is advices to make sure it's communicated and delivered in a way that means your audience can sit back and seriously listen to you and not have to think about the fact that they're uncomfortable. That's a really important thing. And it was great to see you guys already doing that today. So let's talk about the impromptu speeches.

So as you all know, the topic for today was desperate measures. We thought all the speakers had some great ideas. And we do really respect the right of the speakers to choose an issue that matters to them, to choose something that they're passionate about and is not necessarily the most obviously or the only thing you can talk about when giving a topic. That's completely fine. And should be something you continue to do.

What we did think, however, that needed to be done better was that you need to really think of that impromptu topic as the heading for your speech. What that means is your link to the topic has to be really clear. You have to explore that topic in a relatively sophisticated and nuanced way, rather than just name dropping it in your speech somewhere and kind of hoping that the audience or the adjudicators will makes those links mentally for you. So the number one thing that we wanted to tell you today is to-- you needed to be really clear what the desperate measures you were talking about were.

A lot of you gave us an interesting insight into why we are in desperate times. We can see that link would be natural, as your first instinct when you saw the topic was probably to think desperate times call for desperate measures. Completely fine to take some time establishing why we are in desperate times, or why we are not. What you then need to do is be really clear on what the desperate measures were.

Why or why not you thought those particular specific desperate measures were or were not appropriate. And how you actually wanted us to go about taking or rejecting those desperate measures. We weren't clear enough in some of those speeches what exactly the desperate measures really were, and how we were going to go about enacting or reacting to those things. So we thought that was our main piece of kind of advice to all of the speakers.

So bringing us to the winning speech for today. The winning speech today gave us a prepared speech that was really interesting and unique in terms of a topic choice, but was made very accessible and actually engaged the audience, we felt, quite fully in a topic they may not had ever thought about before or may not had ever heard about. We thought, despite it having that kind of personal touch and being a unique topic, it also still had a fairly broad and universal, but very clear message that became clearer and clearer as we went a long.

This brought to a kind of a nice close about how we should view the world differently as a result of sitting through this speech. In terms of this speaker's impromptu, we thought, although the second part of their impromptu could have been a little bit clearer, as I said, on what those desperate measures are, how they came about, and possibly why we should choose to reject them. We felt we still had some interesting material there about the threats and the societal impact of reacting with desperate measures to something that may not be as real of a threat to us as it sounds.

So because we thought, for all of those reasons, did speaker did a fantastic job today. We have awarded it today to the speaker from Sydney Boys High, Justin Lai.

[applause]

JASON BAENA-TAN: Thank you, everybody, and your fellow adjudicators. I now invite our presenters back to the stage. And please welcome back this year's winner, Justin Lai.

[applause]

He will receive a Westminster Stone and a Dymocks voucher, gift voucher, from Mr Olsen on behalf of

[interposing voices]

A gold medallion and certificate to be presented by Ms Davis, and a check for $250 for the Plain English Speaking Award shield to be presented by Mr Bock.

[applause]

Congratulations to Justin Lai who will now represent NSW at the national final of the Plain English Speaking Award to be held in Darwin on Sunday the-- sorry, Sunday the 12th of August. Contestants from all states and territories will compete for a place in the international final in London next year. Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, it has been an honour and a pleasure to share the 2018 final of the Plain English Speaking Award.

The official party, contestants, their parents and coaches are invited to lunch in the foyer. Thank you.

[applause]