Video transcript
Plain English Speaking Award 2022 - NSW State Final

[intro music]

JUSTINE CLARKE: My name is Justine Clarke, and I'm the Speaking Competitions Officer for the Department of Education's Arts Unit. I'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we meet today, which is the land of the Gadigal people of the Eora nation, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people here today. This is and always has been Aboriginal land.

Just a couple of housekeeping things to start with. If we have to evacuate-- let's hope we don't-- but if we do, if the alarm siren sounds, everyone is to evacuate the building. The sound is like, whoop, whoop! And it's usually accompanied by a message.

If the fire alarm goes off, do not use the lifts. Please proceed to the clearly marked green Exit signs via the 2 side passageways or the back of the auditorium that will take you to the stairs, which use the 2 exits. So it's here, here, and up there.

The emergency exits for the auditorium are the main entry from which you came in at Reservoir Street to my left, right lane which is at the opposite end on my right, the double doors near the toilets in the mezzanine and coffee area, which will take you out to Mary Street via the Federation foyer. Evacuation locations. You will be directed to them by evacuation delegates if that's necessary.

OK. Secondly, I'd like to welcome a couple of very important people in our assembly this morning. I'd like to welcome first Simone Walker from the Department of Education. Simone is the-- Simone Walker is the Group Deputy Secretary of School Improvement and Education Reform.

And I'd also like to welcome Jordi Austin, Director of Arts, Sport, and Initiatives, Student Support, and Specialist Programs. Thank you so much for being with us today.

I'd also like to welcome our representatives from the Australia-Britain Society and English Speaking Union. And thank you so much for your support of our competition this year, particularly Mr. Olsen and Ms. Jenner.

And of course, I'd like to welcome all the families, friends, teachers, and principles of our 6 speakers here today. Thank you for supporting them today. But I realise this has been a long, ongoing process where you've been supporting them all along, and I'm sure they all appreciate that.

It has been my absolute privilege to watch these 6 young people deliver their speeches over the local finals, regional finals, and state semi-finals. And I can guarantee you're in for a treat today. They are 6 wonderful speakers with really interesting perspectives on the world around them. So I think we should get to them.

Before I do that, I'd like to welcome 2 more very important people, our chairperson and timekeepers from Prairiewood High School. Johnny [inaudible] is in Year 10 at Prairiewood and is a keen public speaker himself. And Jessica Nguyen is in Year 12 and made the state semi-final of this competition, so you're in good hands with both Jessica and Johnny. And with that, I'd like to hand over to Jessica to take over proceedings for today. Enjoy.

[applause]

JESSICA NGUYEN: Sorry about that. Thank you, Justine. My name is Jessica Nguyen and I attend Prairiewood High School. And it is my great pleasure to be your chairperson for the state final of The Plain English Speaking Award for 2022.

Before we get to our speakers, let me introduce you to the adjudication panel. Our 3 adjudicators for the final today are Micaela Bassford, Justin Lai, and Andrew Lasaitis. Justin Lai was the winner of this award in 2018 and went on to win the National Final in Darwin. He travelled to London to represent Australia and was the runner-up at the International Final in 2019.

He was a member of the 2018 Sydney Boys High School debating team who were the state champions of the Premier's Debating Challenge for Years 11 and 12. Justin is an experienced adjudicator, officiating state finals for The Plain English Speaking Award, the Legacy Junior Speaking Award, and the Multicultural Perspectives Public English Speaking Award last year.

And last year, he was the official interviewer for The Plain English Speaking Competition, an English Speaking Award National Final, which for the first time in history was held online. Justin is currently studying law at the University of Sydney.

Micaela Bassford was an accomplished debater and public speaker as a student attending Kirrawee High School. She was a state finalist in The Plain English Speaking Award in 2010 and 2011, and a state finalist of the Legacy Junior Public Speaking Award in 2007 and 2008.

She was also a state finalist in the Premier's Debating Challenge for Years 11 and 12 in 2009 and a member of the Combined High School's debating team in 2008. Micaela has studied both adjudication, has adjudicated both state and national finals for The Plain English Speaking Award and the Legacy Junior Public Speaking Award, as well as the state finals for the Multicultural Perspectives Public Speaking Competition.

Micaela holds a bachelor of economics with first class honours and a bachelor of laws from the University of Sydney. She is currently working as a lawyer for the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, the ACCC, where she uses her public speaking skills to deliver presentations about competition and consumer law.

Andrew Lasaitis is the Arts Programs and Partnerships Coordinator at the Arts Unit. As an English, drama, and maths teacher at both St. Johns Park High School and Riverside High School, he was a regional debating coordinator for many years in South, West, and Northern Sydney, and mentored a number of successful public speakers, including champions in this competition, and the Legacy Junior Public Speaking Competition Award. Prior to his current role at the Arts Unit, he was the previous Speaking Competition's Officer, as well as a Learning Quality Advisor with the New South Wales Department of Education.

We now come to the prepared section of the competition. Each speaker will speak for 8 minutes on a subject of the contestant's choice. There will be a warning bell at 6 minutes.

[ding]

And 2 bells at 8 minutes.

[dinging]

A continuous bell will be rung at 9 minutes. Our first contestant is Ethan Zhu from The King's School. The subject of Ethan's speech is protecting our democracy through the arts and humanities. Please welcome Ethan Zhu.

[applause]

ETHAN ZHU: Like most people today, I try to unwind by putting down my small screen, closing my middle-sized screen, and then settling down in front of the large screen. At the moment, though, I've noticed that all of the films and programs on Netflix, Binge, and iView all seem to have a similar mood and tone. And quite frankly, it isn't the least bit relaxing.

In 'Handmaid's Tale,' women are denied control over their reproduction, which gets me thinking about the Supreme Court decision overturning 'Roe v. Wade.' I try to switch to 'Snowpiercer,' set in a future where the planet is a frozen wasteland with deep divisions between rich and poor. Suddenly I'm thinking about the way that we're leaving disadvantaged communities behind as we confront our own ecological collapse.

It's no different at the movies. 'Mad Max,' 'Blade Runner,' 'Dune.' The world of science fiction is warning us. And I've started to note the smug smiles on the faces of my English teachers. After all, they've been warning us about the predictive value of dystopian fiction for years, noting the similarities and delving into the answers that great writers provide for avoiding a slide into fascism.

Now I promise I'm not just trying to be a teacher's pet when I say that maybe they were really onto something. As I'm spending more time actually surfing the channels rather than actually watching, I've realised that the arts can offer our best defence against the creeping authoritarianism embodied by the rise of figures like Viktor Orban and Robert Duterte.

Just like the protagonists in any of these shows, our best tool of resistance and prevention against these trends is our ability to think critically, to challenge conventional wisdom, and interrogate bias and propaganda, the exact kind of skills of analysis we picked up from those smug English teachers.

And yet, the arts and humanities are under an unprecedented threat. Look at the formal federal government's changes to university funding. The cost of degrees in the humanities for students increased by a staggering 113%. And our government's systemic disregard for the arts was reinforced during COVID when JobKeeper was not offered to artists or the university sector.

And Australia's not alone. There is a global pattern of undermining the humanities. For instance, US states like Alaska and Wisconsin have significantly cut public support for arts and humanities degrees.

These governments claim that they are just trying to create so-called job-ready graduates. These STEM evangelists argue that dusty old books are a thing of the past, and that beyond basic literacy and writing skills class time is better spent on coding and algorithms. The ultimate claim here is that we should maximise people's utility to society.

We might respond to this argument by stating that the arts do have utility to society. During the COVID lockdown, artist organisations highlighted just how many people the sector employed. But what if we resisted the temptation to even accept the premise? The very phrase maximise people's utility to society should give us pause. Could anything sound more bleak and authoritarian?

The value of the arts is that it is not easily reducible to mere utility. It offers a vision of humanity outside the marketplace. It gives us a sense of who we might be when we're not just workers. Ultimately, though, what does it mean to bring utility to society? What is useful? Who is useful? These thankfully are some of the questions that the arts and humanities have been trying to explore.

Think of the popularity of South Korea's 'Parasite' and 'Squid Game' and their blistering cross-cultural critique of capitalism. These shows warn us of what could happen if we measure the value of our society in terms of only wealth and work.

While numbers in our economic growth and unemployment rate are concrete and measurable, people don't notice the way that literature puts new perspectives into our consciousness, captures our imagination, or reshapes our ways of thinking. And literature can help challenge the performance measures we set ourselves.

For example, economists use an indicator called gross domestic product to establish how much the economy is growing year on year. When speaking about GDP more than 50 years ago, Robert Kennedy remarked, 'It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our devotion nor our compassion for our country. It measures everything in short except that which makes life worthwhile.'

And it's not just these important societal contributions that we may miss out on. A rise in authoritarianism has come hand in hand with a decline in empathy, imagination, and critical literacy. America, a nation that was supposed to epitomise democracy, had a sitting president attempt a coup. This transformation was only possible after years of underfunding public schools, pricing people out of college, and limiting arts education to the wealthy and privileged.

This destruction of the institutions of critical thought allowed a toxic, propaganda-fueled media like Fox News to flourish and undermine democracy. We need literature to help us counter the Murdoch agenda. It won't make the media go away, but it will give us the tools and skills necessary to consume information critically and evaluate our sources.

Now I'm not trying to claim that the government is deliberately cutting university and art budgets in order to bring about some authoritarian state because I'm more worried about complacency. In a country like Australia, it's easy to believe that our democracy is so strong that we don't need to invest in critical thought. But that is the exact kind of complacency that leads democracies to fail.

So what do we do? How do we turn off this path and avoid a world as bleak as that of Orwell's or Bradbury's? Hopefully I've made it clear. We must invest in critical thought. Rather than pushing students away from the arts and humanities, we should make degrees in these disciplines accessible and affordable for everyone. Of course, STEM is important too. It's just that the expansion of technology is best done in the context of a rich and flourishing society.

I know what you might be thinking. If the lessons of '1984' could be summarised in a few sentences, why read a 300-page novel? Because connecting with the hopes, dreams, and anxieties of Winston vivifies and dramatises the perspective that Orwell is trying to convey. By reading and studying, we become aware of our own way of being in the world. This is a far more effective way of creating change than any op ed or political speech.

And it's not just highbrow literature. People are too quick to dismiss modern Netflix teen dramas as mental junk food. But perhaps we shouldn't be so quick to call these programs insubstantial. Shows like 'The Vampire Diaries,' 'The Big Bang Theory,' or 'The Simpsons' might seem empty-headed, but they reflect parts of our lives that we might not interrogate if it didn't come with a punch line.

The satirical elements of 'The Simpsons' still make the ubiquitous political memes decades after they first aired. They hold a mirror up to the shallowness of modern politics, the contradictions of capitalism, and the construct of the perfect nuclear family. Perhaps that's why the Chinese government selectively screens, edits, and bans particular episodes of all these shows.

I get it. Picking up a novel may not seem like a radical act, but it's up to you and me to read and share these stories. It's up to you and me to preserve critical thought, to stand up against policies which hurt our universities, schools, and arts industries. We need to invest heavily in local Australian content. Film, theatre, music, poetry. We have to keep nurturing our own capacity for critical thought by seeking out content that challenges our existing perspectives.

And maybe we all need to listen to our English teachers, past and present. They've been warning us about the importance of the arts and humanities for decades. And if we follow their lead, we can stop the worst dystopian predictions from coming true. But most importantly, my English teachers will stop looking so smug. And then finally, hopefully, I can settle down to watch some upbeat television.

[applause]

JESSICA NGUYEN: Our second contestant is Lucy Beale. Lucy attends Wollongong High School of the Performing Arts, and the subject of her speech is the right to rest in peace. Please welcome Lucy Beale.

[applause]

LUCY BEALE: One of my favourite memories with my pop is a Tuesday afternoon where he would pick up the flock of grandchildren from Shell Cove Public School, take us to his home in the big black car with soft beige leather seats, and treat us with lollies and sugary drinks we weren't supposed to have. I remember those afternoons as a tradition and a constant reminder of the man my pop was. His values shone through everything he did, and especially everything he did for us.

Now that our times together are past tense, my pop can rest in peace knowing that his flock of grandchildren are growing up to be the people we are because of him. Letting my pop rest in peace with something that was of the utmost importance to my family. Peace was at the core of his funeral, and I think that's a universal intention.

When we lose our loved ones, we all feel that we owe them peace, and this has been consistent throughout history and cultures. Despite the devastation of death, we strive to use the cultural wishes of our loved ones to create justice in their death for the ultimate goal of peace.

But I suppose that my personal experiences have led me to assume that peace and death is a granted, a universal experience. Like most people, I fail to consider that it might not be. Most people are sent off with love and peace, but a significant portion of humans aren't. There are people exploited after death. It only takes a short moment of consideration to discover the commercial human bone trade where marginalised groups are denied their right to rest in peace.

To define the human bone trade is an insurmountable task. The lines between unethical and ethical blurred and are difficult to conceptualise. The best way I can communicate the difference between ethical and unethical is consent.

So an international trading of monetized human remains for profit and ownership, not consensual and not ethical, but donating your body to science is. In this context, informed consent looks like understanding and being aware of what will happen to your body after you die, and that any use of your remains will cease when that standard can no longer be upheld.

But I guess that definition fails to conceptualise what the human bone trade actually looks like. Well, it looks like the unregulated US medical trade where most bodies come from overseas and often arrive without the informed consent of their former owners. It looks like the recent Mungo man and woman case where institutions abuse their power over marginalised and vulnerable peoples.

Imagine if after you laid your loved one to rest you would tricked into selling them, or they were sent around the world without your informed consent. I think we can all agree that unethical practise is unacceptable, but unfortunately the law does not reflect our moral compasses. Around the world, there is a general standard that to some extent, engaging in the human bone trade is legal. Even Australia is complicit in this legal ambiguity. According to the 1985 Human Tissue Act, it is illegal to buy and/or sell human remains, but it is not illegal to own them.

Human bones need to be regarded with respect and dignity as well as being protected by law. And currently, Australia has made little to no efforts to set this precedent. There have been instances where the auctioneers sold photos of human remains and then gifted the actual remains along with it.

The major problem faced in the legal system is that ownership of a body doesn't even exist as a legal concept, despite the fact that clear examples of ownership exist. When we allow for such an ambiguity, scope for unethical practise and a disregard for consent arises.

But Australia doesn't have to linger in the legal ambiguity. We can change by recognising ownership as law and petitioning our new government into making legislation that makes unethical practise illegal. The law will stipulate that in order for any individual or institution to own human remains, it must be a consensual transaction. The punishments for engaging in unethical practise will be large fines that target richer citizens and institutions who are more likely to indulge in the practise.

I do understand that these changes would result in a lot of artefacts not meeting legal standards. The museums of Australia would have to return their skeletons and mummies. Some people would see this as a reason to not make the changes, that it's a desecration of history. But part of history is preventing past injustices from ever happening again. That's what this will do.

Australians have even more of an obligation to alleviate past injustices, as perhaps the most concerning aspect of the human bone trade in Australia is the lingering Indigenous trauma where Aboriginal peoples were exploited for their skeletal remains, and they were then sold without consent.

If you talk to any Indigenous Australian about Aboriginal culture, I can almost guarantee that a pillar of that discussion will be the emphasis on connection to land and community. In this practise, Aboriginal people's cultural identity have been and are disregarded for propriety. And whilst I commend the work of the Australian Research Council to source and buy back these remains, I can't alleviate my concerns that the international commercial circulation of some 4,000-plus remains persist.

Still, I want to make it clear that this practise doesn't just live in the ambiguity of forgotten souls. Truganini was an Indigenous woman who lived an uprooted life due to despicable European colonisation at the time. Despite the efforts to tear her cultural practises down, she persisted, living a culturally rich life until the age of 64.

In the event of her death, she specifically demanded for her ashes to be spread in her hometown in Tasmania. Instead, she was mutilated and shipped across the world by European colonists. It wasn't until 100 years after Truganini's death that she was granted her right to rest in peace. But busts of her dead body still exist, and as late as 2002 have pieces of her remains been identified. Real people are refused their right to rest in peace, instead facing the dehumanisation of a life as a decoration or commodity.

There is the very convincing counterargument, though, that these bones exist whether we like it or not, so perhaps ownership of them can be justified. But I would argue without consent, there is no grounds for justification.

The Australian government now has a moral and legal obligation to protect the remains of Indigenous Australians and marginalised individuals from all around the world. It is pertinent that we introduce restrictions.

Through my personal experiences with my pop, I understand the importance of consent and peace in death. It is why I'm advocating for ethical practise. Just because we inherited these problems does not mean we are justified in perpetuating them. If we make these changes, then every person on Earth, regardless of race or socioeconomic status, will have the right to rest in peace.

[applause]

JESSICA NGUYEN: Our third contestant is Eujiny Cho. Eujiny attends the Presbyterian Ladies College, and the subject of her speech is the gentrification of Chinatowns. Please welcome Eujiny Cho.

[applause]

EUJINY CHO: As an Asian, I have always been grateful for the easy access to my culture in Australia. But now when I re-enter the CBD, I am saddened by the empty shopfronts near Haymarket.

In the 2 years of COVID, an unnoticed force seems to have swept the cultural streets clean. My favourite vendors since childhood are gone, and bustling groups of tourists replace them. So when I travel to other Eastern cultural enclaves, I can't help but think that these communities are also ripe for the picking.

In recent years, Chinatowns across Australia have been affected by ceaseless cultural insensitivities and degradation. For this Lunar New Year, without consultation with local residents, the city council adorned Sydney's Chinatown with blue and white lanterns, 2 colours that symbolise death and funerals in Chinese culture. Naturally, outrage poured as residents said they felt they were mourning the death and decline of Sydney's Chinatown, that the decorations mocked an already struggling community.

Unfortunately, these comments aren't far off the truth. Signs of encroaching gentrification suggest that Chinatowns are dangerously close to dying out. These communities are rooted in a long, often difficult history. Throughout the 200 years after the first wave of Asian immigration, anti-Asian violence, segregation laws, and narratives of these communities as dens of prostitution and opium shunned these enclaves completely from Western life.

But ironically, this has ensured Chinatown's constant presence as thriving hubs of culture and connection and made them into sanctuaries for the Asian diaspora. So if we destroy the lifeblood of Chinatown today, we risk future immigrant generations growing up without a sense of cultural connection, solidarity, or identity.

Across the nation, recent trends of gentrification make it clear that we're not valuing these communities like we should. The fundamental issue is that original residents of these towns are being pushed out.

For example, in Melbourne's Chinatown, the development of luxury apartments like New Chinatown has drastically raised the cost of living for long-time residents. With the rising housing prices, they struggle to pay off skyrocketing rent and are sometimes evicted in the process.

Traditional small businesses have seen their rent rise by $200,000 in the past 5 years. Even in Sydney, the proportion of Asian residents in Chinatowns across the city has staggeringly fallen from 64% to 41%. But it doesn't stop with displacement. It's the commodification and whitewashing that replaces the previously beating heart of these communities that worsens the issue.

For example, in Sydney, the Market City shopping complex designed by a non-Asian company attracts a majority Western customer base with its boba tea stores and overpriced fusion restaurants. According to CEO Jamie Whitty, its white interior and carp logo creates an Asian 'feel' for visitors. It's a strange paradox, trying to sell authenticity by pushing out the true culture.

For long-time Chinatown residents to be forced from a place where you know the language, a community where you find dignity and respect, is terrifying. As Mark Wang, founder of the Museum of Chinese History so accurately describes, this displacement and replacement is like 'ripping the heart out of communities.'

Now gentrification is not new, but the problem is that the plight of low-income Asian immigrants, in comparison to other ethnic minorities, is rarely discussed and never prioritised. This reflects a very long history of the erasure of Asians from our racial consciousness, of the model minority myth.

Put simply, not all immigrants are crazy rich Asians. When lower income families are lumped with high-income Asian workers in aggregate data, a racial blind spot is created, leaving the marginalised to fight for themselves. Whilst gentrification is not unique to Asian communities, the notion that all Asians are successful doesn't do much to help struggling Asians being evicted from their culturally safe spaces.

The question now is, how do we reverse the harms? First, we must come to grips with the history. Governments, community development organisations, and all of us must understand the racism and erasure that Asian immigrants have faced, as well as the needs of low-income households. Knocking down that model minority myth is the first step to inviting progress.

Secondly, we must address residents' needs. Governments and housing planners must use transformative planning tools that avoid blind spots and speaking on behalf of the marginalised. This involves inviting residents to development meetings or actually consulting them on affordability levels of new property.

And finally, how do we know that this will work? Public-private collaborations are my proof. In 2018, the Esperanza Housing Corporation spearheaded a successful government-funded initiative. It found a perfect balance between fostering new growth and maintaining the integrity of the original community of Mercado La Paloma. Whilst this was a great solution, it's sad that similar initiatives are practically non-existent for Chinatowns.

The health of Asian enclaves is at stake. After almost 200 years of growth and vigour, their way of life is being degraded by displacement and commodification. For most of their history they have, like their residents, gone very much ignored by the public eye.

But now in this moment of need, we cannot sit idly by whilst Chinatowns struggle alone. We must better nurture the multicultural flavour of our country. We must stop trying to make over ethnic areas and help preserve every culture's past, present, and future. Thank you.

[applause]

JESSICA NGUYEN: Our 4th contestant is Ysabella Atay-Brito from Crestwood High School. The subject of Ysabella's speech is straight talking. Please welcome Ysabella Atay-Brito.

[applause]

YSABELLA ATAY-BRITO: Let me set the scene for a moment. It is a rainy afternoon after school. You turn on the TV and begin watching a rerun of 'The Princess Diaries' on the Disney Channel.

As you start getting immersed into the story, the iconic makeover scene comes on. The dramatic stylist is appalled by the main character's before look, which consists of full eyebrows, glasses, and big hair, and claims to be able to make her beautiful. But wait a minute? What about her before isn't beautiful?

Anyways, you keep on watching for the big reveal. Oh, her eyebrows have been trimmed, she's wearing contacts, and her hair has been straightened. This all of a sudden makes her more attractive, approachable, and suitable to be a princess.

Now the message that this sent to my innocent self watching it on a cosy afternoon is that I was a before girl, a before girl waiting for someone to tame my crazy hair so I could finally be considered pretty and delicate. Let's talk straight here. I have never had what can be considered straight hair.

I would never be the after girl. I was born the before girl, leaving me stuck in this loop of the Cinderella believing that she needed a magic godmother to transform her so she was worthy of the prince. These beauty standards, these Eurocentric beauty standards are being imposed in society and media.

The narrative that we must mirror the European ideal, which is promoted in every screen, magazine, and advertisement, prompted me to chase the after girl look. This, of course, involved trying every hair straightener, keratin treatment, and every blonde fake highlight in the market. As soon as I could do this non-stop, I tortured my hair.

Having long, straight hair was my ideal. I wanted a break from afternoons spent wrestling category 7 knots, avoiding the dreadful humidity at all costs, and from having people tell me that my hair was too wild and crazy.

Consider those seemingly offhand comments. My hair was too wild and crazy. What was I too wild for or too crazy for? Those comments often used for hair imply that my hair does not fit civilised standards, that in its wildness it is echoing some sort of past savagery.

I bet you have heard these comments before and never thought about the post-colonial echoes that drive this narrative. In fact, maybe you have even said that hair was wild yourself.

This narrative, these seemingly innocent comments are reminders that beauty standards that push straight hair are Eurocentric and fundamentally based in our colonial past, a past that deemed everything European as ideal and everything outside of this norm as savage and needing to be reformed.

You might believe that the standards that define what is beautiful have widened, but recent evidence shows this is false. Restrictive beauty norms are still present in modern trends such as the clean girl trend TikTok's most recent attempt at making people insecure, where girls give hair and skin care advice on how to look clean and presentable. Wear your hair in a slick low bun, have glass-like skin, et cetera.

As you can probably guess, this advice highly favours people with easy-to-style, zero-frizz hair. What it's essentially doing is equating having slick, neat hair with being clean. The impact that this trend has on individuals who do not meet those standards is present in some of the most light comments, saying, this could never be me with 3C Curls.

Being constantly surrounded in these insecurity-inducing spaces makes it hard to find ones where one can generally learn and grow from. And like the light at the end of the tunnel appears the curly hair community. Mainly centering itself on YouTube and Instagram, it is a movement against the dominant paradigm where people get to talk and share tips on how to take care of their curls.

The curly community helped me to come to terms with my hair and to embrace it. This group gave me the ability to challenge the dominant narratives that were being pushed with every actress like Scarlett Johansson or models like Miranda Kerr or Cara Delevingne.

In fact, some of the models who should have been curly hair warrior goddesses blazing the way for my 5-year-old self shaved their heads rather than wear a curly mane. Only straight hair heat-curled into Caucasian hairdos were seen on catwalks. The community gave me insight into what realistic people look like.

However, the community also brought to light many other issues regarding the politics of curly hair. Firstly, the rejection of certain hair types is rampant within the curly hair community. Like previously mentioned, neat and more defined curl patterns are praised and favoured while thicker, tightly coiled hair is just regarded as too hard to manage and is often forgotten about in advice forums.

Spaces originally created during the natural hair movement in the '60s and '70s by Black women as a form of protest have been infiltrated by people who claim to have the same issues, which has essentially colonised the idea of natural hair and made it even more difficult for Black women to access specific information and advice.

Can I just stop here and explain that I myself don't feel the full brunt of prejudice from these restrictive beauty standards? I understand and acknowledge that I don't have the same degree of difficulty with finding hair products as people with natural hair types, nor do I receive this same reaction from people when I wear my hair curly.

And perhaps if I, like Mississippi anchorwoman Brittany Noble Jones had been employed as a journalist, I wouldn't have received the same prejudice that Noble Jones did, being forced to straighten her hair, told she was unprofessional and later fired as she believed that she was staying true to her cultural roots by wearing her hair in its curled form.

We all have a different intersectionality, a different network of discrimination and privilege which determines our experience. I respect that I have different areas of privilege. Yet within these spaces, I have found like-minded voices, people who have taken the before girl narrative and owned it.

The overarching problem is that we are trying to adapt to change our life to suit our art, to fit the images that are being shown to us. And art should imitate life. Life shouldn't imitate art because when this happens, it becomes problematic. Art, our images, our versions of beauty should imitate life so we are holding up a mirror to us, which reflects us in all our glory.

So how do we move from a world where art imitates life and the beauty standards that we see are not Eurocentric? How do we move forward from the outdated colonial past where the European noble and their ideas of what is civilised is being used to reform and change the rest of the world?

Media has moved from the control of media magnates and the control of the internet is now with every person, so we can drive the narrative. We can decide who we support, like, and share on social media. We can decide what we post on TikTok. We can decide to make the before girl the ideal girl, the girl of now. We have the power to do that with every image.

By sharing photos that reflect reality, embracing natural hair in workplaces and formal events, ensuring that our comments and compliments are less ignorant, we can ensure that this new generation never look at themselves as uncivilised, unprofessional, or second best. Make the before girl the girl of now. You have the power to do that.

[applause]

JESSICA NGUYEN: Our fifth contestant is Andy Huang. Andy attends Sefton High School, and the subject of his speech is the cheers and boos of political polarisation. Please welcome Andy Huang.

[applause]

ANDY HUANG: I think being a neutral fan of the Premier League has allowed me to realise some uncomfortable truths about football. No, not that Manchester United fans are toxic and other insults that I'm not going to say here, but that we really are mindless when we watch a game of football.

If nothing else, we can see some absurdity at the fact that we, like monkeys, roared and booed from across the globe when we watched Chelsea score a goal against Liverpool. But it's sports. And let's be honest, who wasn't mindlessly animalistic when we watched Manchester United lose their final game to end 6th in the standings?

But for a lot of us, I think we manage to treat politics and sports to be the same. Just as I would never, ever date an Arsenal fan, more and more Australians no longer consider having long-term relationships with people of an opposing political ideology. We ourselves have created an irreparable divide and we in our daily lives have been thrusted into a stadium of political gamesmanship, regardless of whether we want to compete or not.

Such things are bound to happen when our politics becomes polarised. I mean, I think I would rather drop dead than to be in a relationship with someone who marched in the Melbourne Freedom Rally where a protester proudly shouted for Premier Dan Andrews to 'dance on the end of a rope.'

But if you are like me and in horror witnessed this protest, witnessed the US Capitol Hill insurrection attempt, witnessed the riots after Marine Le Pen's loss in France, how could any of us be blamed for anticipating an Election Day conflict where our democracy looks feeble against the charge of violent protests? It goes without saying that I'm relieved that there was no stop the count protests. I'm relieved that the rise of teal independents could also mean a return to moderate politics.

But in this election, I'm not relieved by the growing disillusionment of the 2 major parties. In this election, it's clear we have cultivated a populist mentality where more and more of us think that both the liberal and the Labour Party are both corrupt and self-serving. More and more of us voted for the United Australia Party and One Nation who decried science and logical discussions to be the government's agenda to indoctrinate them, as if they weren't already.

Even the Liberal Party seems to be transitioning towards this dangerous right-wing populist agenda under the helm of Peter Dutton who thought it was a significant achievement to turn back 20 boats of 622 people, and who in the past exaggerated dangers of African gang violence in Melbourne. Like Diego Costa trying to denigrate the referee's mother, we have to sit and listen to Dutton's attempt at painting net-zero carbon emissions supporters as 'left-wing lunatics,' terrorising our righteous duty to mine lumps of coal.

But isn't this us versus them mentality concerning? Isn't adopting a mentality that formed from football concerning? After all, a mentality that divides politicians as being part of either club freedom or club tyranny is what allows our democracy to be trampled and trodden, as it encourages our political voice to shift from voting to violence. Because what's democracy without violence?

That's what we muttered when we looked at America and watched with shocked eyes when Donald Trump responded to the George Floyd protests, that 'when the looting starts, the shooting starts.' We watched the team of protesters starting riots and arson in their own communities to express their anger against the institutions.

We watched a team of Trump, a militia group called Proud Boys, being ordered to shoot the protesters in revenge. We watched the lack of a productive discussion, the lack of a resolution, and accept the term racial injustice could get you thrown out of the Republican National Convention. So much for free speech.

In the end, because divisive populism has alienated and dehumanised demographics of people on both sides, the outrage from Floyd's death was ultimately useless in changing systemic racism. After all, who would want to dribble the negotiating ball back to protesters who acted like terrorists and right-wing militant groups who just wanted to kill?

But I think it's ironic and somewhat sad how this polarised politics murders progress in societal reforms. Violent populism managed to invoke in us a sense of fear and frustration that makes us feel like we need to elect loud politicians to get what we want in a divided society. We feel threatened by the uselessness of a moderate politician in the face of violence and intolerance.

We saw this when both Anthony Albanese and Scott Morrison's slandered each other as an existential threat, and we see it when any politician trying to compromise with the other political party is now considered fake or traitorous. In fact, I see parallels between former liberal MP Fiona Martin working with the Labour Party to secure transgender protections and Sol Campbell transferring from Spurs to their rival football club, Arsenal.

Both Fiona Martin and Sol Campbell are alike in that the team that they betrayed now despises them for disloyalty. How does that make sense if we're all a part of one Australian team? I think it's clear how in this age of populist movements, the idea of compromise by Fiona Martin even for the protection of human rights is portrayed as a way of backstabbing the Liberal Party.

After all, it doesn't take a genius to figure out why Scott Morrison dodged the seat of Reid during this federal election. Although to be fair, I'm not sure tackling a child to the ground would have helped much either. I think it's not a question of whether polarisation is happening anymore, but I think it's a tough and brutal question of how we can prevent this sportification of politics within our own community.

Like America, we could be witnessing a future deadlock in our Parliament as we try to let the left-wing and right-wing parties argue to a political impasse. Now in a time of economic crisis, we should unite under a single team and disavow rhetoric that is inherently designed to divide us into separate teams. After all, only a unified Parliament can legislate the economic relief we desperately need in the wake of growing inflation, wealth inequality, and supply shortages.

Because let's be real. Either by social media or media outlets owned by a certain someone who rhymes with Turdoch, we are inundated with sports fanaticism. We become violent and aggressive in the way we conduct political discourse. And even I realise that I just blindly participated in this by likening Murdoch to a stool.

However, just like me, we forget we are arguing with other Australians, and that we are all in this together. Just like how sports fans, not just NBA fans, united together to mourn the death of Kobe Bryant, we should find sprinkles of commonality in areas of our values and beliefs.

Dehumanisation needs to end, but in this era of polarised politics, I think a lot of us are unwilling to peacefully communicate with supporters of a different political side. And I would be too. Especially as an Asian who immigrated to Australia, I would find it incredibly difficult to talk to someone who supports Pauline Hanson and considers multiculturalism to be 'white genocide.'

I know that there's a line to be drawn about whether having conversations with hateful people is just platforming more hate and racism and prejudice. However, I think the only way our minds can change is through calm, rational, and somewhat empathetic discussion.

Right now it's half time in our politics. We have a timeout now after 10 years of a divisive, polarised government under the Coalition. I sincerely hope Anthony Albanese fulfils his promise of 'changing the way politics operates in this country.' But more importantly, I hope we can fulfil our own promise of building a unified and inclusive Australia.

Because in the end, maybe I will date that girl with an Arsenal jacket who kept complaining that the Spurs managed to beat them in the standings. After all, the only thing that matters is that we are united in our love for a game of football, just like how we are united in our love for Australia. Thank you.

[applause]

JESSICA NGUYEN: Our final contestant today is Penelope Jin from the Queenwood School for Girls. The subject of Penelope's speech is no one wants to be old. Please welcome Penelope Jin.

[applause]

PENELOPE JIN: My mum, like many others I'm sure, always complains that she's getting old. She can't find the keys because her memory's worsening. The cold from the air conditioning makes her knees hurt. And my dad, my dad dyes his grey hair so often it's religious. No one wants to be old.

But ageing is inevitable, and yet we aren't unified by the experience of growing older and wiser. Instead, we disseminate what is a frankly ageist fear of it. Why are we scared of looking old? Why are we scared of being old? And is that a problem in the way that we think?

A study conducted in a university in Belgium found that students, preschoolers from the age of 3 describe the elderly as ugly and sick. And it gets worse once they learn how to talk in full sentences. 5 to 7-year-olds attribute a poor temper, poor patience, lack of speed, inability to deal with stress, deterioration of skin, bones, posture, hearing, thinking power, all with the elderly. And they're brutal, yes.

But they only know what they've been told. Young children are just a reflection of what the people around them think but know not to say. So in a child's unfiltered words, the elderly live off the economy. They're incompetent and dependent. They don't contribute. They hinder their children.

And I think I've found my answers to the questions I posed before. People are scared to grow old because society has formed a judgement on what being old looks like, and it's a negative one. Society tells them that economically they have less value. Socially they're less relevant. And both of these outlooks need to be rectified.

So I'll begin with debunking the idea that the elderly are an economical burden. A couple of weeks ago, my geography teacher was explaining to the class the population distribution of New York City.

And as plenty of you will already know, New York is an ageing city. The average age of a sewer main is 84 and the average age of a subway is 90. Infrastructure isn't the only thing ageing. 10 years ago, the median age was 35. Now the median age is 37.

Even in Australia, the average life expectancy increases by 1 whole month every year. And this is great. But the problem is that a growing median age means a growing group of people living off pensions.

That means less people making money whilst relatively more people need it. Therefore, taxpayers need to pay a greater amount of tax to support this large elderly population and have less money to inject into other facets of the economy. Therefore, we are taught that an ageing population suffocates an economy.

But isn't this unfair? Should we not instead be looking for how an elderly population is able to breathe life into a city? And to make matters even worse, I found an article in relation to coronavirus where Tony Abbot suggests letting elderly relatives who've contracted the virus just 'let nature take its course' because to support the elderly wasn't worth the cost.

And this repeated characterization that the elderly are an unwanted financial burden that is nothing to offer is simply untrue. Australians age 55 years and over contribute $74.5 billion each year in just unpaid caring, voluntary work. And that includes looking after grandchildren or looking after a sick partner as well as traditional charity work. And we take all this for granted because it can't be calculated, and also because it's already there.

But consider the alternative. Families that can't afford a nanny or carer would have to take time off work. The elderly make more donations per capita than any other age group. Of course, there's also the silver economy which looks at goods and services targeted towards elderly, things like hip replacements, chairlifts. Worldwide, that industry is worth $15 trillion.

The number of people in the world today over the age of 60 is twice as many as it was in 1980, and that number will continue to grow. They are a group with so much potential because they have patience and time, and most importantly, wisdom. So we have to do a better job at equipping them to make their fullest economic impact, and that begins by recognising they have the capacity to make one. This leads into an issue even more important than the economics, the social opinion surrounding elderly people.

I think that perhaps one of Western society's greatest historical errors has been its unwillingness to really learn from other cultures. And in Australia's context, I'm referring to Indigenous culture.

I was talking to a teacher of Indigenous descent and he told me he cannot believe it when he catches the train and sees teenagers not giving up their seats for someone older. And that where he had grown up, even children who were skipping school and getting drunk would not so much as think to stay seated. And it wasn't about-- and it isn't about being well behaved. It was an ingrained, communal respect for the elderly that existed on the basis that they carried memory and tradition.

They're knowledge keepers, he said to me. And so to him, to put an elder into an age care facility is as sacrilegious as burning a library. In the same way that libraries house centuries of growth and truth and wisdom, so do elderly people.

So how is this knowledge passed on and also this respect fostered? Well, Indigenous children are twice as likely to be living with their grandparents. This highlights that the systemic issue we see is simply caused by a lack of integration across generations. Obviously, though, it's structurally impossible for every family to just become a multigenerational unit, so what should we be doing?

The ABC series 'Old People's Home' for 4-year-olds is not only an Emmy award winner and incredibly heartwarming. It also offers a solution.

Young people are still forming opinions, and we have to grab onto that. For them to spend time with older people that leave them with a positive impression is vital. Things like crafts, puzzles, reading picture books. And it can be so easily enforced with the Kindergarten Union or government-run preschools being required to visit local age care facilities however many times in a week.

And not only does this ensure that the younger generation is viewing the older one through a more colourful lens, but it also addresses the isolation of rest homes. There is a common misconception that the best environment we can provide for our elderly is one where they're surrounded by people they relate to, other old people.

Often, however, they feel separated from their families, isolated from wider society, and being surrounded by other people who feel the same way can only compound this. Thus, 52% of residents experience depressive symptoms.

The vibrancy that preschoolers can bring not only gives them happiness and purpose, but in just 7 days it can improve their mobility, balance, and physical strength. Thus, this is the ultimate solution. It brings generations together. It makes life more meaningful for the elderly. It correct an ageist opinion before it can even begin to form. And above all, it's been proven to work.

Society's perception of the elderly doesn't have to be so cruel. In fact, perception is fluid. 'The Golden Girls' portrays 50 to 60-year-old women as a group who are in their own sense dynamic, but past their prime, retired in their houses, limited to the company of one another. The 'Sex and the City' reboot looks at that same group of women, but portrays them as traditionally dynamic, socially active, full of life.

So much has changed in 30 years, and I hope that we don't let go of that progress. I hope that in the 30 years to come we continue to move away from ageist stereotypes. And I hope that in 30 years time when my mum and my dad have reached that twilight years, they'll be able to live them meaningfully and fulfilled, without feeling ashamed of looking or being old and where they are valued, truly valued, by those around them. Thank you.

[applause]

JESSICA NGUYEN: Thank you. That concludes the prepared section. The finalists will now leave the auditorium and will return after morning tea to give their 3-minute impromptu speeches. Each finalist will speak on the same subject after a 3-minute preparation time.

There will now be a short break. Tea, coffee, and refreshments will be served for invited guests in the foyer, and we will return here in 15 minutes for the impromptu section. Thank you.

The subject for the impromptu section is In the Thick of It. Please welcome back Ethan Zhu.

[applause]

ETHAN ZHU: I don't know about you, but it seems like people are making faster and more instantaneous decisions every single day. People decide what they want to eat and what they want to do at the snap of a finger. And all of these things are great and all, but I think that sometimes this leads to some more impulsive decisions than should be made. And I think the perfect example of this is the rise of cryptocurrency and, let's say, Elon Musk and Dogecoin and all of his Twitter accounts.

And I think that this has led to people pouring their life savings in. And then when they realise that they are in the thick of it, it's too hard for them to get out and it's too hard for them to seek help.

So let's talk about cryptocurrency. The question that I want to answer today is, does cryptocurrency have a place in our society? And I think this is a complicated question and possibly more than you would expect, because on the one hand crypto is amazing and innovative.

It's decentralised. There's no government control or oversight, which means it's not that corrupt. And it's secure and it's anonymous, and all of these things are what attracts investors to it so much.

But I think that people have realised-- and this is exemplified by the recent cryptocurrency crashes-- that we might be in the thick of a very difficult situation because there are just so many influences, and there's so little that can be controlled about cryptocurrency that lives can be obtained on an instant. And there are just so many influences that affect cryptocurrency.

Dogecoin, for example, was created by founders as a joke. It was satirical because it wanted to show how misleading a lot of the customer base was of cryptocurrencies and how ingenuine and how little authority cryptocurrency had. And it proved itself right when the cryptocurrency Dogecoin actually gained mainstream influence thanks to Elon Musk and his Twitter feeds.

While sensible, well-thought-out investments should be based on the stock market and genuine facts, it seems like Dogecoin and other cryptocurrencies are based on some genius megalomaniac billionaire's Twitter account. And that is why people are in the thick of it.

So what should be done about this? Well, I think we need to be careful because cryptocurrency and Dogecoin and blockchain has proven itself to be an innovative, useful technology. And it can be useful if we can get out of this thick, sticky situation.

But we need to bear in mind the harms of cryptocurrency, the way that criminals use it to scam and steal people and put people in genuinely thick and terrible situations. And while people who suggest that the government should regulate crypto do have a solid point and it sounds good on paper, we need to be careful because yes, it might make sense for the government to pay back people who lost their money getting scammed on the crypto market.

It also defeats the point of crypto. The point of crypto is that it is decentralised. The point of crypto was that there was no government influence. It was something separate to countries, and it would defeat the point of it to have government regulation.

So I think we need to be careful. We need to stop listening to eccentric figures like Elon Musk and believing every word he says, and we need to be informed consumers, and government regulation can help that.

But I am confident that we can get out of this thick situation if we navigate it carefully, if we use technology carefully and we control innovation, and therefore lead to a better future. Thank you.

[applause]

JESSICA NGUYEN: Please welcome back Lucy Beale.

[applause]

LUCY BEALE: I don't know if you guys remember, but recently we had a federal election, and there were lots of highs and lows to it. We engaged in some pretty impressive debate. And I think it's safe to say that we really continue to evolve in our political discourse.

But when former Prime Minister Scott Morrison selected Katherine Deves for the seat of [inaudible], we got lost in the thick of the debate about whether trans women should compete in sports. It's a loathsome culture war, one that's perpetuated only to harm trans women. But somehow we allowed ourselves to get lost.

When we're in the thick of debate, we lose the capacity to see the bigger picture, to see the harm that that debate can potentially cause. So what did this debate consist of?

First of all, one side was saying that trans women shouldn't compete in sports because it causes harm to the fairness of the sport, in that individuals are unable to succeed, or women are unable to succeed, and they are harmed by the fact that trans women are competing and have a so-called biological advantage.

The other side said that trans women are real women, and fairness is less important than letting people affirm their identity. And regardless of which side you agree with, it's irrefutable that the debate caused harm, because I don't contend the veracity of these claims, but I do question the need for them in the first place.

When a debate is perpetuated to diminish trans women, it's not really a debate that's worth having. I think as a society we need to take a step back and not get lost in the thick of a debate, being critical about what debates we engage with and thinking about the consequences of our discourse. We have a responsibility to not get lost in the thick of the debate.

But we should consider that debate is good for society. Sometimes getting lost in the thick of a debate can mean that we produce intense discourse that can help solve problems and help further our political discourse.

And so we should be rigorous in determining which debates fit the criteria of something we shouldn't engage with. We should always make sure that we don't get lost in the thick of it, both to make sure that harm isn't caused by the debate, but also so that we can evaluate the importance and the value of that debate.

The larger issue is making sure we are critical of what we engage with because with the recent announcement from the World Swimming Organisation announcing that they were banning trans women from competing in their events, I as a trans activist were rightfully outraged. But that's a debate that's talked about by experts and individuals. What this debate was was perpetuated by transphobes whose only intent was to harm trans women.

So we have a responsibility to be careful, because once again, trans women have become the victim of our debate. We got lost in the thick of it, and we need to acknowledge that we did so so we can prevent ourselves from ever getting lost in the thick of it again. We need to be critical of what debates we engage with.

[applause]

JESSICA NGUYEN: Please welcome back Eujiny Cho.

[applause]

EUJINY CHO: If you've been keeping up with anything really in current affairs lately, you would know that the defamation case between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard is one of the biggest sensations on the internet. Whether it's seeing the memes of Amber Heard supposedly pretending to cry or a video psychoanalysing her every behaviour and movement in the court, it seems like it's the only thing that everyone's talking about right now.

However, while society has characterised the case as something like a harmless internet meme, a little fad or craze that may blow over in a matter of weeks, we are failing to recognise that this court case shows how we're really in the thick of an issue concerning the way that women are treated in domestic abuse cases. We're failing to be more mature as a society and recognising how this court case holds up a mirror to the dangers that women face when they speak out in our society.

So what's been happening with the Heard and Depp case? How has society been framing the way we see it? Well, beneath all the memes and jokes and videos, we are actually in the thick of a highly concerning issue when we analyse the way that Heard has been treated.

So how has she been mocked by the internet? Well, we see that she's constantly being humiliated, not believed, painted as a liar, a manipulator. Some people even go as far to say that she's a sociopath who has destroyed the life of Johnny Depp, already a highly affluent and successful actor, whilst she has been branded as a liar and someone who seeks to bring down women.

On the other hand, Johnny Depp has been hailed as a hero, as the unfortunate victim who was simply mischaracterized, who has had his career trodden on by this evil woman. We see that, for example, the disgusting texts he sent about Heard. The disgusting texts saying that he would supposedly rape her corpse have gotten little to no attention on social media despite the fact that they are highly concerning, disgusting, and speak to the way that women are treated in our society.

So why is this so bad? Well, it's bad because society sees it as a little harmless court case, but we're only scratching the surface of a huge issue at play in society when we discard it as a meme or a joke.

We fail to recognise that we're in the thick of a really concerning social issue because from the way that Heard is treated, we continue to perpetuate the myth of the perfect victim, the myth that women have to be innocent, terrified, naive in their court cases, that they can't stand up or speak out because then they risk being branded as a manipulator or a psychopath by the broader society.

When we treat women like this and treat it like a meme or a joke instead of recognising the gravity of the situation, we break the momentum of movements like #MeToo where women have constantly been trying to undercut the portrayal of them as innocent victims. So how can we do this? How can we recognise that we are actually in the thick of an issue?

Well, we must change legislation, stop publicising court cases like this because then people start to make assumptions, and start taking things more maturely. So as we move into a broader, more progressive society, we must realise that cases like this aren't just child's play or memes, but really they speak to a broader issue that we're in the thick of. Thank you.

[applause]

JESSICA NGUYEN: Please welcome back Ysabella Atay-Brito.

[applause]

YSABELLA ATAY-BRITO: A politician to speak out on issues around-- in the world that she lives in. You can see her, right? You can see her sitting in the classroom, eager to learn every day, ready to face anything that comes her way, anything that comes in her way as soon as she steps out into her world.

Except the world that she's stepping out into isn't one where she can learn. It's one that faces a big threat. This is the reality that young girls face in South America. They're in the thick of a highly systematic issue where they're faced with the threat of death every day, and we need to help them.

The issue of femicides in South America is highly rampant. These women are being killed solely because of the fact that they're women, like in Mexico where 10 women are killed every day. This is mainly perpetuated by men or people who are close to them. And the truth is that it is highly ingrained in the cultural and societal beliefs that glorify a highly toxic male pride.

How do we fix this? We need to listen to these women that are speaking out on these issues such as female feminist rappers like Rebecca Lane who create music, talking about these issues and have highly explicit lyrics. We need to look past our privilege because the world does not end in Australia or the First World. These women are faced with a highly dangerous world. We need to help them. Thank you.

[applause]

JESSICA NGUYEN: Please welcome back Andy Huang.

[applause]

ANDY HUANG: When I get off the steps on the plane and onto the streets of Guangzhou, China, I realised that I was in the thick of it, a country where anything I could say publicly against the countless legal Muslim human rights violations and the events that occurred in Tiananmen Square could be used to sentence me and throw me in a prison where I will never see the light of day again.

But for me, I know that such suffering and such censoring of our speech is simply a commonplace in our world. And for me, I realised that I was already in the thick of it, because for someone specifically and surely a man called Julian Assange who was set to be extradited just last week to the US, he was truly in the thick of it for having published an article about how the US allowed helicopters to fire on the streets of Baghdad in Iraq at the invasion of Iraq and the Iraq insurgency, and how they allowed such people to fire indiscriminately.

For someone like Julian Assange, this was an opportunity for him, for him to cut the trash that was being spoken by the media, the idea that we were not in the thick of it, the idea that we were actually trying to do something good in Iraq. And for him, telling the story of how American soldiers were boasting about killing civilians and 2 Reuters journalists, that was him trying to remove us from the war crimes that we continued to commit in Iraq.

For us, it's a chance for us to have an opportunity to speak out against it. He is an Australian man. He is one of us. And for him to be subjected to the same crimes and the same acts of espionage is simply a wrong thing to allow. This is an opportunity that we have, that we can actually speak out against the war crimes that we helped when John Howard sent our men and women to Iraq in 2003 when we were meant to lay down our arms with the US like they were our brethren and brother.

As someone who knows what it's like, someone who knows what it's like to have your voice being silenced, the fact that I'm so vehemently anti-China in the way that they conduct their own human rights, the fact is I've lost faith in our Australian government to do something. In fact, Anthony Albanese said he would approach the quiet diplomatic approach with Joe Biden, the US President of the United States.

But what does this mean really? What does it mean really when he asked him politely to send Julian Assange back to Australia? What does he mean when he says that he's going to ask for a diplomatic reasoning and a diplomatic de-escalation?

It means that ultimately if they say no, we ultimately are just going to accept it. Like our portrayal as a dog of America, like when we allowed them to interfere with many of our politics during the 1975 Gough Whitlam case, we continue to allow America to get away with hiding away war crimes that we all committed and we all can't take back.

At the end of it, I realise that we are in the thick of it. And unless we do something about it, our final opportunity to right the wrongs in Iraq will simply vanish. And in the end, we'll be in the thick of it in a world where only war crimes are allowed. Thank you.

[applause]

JUSTINE CLARKE: Please welcome back Penelope Jin.

[applause]

PENELOPE JIN: When we're walking in the city and there's someone sitting on the side of the curb or walking in front of us that's smoking a cigarette, we know to stay a little bit to the side or to hold our breath discreetly because we don't want to get into the thick of all that smoke because we know it's bad for us, because that's what we've been told at school, because that's what we recognise as something unhealthy.

And we like to think that over the years, the issue of cigarettes and smoking is one that's on the decline because of education, because we know that it's unhealthy and there are lower rates of people smoking. We're coming out of the thick of that problem as well, or we like to think, when in reality that is not the case at all, and Australia is completely behind on the action it takes to move away from cigarette smoking.

After COVID, what was once a quarter of people aged 18 and 24 is now a third. A third of people between the ages of 18 and 24 in the UK now smoke cigarettes. So they're taking action. They're going to move up the age where you can buy cigarettes every year to eventually phase out cigarette smoking. New Zealand is taking similar action. All of this is to stop this from being such a prevalent issue.

But even if Australia does adopt similar action, even if Australia, like the UK, decides to raise duties on the cost of roll-up cigarettes to prevent people from choosing that as a cheap alternative to nicotine, we're still very much in the thick of the problem because there's a new issue now, vaping.

Vaping is sweeping through New South Wales high schools at an unprecedented rate. Initially presented as a way to get out of the thick of this issue of cigarette smoking, roll-up cigarette smoking, it's now creating a world where nicotine addiction is even worse.

Why? Because it's accessible. It tastes better to young children with flavours marketed at them like mango ice, like, for example, mint, lemonade. And I know these from research, not personal experience. I swear, Mum.

[laughter]

The issue here is very clearly that vaping, unlike cigarettes, is discreet, not picked up by smoke sensors easily. It can be done in a classroom. It can be done in a bathroom. And it doesn't leave as noticeable of a scent.

So plenty of New South Wales schools are taking action. In the 'Sydney Morning Herald,' we've seen schools like Burwood Girls, Willoughby Girls, since Scholastic is also private schools like Knox, co-ed, single-sex, girls, boys, and of all ages-- in fact, 5-year-olds are being sent home with nicotine poisoning, vomiting blood, being hospitalised because of this issue.

Smoking kills. That's something we all think we know. Smoking kills is something that's been drilled into us for years, and we think we're coming out of the thick of that issue. There are other things to worry about.

But we're not. We're just getting into the thick of it. With new things like vaping, we need new solutions. We need, like Knox has started to implement, alarms that are more detective of vaping and more information within schools, further education to discuss the issues with vaping, which are often marketed as something less dangerous. We're just getting into the thick of this issue. Thank you.

[applause]

JESSICA NGUYEN: Thank you. The adjudicators will now leave the auditorium to decide the winner of The Plain English Speaking Award 2022.

I would now like to invite the following special guests to the stage. Simone Walker, Group Deputy Secretary, School Improvement and Education Reform for the Department of Education; Jordi Austin, Director of the Arts, Sports, and Initiatives for the Department of Education; and Mr. John David Olsen, representing the Australian-Britain Society.

[applause]

I will now invite each of the contestants to the stage where they will receive $100 to be presented by Mr. Olsen, certificates to be presented by Ms. Austin, and medallions to be presented by Ms. Walker. Please welcome back Ethan Zhu.

[applause]

Please welcome back Lucy Beale.

[applause]

[applause]

Eujiny Cho.

[applause]

[applause]

Ysabella Atay-Brito.

[applause]

[applause]

Andy Huang.

[applause]

[laughter]

[applause]

And Penelope Jin.

[applause]

[applause]

I would like to call on Justin Lai to announce the winner of The Plain English Speaking Award for 2022.

[applause]

JUSTIN LAI: Ooh it's just 14 minutes before I can say good afternoon. So good morning, everyone. I hope everyone has been well. It is, I think, as always a privilege to watch public speaking state finals of any calibre, but I think the specific caveat is that we get to watch them in person for the first time in what feels like forever.

So I think firstly, what I just want to quickly say is that this was a grand final of the highest calibre. This was an immensely entertaining and intellectually stimulating series of speeches to watch from everyone. I think the adjudication panel remarked on those things in particular. And that is, as per usual, a testament to all 6 speakers here today.

To go through what is the gauntlet of this competition is very much a challenge. It's exhausting. You have to memorise all of your speeches. You have to prepare so many-- the different impromptus to various topics. You have to get tested. You have to come out all the way-- go to various places in Sydney.

And the fact that you guys are all here really shows the reward that your effort has been put in. So just a quick, again, round of applause for our 6 finalists. They really deserve it.

[applause]

I'm not going to be breaking the mould when it comes to the structure of this oral adjudication. We'll start off with some general feedback for both sections, and then we're going to go into announcing the winner.

So in terms of general feedback, the first-- in terms of the prepared section, the adjudication panel thought that this was, I think to the strength of all 6 speakers, a really unique final where all speakers really packaged ideas in a way which felt unique to them and their perspectives, and also tried to weave in anecdotal experiences in such a way as to string the audience along, and understanding the journey and the path towards understanding the ultimate idea in the message of the speech.

We thought that all speakers had a really strong structure. We thought that they really were clear in sort of elaborating what parts of the speech meant certain things and how arguments might have transformed throughout and then going into maybe, for example, a solution.

And we thought that they all genuinely tried to grapple with a problem in such a way as to provide solutions to people. The issues that were being talked about weren't just necessarily being lamented, but were being actively engaged with to try and present a real solution to people in the world.

In terms of feedback, the adjudication panel had one broadly particular idea which was, I think, in terms of argumentation we think that a lot of the speeches argued ideas in a way which was I think seemingly intuitive, but sometimes lacked logical connection to the things that they were trying to prove.

So sometimes when an idea might necessarily sound similar to an argument you're trying to make or an example might sound intuitive to a point that you're trying to prove, needing to do the legwork in proving why those things were connected was really important, and you couldn't just rely on the fact that they sounded intuitive. Otherwise, I think what the panel noticed was that if put under the microscope, some of the ideas started to dissolve a little bit and become more susceptible to pointing out certain questions in those.

And then in terms of the impromptu section, obviously with the topic we'll go into a little bit of what we were looking for in speeches that we heard. So in the topic In the Thick of It, I think we were looking for something quite particular, and this wasn't necessarily just something that was an issue. It was an issue that appeared before a certain thing in a particular way.

That was to say that the issue was particularly big and looming such that you had to face it front on or that the issue or the situation was so deeply immersive or that individuals or society was so quagmired in it that we may have lost sight of the bigger picture, which I think meant that you couldn't as-- if you were trying to tackle this speech just talk about why the issue existed. It had to be a unique analysis of what the issue was, why we were ostensibly in the thick of it, and then why that situation was unique, such that we were definitionally in the thick of it.

And I think the feedback here broadly speaking is the old adage of when in doubt, try and think about what the title of your speech would be and why it would be the topic that you have selected. So the thick of it here. It just needed to be a closer and more logical analysis of what the topic was trying to ask of you, and then ultimately trying to structure it around the topic rather than maybe picking an idea and then running along with it, and then maybe losing sight of what the topic was.

So now onto the winning speech. We thought that in the prepared section they did a really strong and really good effort in arguing their point, but also structuring it in a really sort of strong and comprehensive way. We thought that their use of things like examples and statistics was genuinely innovative and done in such a way that allowed us to consider something-- the issue that they were talking about in a very fresh light.

We thought that the speech was also signposted really well, clear in terms of its direction. And we thought that there was a sort of elegance to the solution that they proposed, such that it was in a way simple, but then groundbreaking because of that simplicity.

In terms of the impromptu, we thought that they engaged with the topic in a really comprehensive way. We thought we understood the different areas of their speech and how they particularly related to the way that the issue may or may not have been in the thick of it or that we as a society were in the thick of that particular issue.

And we thought that the engagement with the subject matter was very natural, and also to some extent tied to issues that a lot of the audience could understand and particularly laugh at. And not necessarily that there needed to be a call to action at the end of the speech. We thought that that was done well and allowed us to understand what could be done about the issue. So without further ado, the winner for the 2022 Plain English Speaking Award is Penelope Jin.

[applause]

JESSICA NGUYEN: Thank you, Justin, and your fellow adjudicators. I would now like to invite our presenters back to the stage, and please welcome this year's winner, Penelope Jin, who will receive the Westminster Stone and $250 from Mr. [inaudible] representing the Australia-Britain Society and a $250 gift card from Mr. Olsen on behalf of Professor Flint and the English-Speaking Union. A gold medallion and certificate to be presented by Ms. Austin, and The Plain English Speaking Award shield to be presented by Ms. Walker.

[laughter]

[applause]

Congratulations to Penelope Jin who will now represent New South Wales at the National Final of The Plain English Speaking Award to be held in August. Distinguished guests, ladies, and gentlemen, it has been a great pleasure to chair the 2022 final of The Plain English Speaking Award. The official party, contestants, their parents, teachers, and principals are invited to have lunch in the foyer. Thank you.

[applause]