Debating and Public Speaking Update

King’s Speech – 10^th Anniversary
Following on from the heats, which took place earlier in the term, there were ten boys selected to compete in this year’s finals, with four competitors in the Preparatory School division and three competitors in each of the Middle and Senior School divisions. Speech topics ranged from the loss of biodiversity, vaccines and overfishing in the Preparatory division, to themes such as freedom of speech, second languages and music in the Middle and Senior divisions. As per previous years, each competitor was also required to present a short notice (impromptu) speech, giving a total of 20 speeches for the evening, with this year’s results as follows:

Preparatory School results:

• Best Speaker (Lionel Logue Award): Jayden Yue
• Runner-up: Devesh Anavkar
• Third place (shared): Zac Grice and Milo Kotzee

Middle School results:

• Best Speaker (Lionel Logue Award): Nicholas Henchliffe
• Runner-up: Thomas Henchliffe
• Third place: Vivaan Sood

Senior School results:

• Best Speaker (Lionel Logue Award): Dinan Perera
• Runner-up: Jake Hamood
• Third place: George Bartley

Congratulations and well done to all boys who participated in this event! Thank you also to those from the Princes community who supported our boys by attending the event, and to our Rostrum judges for helping to adjudicate this competition once again.

Mark Bailey
Debating and Public Speaking Coordinator

PAC achieves a ‘clean sweep’ in Senior Debating

Over recent years, debating at Prince Alfred College has gone from strength to strength, culminating in what has been a superb 2021 season for our debating teams, in the SADA (South Australian Debaters Association) competition. From a total of 155 teams drawn from various schools around Adelaide, 7 of PAC’s 9 teams this year made it through to the quarter finals, with 4 of these teams also progressing to the semi-finals. Whilst the Intermediate A and B teams are still awaiting their penultimate debates, the Senior A and B teams both made it through to the Grand Final this year, where together they won a clean sweep in the top two divisions.

In Senior B, Prince Alfred (negative) defeated Wilderness 2 on the topic "that we, as developing nations, should not accept belt and road funding from China" in a unanimous decision from the 5 adjudicators, giving PAC its first win in this division since 2017. At the same time, our Senior A debaters, who have remained undefeated in this year’s competition, also defeated Wilderness in a very high level and complex debate on the topic "that we should prohibit private ownership of culturally significant art" (PAC again speaking on the negative side). This Senior A debate was very close, ultimately won on a split decision from 5 adjudicators (4 to 1), ending a 17-year drought by PAC winning this division for the first time since 2004. In a further testament to the quality of our boys, during the awards which followed, this year’s ‘best speaker’ awards were also won by Prince Alfred students: Kyan Jenkins (Senior A) and Max Thomas (Senior B), respectively.

Congratulations to debating captain Alex Henchliffe and his Senior A team (Kyan Jenkins, Dinan Perera, Thomas North and Dhwarakesh Rajaram), and also to our Senior B captain Max Thomas and his team (Henry Brill-Reed, Archibald McEwen, Rahul Ravindran and Tarun Kamath). Good luck also to our Intermediate A and B boys in their own quest for a Grand Final this year!

Mark Bailey
Debating and Public Speaking Coordinator