On Sunday the 15th, Sam and I went to Murdoch University to participate in the British Parliamentary Debating Competition. We had to bring lots of pen and paper for an impromptu competition. It meant that we weren’t allowed to prepare our speech beforehand. We had thirty minutes to prepare topics for our speech. The schools at the competition was just All Saints and Perth Modern.
The Roles for a BP Debate are split into four team each team consisting of two people. Out of the government and opposition there was Opening Government, Opening Opposition, Closing Government and Closing Opposition. From Opening Government there was Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister. The Prime Minister’s role was to define the case and present points for them with the Deputy Prime Minister following on what his Prime Minister said and rebutting Opposition Leader. The Opening Opposition consists of the Opposition Leader and the Deputy Opposition Leader. The Opposition Leader’s job is to rebut what the Prime Minister said and give points supporting their side of the topic with the Deputy Opposition Leader rebutting the Deputy Prime Minister and following his Opposition Leader case. The next part is the Closing Government following the Closing Opposition. The Closing Government consisted of the Government Member and Government Whip with the Closing Opposition with Closing Member and Closing Whip. Their roles were to define the case, look at it from a different perspective, and summarize the case with rebutting the other teams.
Another important part of BP Debating is POI’s also known as Points of Information. During the 1 – 4 minute marks members of the debate are aloud to ask questions to do with the topics to try and help support their side. The person speaking has the choice to accept the POI or deny it. Speakers have about 5 minutes to speak before cutoff.
The First debate topic was that we regretted the trend of STEM(Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) being treated higher than the arts and humanities. Our points was that STEM is just hardcore facts and doesn’t encourage creativity, communication is not used well, STEM makes robots, not humans and it doesn’t give humans the chance to express their feelings
The Second Debate Topic was an actor debate. It means that we have to pick a stakeholder (an aimed audience) and pretend we were that person. The topic was that parents should pay their children regular allowance. This was a hard topic but we raised some good points to how it makes them responsible, provides them with some motivation and teaches them skills for the future
The Third Debate Topic was that the Olympic Committee should include non-sporting events such as debating and chess in the Olympics. We were against this and we said that it would lose it’s popularity and so many other points.
On the day I made lots of friends from Perth Modern with whom we watched Yakko World Memes (Video Included countries without McDonald’s getting destroyed or the amount of people from each country who participated in WW1 and WW2)
This day was really fun and I hope to compete in the same event next year