Congratulations to all participants in the interschool debating competition held on Wednesday evening in Week 7. St Catherine’s were the hosts once more and hoped to hold onto the trophy from last year’s inaugural event. Proserpine State High School took along two teams, one experienced and one made of debaters having their first go. All performed very well and it was wonderful to see the improvement over the evening. Topics included: non violent criminals should not face goal time; politicians should be paid the Australian median wage; that university should be free. The two top teams then faced the impromptu challenge of debating, representations of smoking and drinking should be banned from all media, for which they had only ten minutes to prepare. In the end, it was the experience and debating skills of Xanthia Thompson, Mac Rogers and Zante Sloane that won the night, defeating a very well spoken St Catherine’s team. Our newcomers, Acadia Simmonds, Sam Rogers, and Riley Stuchbree did a remarkable job, particularly considering that they were given two of their topics at late notice due to the withdrawal of a team from the competition.
