2011Trials: TBC
2011 Dates: TBC
2011 Location: Korea

Prep Time: 30 minutes
Speech Length: 8 minutes
Speakers: 3 per team
Points of information are not allowed

The Australasian Intervarsity Debating Championships (known colloquially as “Australs”) is an annual debating tournament for teams from universities in the Australasian region. It is one of the world’s largest debating tournaments, second only in size to the World Universities Debating Championship (WUDC), and one of the largest annual student events in the world.

Australs follows the Australia-Asian Debating format (three speakers plus replies), rather than the British Parliamentary Style used at WUDC. It is held every year in early-July under the auspices of the Australasian Intervarsity Debating Association (AIDA). The host university is selected a year before at a meeting of the AIDA Council.

Since the inaugural tournament at the University of Sydney in 1975, Australs has continually expanded the scope of its participants, now attracting around 300 competitors each year from around the Asia-Pacific region.

Currently teams come from Australia, Bangladesh, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand and the Philippines.

In 1992 an affirmative action requirement was introduced to ensure that at least one third of each University’s contingent must be female, unless the circumstances could be justified.

Australs 2009

Australs in 2009 was held at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia in July. Auckland broke two teams to the finals series of debates (A1 in 9th place, made up of  Max Harris, Glenn Riddell and Craig Riddell and A2 in 12th place, made up of Steph Thompson, Ben Milsom and Mitch Cooper).

Further to this, Max Harris was named the 7th best speaker of the tournament.

Australs 2010

Australs was held in our very own Auckland in June 2010 and was convened by past President Brad Ward.  Auckland broke three teams to the octo-finals and Auckland 2 (Steph Thompson, Akif Malik and Kathy Errington) made it to the final before losing to Victoria 1 in a close debate.  This was the closest any Auckland team had ever come to winning Australs and we hope to do even better in Korea next year!