UQ Australs Topics

[Duncan]

Hey Australs friends,

Does anyone know how we could get our hands on the topics that were used at UQ Australs in 2005? I thought that these might give us a good clue as to what we might expect to get this year, given that Bobby and Rob chose topics then and will be doing so again this year.

[Hornblower]

I remember some of the more extreme Bobby/Rob/Fitch/Sumi trademark topics, like:

That this house ?supports? Lipstick Lesbians
That the rise of gaybourhoods is deterimental to the gay rights movement
That we should create a database of animated child pornography for paedophiles

The semi-final was something about S+M and feminism

Some more traditional ones like:

That Japan should have a seat on the U.N. Security Council
Something about environmental protection versus the needs of the poor

[Chancellor of the Exchequer]

From memory, these were some of the ones I debated/saw that haven't been mentioned by Victor:

That we should abolish trial by jury
That the ban on whaling is cultural imperialism (note that this topic was apparently a drunken joke by Fitch, who was mortified to realise he had been taken seriously when it came up as an actual topic in round 3)
That governments should not fund controversial art
That holocaust denial should be a crime
Something about conflict diamonds (not buying minerals from countries with unstable govts, or words to that effect)
The octo had a topic about the right to gender identity - this was mostly defined as governments funding gender reassignment surgery, but apparently it wasn't meant to be about that.

[Tom]

Can't swear to the wording of any of these. I remember the debates but not the topics.

Semi-final: That the ban on S&M is an affront to feminism.

Quarter: That we should purchase mineral resources from Afrian conflict zones. (Conflict diamonds, as Ravi said)

Octo final: That hospitals should be required to pass on the details of overdose patients to law enforcement.

Round 7: That we should pay terrorists for hostages.

Round 6: Something to do with Microsoft.

Round 5: That ASEAN should crack down on Burma.

Round 4: That hip hop culture damages non-black minorities. (No, I'm not sure what this was meant to be about either)


If Duncan's right, and the topics do follow a similar theme, then you can expect to see a lot of social debates, and a handful of semi-empirical debates. That is, debates like 'X is an affront to feminism', or 'Y is the new McCarthyism'. Essentially, these are debates where affirmative teams have to show that something is good or bad in a certain way. I hate these topics. I think they confuse debaters, restrict creativity, and they never ever work out the way CAs hope they do. Hopefully, Bobby and Rob have learnt that from last time.

[n]

Fingers crossed that Liz knocks some sense and some IR into them!

[lizzie]

Who says that I have anymore sense than Rob and Bobby?

[Duncan]

Thanks Lizzie. I like social topics too
From my research, it seems a lot of these topics are still very relevant, if not more so than in 2005.
Thank you Victor, Ravi and Tom. You have a great collective memory.

[Tom]

Liz, whatever you do, don't bring back that hip-hop culture damaging non black minorities topic. That was a shocker. No one had any idea what they were doing. I've never seen a debater look less believing of their own material than when Abby from Macquarie tried to argue that hip hop contains sexist lyrics, and women are a non-black minority. Mike Powell would have been proud of that logical leap.

[n]

Lizzie. I say you have more sense. After all, you're a former MUDS president