Australian Intervarsity Debating Championships

The Australian Intervarsity Debating Championships (known colloquially as "Easters") is Australia's largest debating tournament, held each year over the Easter period. The tournament has a focus on developing novice debaters who have not yet debated at the Australasian or World Universities Debating Championships. The first major Inter-varsity tournament of the year, Easters follows a three-speakers without replies debating style in preparation for the Australasian championships which include reply speeches. Debaters give 8 minute speeches and there are no reply speeches or points of information.

The first Easters tournament was held in 1990 by the Australian National University with Simon Banks was the Convenor and Clayton Long the Chief Adjudicator. These two had been instrumental in hosting the Australasian championships at the Australian National University the previous year and used the surplus funds left over from that tournament towards this novice tournament. At that stage the tournament was a one-off but under the auspices of the newly-formed Australasian Intervarsity Debating Association (AIDA) and with the support of the Monash Association of Debaters, Monash University hosted the tournament in 1991 and the tournament's future was secured. Easters was an important tournament in the development of AIDA and a more unified and progressive Australian debating community. Prior to that the Australasian championships was typically dominating by a few of Australia's oldest universities and/or by speakers who had come through the Australian Debating Federation National Schools team. There were few women and most speakers had attended private schols prior to attending university where they had been given debating training. There was little opportunity for many university debaters to obtain valuable experience before turning up to the more competitive Australasian championships where inexperienced speakers or teams from universities who were breaking into debating would often be comprehensively beaten by more experienced debaters.

Due to the novice nature of the tournament, experienced debaters ensure a high standard of adjudicators. Initially there was a requirement of one "novice" debater per team, novices being those who have never debated at an Australs or Worlds. That requirement has since changed so that each team must have two novices, and a novice is not allowed to have debated at more than one easters.

In 1992 an Affirmative Action requirement was introduced to that one third of each University's contingent must be female. The change was introduced by the then AIDA Women's Office Catherine Dunlop with the support of AIDA President Simon Banks (now both AIDA life members) in recognition of the poor record of most Australian Universities in selecting and promoting female debaters at the Australasian championships. In 1990 only 8% of all speakers eligible to make the finals at Australasian championships were female, in 1991 after the first Easters the figure was 21%, but it was thought that not enough progress was being made by Australian Universities.

A number of Australia's most successful debaters got their start at Easters, including many who had never debated before at high school.

Past Finalists and Hosts

Future Championships

* 2009 - to be hosted by University of Queensland

External links

* [http://www.easters2008.com www.easters2008.com Macquarie University]
* [http://www.easters2007.com/main.html easters2007.com]
* [http://flynn.debating.net/easter.htm World Debate Website Easters History]