Victoria 1 Grab Australs 2011, Best Speaker in Final

Venue of the Australs 2011 finals

#4 Victoria University of Wellington (Richard D'Ath, Seb Templeton, Udayan Mukherjee) emerged as the champion of the 2011 Australasian Intervarsity Debating Championships, keeping the trophy that the New Zealand school won last year. In the grand final, they defeated #6 National University of Singapore (Imran Rahim, Sadhana Rai, Robin Teo).

Udayan Mukherjee, part of last year's winning Victoria team, also was awarded the best speaker in the finals. Elle Jones from University of Sydney grabbed the overall best speaker prize, also known as the Martin Sorensen Trophy. Her team, which broke second from the preliminary rounds, lost to NUS 1 in the semifinals earlier today.


The winning team successfully negated the motion "THBT Nations Should Use Bounty Hunters to Capture or Kill Their Enemies" in the final that took place in Seoul. It was the second non-Australian final in as many years following a long stretch of Australian  dominance in the top tournament in the Asia-Oceania region.


Since 1975, whenever a non-Australian team won the Australs, debaters from the Land Down Under would take the trophy back the next year. In fact, from 1983 to 2010, Victoria was the only non-Australian institution that became champions. And they only could that twice. Besides last year, it also won in 1998.

Australs 2011 was the first time a Korean institution, Chung Ang University, hosted the championships. Victoria will be the host next year.