In an range of challenging debates, over 80 teams from more than 30 of the best universities across Australasia battled it out in what is considered to be the most intellectually demanding debating competition in the world, the Australasian Intervarsity Debating Championship, at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand, from July 2 to 10, 2006.

Widely known as Australs, the competition is the world's second largest debating tournament and is equal in prestige to the World University Debating Championships. The cultural diversity of the teams, combined with the wide range of topics for debate, makes the tournament the most remarkable social, cultural and intellectual exchange available to any student.

Over its 30-year history it has developed from a competition purely between Australian teams, to involving initially just New Zealand, and then all of Asia. It now attracts the whole Asia-Pacific, including Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Japan, South Korea and India.

This year Indonesia sent one team from the English Debating Society Universitas Indonesia (EDS-UI), consisting of Siti Astrid Kusumawardhani (from the school of social and political science), Melany Tedja (school of computer science) and Astrid Fina Nurshinta (school of social and political science).

In the freezing winter, teams had to debate in train station buildings, campuses, government chambers and lecture halls on various topics ranging from regional politics, international economic policies, sports, culture, religion and philosophy. The topics, called "motions", were released just before the debate started, giving teams only thirty minutes to prepare their speeches. During this year's competition, new topics were introduced, including banning advertising during children's television programs, disbanding the World Trade Organization, transferring military resources from Iraq to Afghanistan and adopting a common history textbook for East Asia.

The tournament consisted of seven preliminary rounds, where teams were ranked on number of victories, judge points and total speaker points. The top sixteen then advanced to knock-out rounds -- commencing with the octo-finals and finishing with the grand final. The physically and mentally exhausting nine-day event was also complete with many social events and gatherings such as American Independence Day party, break night and final night party, ballroom and championship dinner, women's debate, public speaking competition and comedy debate night.

In the English as Second Language (ESL) Round, the Indonesian team was named runner-up, the best achievement since Indonesia first participated in the tournament.

The ESL round is designed for countries whose mother tongue is not English, thus placing them at an inherent disadvantage against teams with no language barrier.

Indonesia defeated UT Mara Malaysia in the ESL semi-final, debating the motion: We should publish cartoons of religious figures. Unfortunately, the winning streak came to an end when the team was defeated in the ESL grand final by the International Islamic University Malaysia in a 4-3 split decision on the motion: That we should introduce hard labor for criminals in developed countries.

Indonesia's team member Siti Astrid K., was named among the top 3 ESL best speakers in the tournament.

The grand final took place on the last night of the event and everyone came to watch the anticipated debate between Monash University and Melbourne University. The motion for debate was: That it should be legitimate to use aid to buy votes in international organizations, the best two teams in the tournament demonstrated their skill with astute arguments combined with deadly attacks to destroy the case of their opponents. The excellent debate left the audience speculating on who would be crowned champion. In a split decision of six to three, Monash was declared the champion of Australs 2006, with one of their team members, Rolland Dillon, winning the Jock Fanselow Cup for best speaker in the grand final. The Martin Sorenson Cup for best speaker went to Elizabeth Sheargold from the opposing Melbourne team, and the public speaking winner was Jess Moir, also from Melbourne.