Salient

The Great Debate

By Jackson Wood | 10 Mar, 2008

The MC/Chairperson/Salient hater was Greg Ellis, a NZ comedian of some description who throughout the night kept proceedings going in a leisurely and humorous way. On the affirmative team we had: Nandor Tanczos, some dude called Ian from Tui, and Wellington comedian Jerome Chandrahasen, and on the negating team, Darren Hughes, some dude called Hamish from Tui, and bearded person Josh Cameron. The moot was “Auckland should be New Zealand’s capital.”

Nandor in all his bearded and dreadlocked glory spoke first. After accepting that New Zealand was in fact one whole geopolitical entity he went on by using Tolkein’s The Hobbit as a metaphor for NZ’s politics. The connection was made between Orcs and Aucklanders.

The ginge from Otaki was up next. He made the astute observation that Auckland was a pain in the ass, and that it was too far from Otaki. He also pointed out that Wellington does shit well and that Auckland’s sunny climes are unfriendly to ginger haired people, there are volcanoes, many more strange people in Auckland than Wellington… Yadda yadda blah blah blah.

After drinking three quarts of Tui all this was quite heady, so when the first of the people from Tui Breweries got up to speak, Ian the pom, I decided to urinate. Man it was good. A lot better than actually listening to the drivel coming out of his mouth. The other Tui rep, Hamish, had recently shaved his legs, and declined to wear pants underneath his Tui can costume. Much to the revulsion of much of the audience he proceeded to sit on the edge of the stage, displaying his man hood for all to see.

VUWSA exec member Paul Brown tried his hand at heckling, was shot down so badly he needed aloe vera cream for the burns inflicted on him. This however did not stop him from continuing to call out stupid shit for the rest of the night. During the interval Ellis threw out some Tui branded free shit and all you douche bags went wild.

Jerome took the stage and called Wellington a “multi cultural cess pool”, a great start I thought and commented on the trashy bars like Estab. The point was also made that Wellington is a grey, dark place, and that if you don’t like Auckland it is because you are Rascist.

For those outside the political loop, who don’t know that Helen Clark thinks of Hughesy as the son she never had, Josh kindly let the cat out of the bag. He went on to elucidate why we need Wellington as the capital because it increases our self esteem due to all the fat civil servants who waddle down fire escapes.

In the end the negating team won, and Darren Hughes went to Satay Village on Ghuznee street to celebrate, while most other people went to MVP for a debsoc party (there ain’t no party like a debsoc party) and got more intoxicated. It was a good night… Mainly because of the cheap piss. THANKS TUI!