Some didn't know the rules, others ignored them – but three teams of adults made up of Tauranga politicians, celebrities and businesspeople gave debating their best shot against the Bay's young talent on Saturday night at Classic Flyers.

In fact, the adult Bizzos team of Cecilia Burgess of Cooney Lees Morgan, BOP Regional councillor Paula Thompson and Modern Office businessman David Littlewood won the inaugural event in front of a nearly 400-strong audience.

And, after a round of ecstatic applause, the adult Celebs team – Judge Paul Geoghegan, accountant Nick Dangerfield and Dr Luke Bradford – clinched People's Choice.

But really it was the Bay's youth who won on the night – three teams of student debaters got the chance to use their skills in public against a gaggle of the city's high-profile adults in the first-ever Great Debate in the Bay on May 13.

Great Debate chairman Jerry Cowper had rallied his Rotary club of Tauranga Te Papa to organise the slickly-run event to support and help rebuild school debating among the Bay's colleges.

And support it did – not only giving the students a live stage to bring life a professional debating opportunity locally, but also fundraising for Rotary Youth Development programmes of school debating, road safety education and Spirit of NZ.

The club has partnered with the NZ Schools Debating Council, which supplied three highly-qualified debating judges Umbar Sandhu, Zar Sinclair and Liam Silverwood to evaluate the evening.

The Great Debate also helped the BOP regional team prepare for the upcoming 2023 NZ Schools' Debating Championship on May 26-29 at Parliament.

On Saturday night the students impressed the audience with their confidence, honed debating skills and tact against the adults – drawing howls of laughter, clapping and nods of agreeance as the youngsters tried putting the adults in their place and rebutting the opposition with quick talking, vocal flair, researched speeches and being sticklers for the Cambridge-style debating rules.

In the first debate it was the Politicos versus the Bay of Plenty Regional debating team, which soon heads to Wellington.

Labour list MP and Government Minister Jan Tinetti doing her part in the debate to discredit the MMP system – in jest of course. Photo: David Hall.

The unlikely pairing of Labour list MP and Government Minister Jan Tinetti, National MP for Tauranga Sam Uffindel and Act's representative Cameron Luxton had to work together to debate the affirmative of the Motion: ‘This House regrets MMP' – a very awkward scenario given MMP has made way for Jan getting into Parliament as a List MP and becoming a Minister. But she took it in her stride.

Fast-talking Year 13 Tauranga Boys' College student Saad Aamir, 17, sticks it to the politicians in Cambridge debate style. Photo: David Hall.

Tauranga Boys' College Year 13 student Saad Aamir, 17, and Mount College's Year 13 Shiana French and Year 12 Luca Ririnui debated the negative – making mincemeat of the politicians as they pointed out the Politicos gave no useful arguments of how they regret MMP, only referring to the First-Past-The-Post electoral system as a great forerunner and downplaying MMP by pointing out Winston Peters was kingmaker in the start of Labour's current two-term reign – effectively taking the voice away from the people.

There was also to-and-fro over the accuracy of details of two past referendums on what voting system to use in NZ – and many Points of Order refused, bringing much fun and mischief to the debate.

A Point of Order could be refused between the first and fifth minute of a debater's speech – known to the youth but not so many of the adult participants. Thus, there were many refusals in all sorts of humorous fashions.

The second debate got off to an even more satirical beginning with the Celeb team apologising for not actually being ‘celebs'. Led by Judge Paul Geoghegan, with team mates Dr Luke Bradford and accountant Nick Dangerfield, the hijinks unfurled from there.

The ‘Celebs' team was debating the negative of the motion: ‘This House would ban cars in Tauranga's CBD'.

The Student Finalists team of Sarah Adlam and Kiarni Sperling and Alex White debated the affirmative – giving much research, evidence and ideas as to why banning cars would offer a new utopia for Tauranga's CBD.

The Celebs hit back – with much deliberation over the meaning of the word ‘ban' and saying that cars should stay because the CBD is dead anyway!

There was also scandal as Nick Dangerfield used his time-slot to expose a long-winded and very elaborate scam of promoting Bayfair as shopping destination that he accused the students finalists of in jest, of course, giving the strictly-polished students not much to clash with. So overall, a very amusing match-up!

Finally, as the audience was quipped to stay up past their bedtimes, came the third debate. The motion: ‘This House would pay teachers based on the performance of their students' had an even more unenviable match-up, leading to even more satirical squabbles at the podium.

The very confident Mount College Year 13 student Shiana French quickly presents clashes to the politician's arguments. Photo: David Hall.

The Student Prize Winners team of Ollie Farquharson, aged 14, Year 12 Gayathri Dinesh of Tauranga Girls' College and Year 12 Kaleb Evans-Lao of ACG Tauranga were on the affirmative, taking on the Bizzos team of Cecilia Burgess of Cooney Lees Morgan, BOP Regional councillor Paula Thompson and business owner David Littlewood from Modern Office.

Ollie took on his step father David in the Bizzos team – whose wife is a teacher and Ollie's mother – ouch! The students got stuck in with the facts of why it would be better to pay teachers based on their students' performance then Paula revved things up by saying kids don't go to school anyway and the logistics of such a pay system would be a nightmare.

There was several mentions of Donald Trump throughout the debate and points made with the US voting system, plus accusations of graph-tampering by a particular father-in-law about his step-son, which all made for continuous howls and hoots of laughter from the audience and a rather relaxed debate to conclude the evening.

The event finished with NZ Schools Debating Council's BOP regional convenor Kale Adair generously thanking the Rotary club of Tauranga Te Papa for organising the successful night and getting behind their region's young debaters.