Congratulations to Casper McGuire (Year 10) who won Best Speaker in the Junior Public Speaking competition on Friday 2 December.

Casper's clever and entertaining speech on why the South Island needs to separate from the North Island in a South Island Exit was full of dry, witty and topical humour.

Sasha Freeman and Esther Tamati (both Year 9) also distinguished themselves in the competition speaking confidently and persuasively on police brutality in America and the influence of the internet respectively.

Below is a copy of Casper's winning speech:

South Island Exit Speech

Casper McGuire

Sexit, South Island exit: the name of my proposal to separate the South Island of New Zealand from the north and form an independent country. It seems like an outrageous idea at first, but in reality it is a fantastic opportunity for the citizens of New Zealand.

When you start looking, there are many reasons as to why the South Island should become independent; it is 32% larger than the North Island but only consists of 23% of the population. Now that’s what I call wasted potential!

The South island also has a lot of attractions that the North Island doesn’t; including, not only more sheep by roughly 1 million but also closer proximity to international superpower Antarctica. Separation could promote trade between the South Island and Antarctica, maybe even importing to the South Island a very rare commodity here — snow.

The Sexit movement also has a lot of international support, former U.S. President and four time WWE champion, Jeb Bush once said, “Yeah, absolutely, that sounds great, you should absolutely do that, that’s a really good and cool idea”.

I voted with a few of my friends and it is formally decided that the South Island would take roughly half of the letters from the name New Zealand. The new, cool, separatist country would be named ‘New Zed’ and what was the North Island could keep the remaining letters that form the name ‘Alan’.

When the South Island becomes New Zed, it is going to need a capital city and in the end we threw a dart at a board and it landed on the perfect sprawling metropolis for the job! That’s right! You guessed it: Gore. Now don’t laugh, when it becomes the capital city of New Zed, Gore could easily triple in size, picking up 20 or 30 new inhabitants!

As for a national flag, it is decided that New Zed would hold an expensive referendum that nobody wants. We will then ignore the results and just use the ‘laser kiwi’ flag anyway because it’s really cool. Alan (what was once called the North Island) could do whatever they want, y’know whatever suits them. The national anthem would be whatever’s hip with the kids at the time in order to secure the young voter’s approval.

In the time between the South Island separating and New Zed developing a culture of its own, New Zed shall split all of the New Zealand culture with Alan. We take rugby; they take golf, we take Pavlova, they take marmite. We take New Zealand history from when the island was first inhabited to 1508; they take New Zealand history from 1509 until today. So on, so forth.

You now know what Sexit is, why it should happen and what New Zed would be like, it’s time to talk about the looming question, how? And what can I do to help? And that is why Sexit is so genius. It’s already happened! A team of South Island separatists were planted at beaches yesterday and spent all night rowing us to freedom.

If you look out the window now and squint very far into the distance you aren’t going to see the North Island. You are going to see Antarctica. That’s right, you live in New Zed now. Congratulations!