The Dead Roo

The Australian is reporting this morning on the National Union of Students’ proposed constitutional amendments and budget cuts resulting from the imposition of voluntary student unionism in July this year. Drawn up by several of the Labor office-bearers, these include some reforms which are perfectly understandable in the circumstances, such as dumping the union’s $60,000 a year office in Melbourne’s Trades Hall and moving to a cheaper location. Yet what should be of concern to progressive students in Australia is the detail of the plan.

The positions of president and general secretary of NUS are essentially factional spoils. They are perenially held by the two Labor factions as a result of an annual sweetheart deal, and the people who hold them are rarely seen on any campuses around the country outside of student election time. Under these reforms, both of these positions will retain their full salaries, and will continue to be paid for looking pretty for the cameras. Instead, the cuts will occur at the expense of the women’s officer, the queer officer, and all related positions, which will lose their utter pittance of a salary.

Many of these people are actually activists, and actually use this small amount of money to get out to as many campuses as they can and help with campaigns wherever possible. For many campuses, these people are the only NUS representatives are the only ones they’re ever likely to see. We’ve seen the likes of brilliant National Queer Officer Rachel Evans numerous times this year in Canberra. By contrast, NUS President Rose Jackson appeared once to make a speech in O-Week, and General Secretary Michael de Bruyn, to my knowledge, has not set foot on either of the Canberra campuses this year.

The small salary given to the likes of departmental officers such as Rachel Evans (used to boost the small amount of travel allowances they are given) is the only means they have of being able to get out to campuses and actually help on the ground, rather than trying to do activism and representation by teleconference. The departmental officers have shown that they can actually use this to benefit students, in stark contrast to the useless NUS executive. And yet it is these people who the Labor factions are cutting in order to save their own salaries.

If the NUS is going to cut the salaries of the only people who actually have any impact on students around the country, in effect preventing them from adequately fulfilling that function, I think progressive students around Australia seriously have to question whether we still want to support our corrupt national union. These sentiments were certainly raised when Small and Regional Officer Kate Perry tried (completely unsuccessfully) to sell these changes to the national queer student activist conference, Queer Space, in September. If, as expected, the Labor factions push these changes through at the NUS national conference in December, I believe progressive student unions around the country should seriously consider the prospect of disaffiliating from the NUS in 2007, and perhaps looking at creating a progressive, democratic, and actually representative alternative.

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