By Justin Randell
PERTH — A University of Western Australia Guild Council meeting last month called a referendum on continued UWA affiliation to the National Union of Students. This referendum will be held April 14-16.
The motion for a referendum was put by UWA Liberals, but supported by guild president James Foggarty and his supporters on the council. He told Green Left Weekly he voted for the referendum only because he is "pro-choice" on affiliation to NUS.
Amidst the Howard government's slash and burn policy on education funding, a national student union could play a crucial role in fighting the attacks. So why is NUS in a situation where disaffiliation is on the agenda?
During the ALP's 13-year reign, NUS did little to threaten the government's agenda of establishing user-pays education, and in many cases actively tried to stifle student opposition. Young ALP politicians have used NUS as a training ground, looking to cut their teeth in the student movement bureaucracy. This was never clearer than at the 1996 NUS national conference.
Corinne Glenn, a Curtin University Resistance activist who attended the conference, told Green Left Weekly, "Resistance was the only group which prioritised building the education campaign above getting factional buddies elected to office bearers' positions. The conference cost $560 to register, and to put motions meant preparing them two months beforehand, then doing factional deals to get them up for debate by the conference
" The conference sessions didn't start until around midnight, after hours of number crunching had ensured that all decisions had been made before voting began. In short, it was a bureaucratic and undemocratic farce, inaccessible to students and mostly irrelevant to their needs."
Despite the Liberals' brutal attacks on education funding in 1996, NUS generally proved incapable and unwilling to lead the campaign to defend students' rights to free, quality and accessible education. The organising of the campaign in most states was done by activist groups and individual student unions, with little more than token assistance from NUS.
This record has led to general apathy and mistrust of NUS among students, precisely when a national union of students with a campaigning orientation could help mobilise and organise opposition to the attacks.
Given this, it is likely that UWA will be but the first of many such attempts to disaffiliate from NUS.
The Liberal club on UWA will run a strong disaffiliation campaign. It will attempt to discredit the idea of student unionism in general by linking it to the current state of NUS. This will be part of the Liberals' broader aim to destroy any student organisations that can fight (even potentially) for the rights of students.
Jessica Needle, a UWA Resistance activist, told Green Left Weekly, "Resistance's attitude towards affiliation to NUS is to judge it case by case. The key criterion in Resistance's decision was whether disaffiliating would help or hinder organising the student movement on UWA and as a whole.
"Although we were highly critical of NUS's performance in WA last year, any money saved by disaffiliating will not be used by the present guild to help further campaigns against Liberal attacks on education and student. This is clear from who is proposing the referendum — the Liberals' and James Foggarty."
Needle said that Foggarty's election propaganda "was full of the need for 'financial responsibility', 'student services and discounts' and 'bringing campus back to life'. How Foggarty plans to mesh cheap beer, free entry to night clubs and more live bands on campus with his plans to be 'financially responsible' is open to question — perhaps there is truth to the rumours that he will be 'saving' money by abolishing the Women's Department.
"It seems some in the guild, Foggarty included, are confused about what guilds are there for. Students pay their guild fees to provide campus services that require subsidies, such as welfare officers, women's rooms etc. Guilds are not profit-making businesses. Most of all, student unions need to provide students with a political body that can defend their interests, something that is especially important in the context of the Liberals' attacks."
The referendum will cost thousands of dollars, Needle pointed out, "and the choice for UWA students will be between getting what they can from NUS, or getting nothing from the present guild but 'financial responsibility'. Disaffiliation will only weaken the education campaign on UWA and in Western Australia."
Martin Smith, a UWA Resistance activist, told Green Left, "Given the present situation at UWA and in Western Australia, we feel that it is important for activists to defend affiliation this year, but we should put a very critical 'yes' to continued affiliation.
"We are not tied to NUS itself, but to maximising coordinated student mobilisation against government attacks on education and students' rights. We'd argue that NUS needs a major reorientation of its priorities, structure and political outlook. If it doesn't do this, then it's going to be faced with more and more disaffiliation campaigns."