By Marina Cameron
More than 300 delegates from around the country met at the University of Ballarat from December 8 to 13 for the annual national conference of the National Union of Students.
In the face of massive cuts to education funding and attacks on student unions in many states, NUS conference could have provided a useful and concrete discussion around defence of education and student rights. The highly factionalised nature of the conference, and the focus on preselection of candidates and deal-making with over office-bearer and national executive positions, prevented this.
Groups represented at the conference were the Labor right (Unity), Labor left (National Organisation of Labor Students or NOLS), the Liberals, the Independents, Left Alliance, Non-Aligned Left, Resistance and some smaller groups.
The prepared agenda for the conference is thrown out of the window every year because 50% of delegates are required to be on the floor for the conference to convene. Any two major factions can therefore stop the conference.
Conference did not convene until 11.56pm on December 8 and generally met between 10pm and 6am on the following four nights. Other time was spent caucusing or trying to make deals or discuss with other factions.
Sarah Stephen, a Resistance member and delegate from the University of Tasmania, told Green Left Weekly, "We were shocked at the lack of democracy.
"Any motions to be debated, or any amendments, have to be handed in two months beforehand. These are put before the floor only with the approval of the business committee — a body made up of seven people which directs the chair and the agenda and rules on procedural points. The only way to get a motion up is to lobby enough support from factions to allow your motion to be put. What is then adopted depends on what amendments other factions want to make.
"Voting is on a tight factional basis. Unity, for example, positions people at each corner of the room to direct their delegates. Any open debate is superseded by factional deals made behind closed doors."
A major source of debate was how NUS should restructure itself to cope with funding shortfalls because states affected by voluntary student unionism legislation can no longer afford to pay affiliation fees. Despite a lot of heated debate, only a small number of constitutional amendments were passed.
A motion to raise the affiliation fee was initially lost, but four hours later (at around 2am) Unity members challenged inconsistencies in the voting procedure (some of their members had got mixed up about which way to vote) and the motion was re-put and won.
A delegate from Curtin University, Arun Pradhan, said, "Resistance has not attended NUS conference for nine years. We decided to participate this year because we saw an opening to work with left activists in NUS to push for support for the campaign against the Liberals' cuts to education.
"NUS has been dominated by Labor students since its formation and often played the role of tying the student movement's hands in fights against Labor governments' attacks. The national conference is little more than a training ground for Labor bureaucrats in how to number-crunch and stifle any discussion around campaigns pushed by the left."
Pradhan said that Resistance fought to have a motion put for a comprehensive education campaign in 1997. This motion was adopted after Unity and NOLS managed to have any funding commitments removed.
"Another Resistance motion committing NUS to a campaign in support of Indonesian political prisoners was also passed. However, very little other policy was adopted, apart from some to which all factions agreed and which was moved en bloc without any discussion or debate."
Only four of the seven outgoing national office-bearers presented reports to the conference. These were five minutes each, with four questions allowed.
In addition to the national president of the New Zealand NUS, the president of the National Tertiary Education and Industry Union, Carolyn Allport, addressed the conference on December 11 about the union's pay campaign.
Students questioned the role of the NTEU at La Trobe and other universities, claiming that the union caved in too soon and did not keep students informed about the state of the negotiations. Allport noted the importance of students and staff working together, citing the situation at the University of Canberra where the Students Association sided with the administration against academics.
Allport agreed, when questioned, that NUS and the NTEU had paid dearly for their reliance on the ALP during its time of government and that other strategies needed to be pursued.