Adelaide Student Politics

Attending the election of a new President of the Union was a real reminder for me of why I love – and hate – student politics at this university.

The thing that got me most was the clear passion and dedication that almost everyone at the meeting felt. In a way it was very exciting to be in the room with so many people who had invested such an enormous amount of their lives into making this Union function. However, the feeling was marred by the knowledge that so many of the great ideas of the Board members will be consigned to the ideological junk heap as a result of factional disagreements based more on point scoring against opposing factions than on the individual merits of the idea.

Rather than making you wait any longer, I’ll reveal here that Lavinia Emmett-Grey won the position of President with a respectable majority, forcing Mark Joyce to wait until 2010 to try again (technically the vote will be in 2009, but the President changes at the turn of the year).

Mark spoke to the Board first, with a carefully scripted speech (so scripted that he was able to give me a copy of the speech afterwards, with the bits that he didn’t use scribbled out). He focussed on the need to replace the constitution with a reformed and greatly improved document, as well as raising new ideas such as three day elections, online voting for the general elections and the re-naming of the AUU to the Adelaide University Student Association. In addition, Mark proposed that the President’s honorarium be reduced to $15 thousand annually.

In contrast, Lavinia’s speech was apparently unscripted and directly from the heart, though some more cynical observers believed that her words had been carefully selected before hand. Lavinia began by pointing out that the speeches didn’t really matter, and that everyone would already have decided how to vote. She then did her very best to change the minds of those who’d decided in Mark’s favour. Hers was an emotive appeal to those Board members who could be inspired by the image of a President who’d seen it already, and who harked back to a union that had three times the members, four times the events and ten times the will to fight for student rights. She drew on the emotive imagery of a strong student union that produced the best times, friends and fights, and the idea that student representatives and representation might mean something, rather than being a farce. To finish, Lavinia urged all of the Board members to vote as if they were the only one, and there were no factional twit standing behind them. To vote as if they were representing the students.

I can’t say whether either speech swung any votes, but the juxtaposition of the rational policy statement and the emotional appeal definitely threw the candidates into stark contrast.

Of the two big votes, the Vice Presidential one – unexpectedly – ended up being the more interesting of the two. It was clear that factional deals had been made by both sides: one group’s Presidential candidate received votes in exchange for voting for the other group’s candidate as deputy. John Bowers and his followers, then, looked quite concerned about his chances of achieving the Vice Presidency, while Fei Tang seemed the presumed candidate. Nonetheless, the speeches touting financial management and leadership went ahead. In this case they were much more similar. The biggest difference was that John came across as a more confident candidate (though some of Board appeared concerned that he drew direct parallels between leading 30 people on a battlefield and leading the Finance and Development Standing Committee [F&DSC]), whereas some Board members appeared confused and concerned by Fei’s less certain use of English and rumoured uncertainties about his future.

The votes, the counters and the scrutineers went out, and came back…looking confused and in some cases either very pleased or very worried, depending on their faction. Despite Fei Tang’s ‘side’, as it were, electing the President they had agreed on, at least three votes had changed hands in the interim, delivering John Bowers as the AUU Vice President for 2009.

This sent the Activate and IndyGo factions into a small panic as they re-counted their votes for the subsequent elections in light of their new found uncertainty. It also restored a sense of cynicism after Lavinia’s inspiring speech. Apparently Board should only vote as if they were representing the students when they’re voting for her.

The subsequent elections – for AUU Executive and the Finance and Development Standing Committee – were conducted without speeches or discussion time. Daniel Bills, Fletcher O’Leary, Aaron Fromm and Yasmin Freschi were declared as the 2009 Executive, with Jianbin Jiang (also known as Strong) as the only other person running.

Ye Yang, Fei Tang, Andrew Anson and Mark Joyce were elected to F&DSC, with Aaron Fromm missing out.

Rhiannon Newman caused some entertainment when she claimed the place as Fletcher’s scrutineer despite the fact that he was absent at the time, and unable to appoint her. She quipped that ‘It’s only because I know how you all vote’, then felt the need to point out that she was being facetious. I guess it was a touchy subject considering just how wrong the VP vote had proved her.

It was interesting to note that David Collucio – the General Manager of the AUU – spoke at length to the assembled Board both before and after the vote. In the first spiel, he mentioned that the services of the AUU employee who had been taken minutes at most of the 2008 meetings had been withdrawn for the final two meetings of that Board due to an impression of unacceptable behaviour. One former Board member in attendance – Justin Kentish – was particularly unimpressed by this, as he said that the old Board was never told that this was the reason for her absence.

After our mass exodus to Unibar, I was sought out by a Board member only willing to be quoted as ‘a left board director’, who passed on (and, at my request, later sms’d me) the sound bite that “left board directors where suprised and appalled that Jake Wishart – a vocal member of the young greens – voted in a dry liberal to vice president of the auu”. The grammar that seems to have eluded this university educated student politician aside, this ‘defection’, as it were is being taken very seriously by the left. Another of the lefties even compared it on Facebook to the totalitarian horrors of Orwell’s 1984 (though he wouldn’t explain what the parallels were).

To put it into context, the Board member who changed their vote without the knowledge of their faction (I’ll post here once I’ve asked Jake personally – until then I’m not willing to say outright that it was him, though that appears to be the common assumption) would have been asked during the negotiations whether he was comfortable with his factional leader representing his vote for that outcome. The choice was his one way or the other, but it was expected to be made and put out there for counting well in advance. Had his faction found that they did not have the numbers to offer something in return, or had he changed his mind belatedly, I expect there would have been some pressure to vote in line.

Looking to one of the side issues of that vote, though, a far more Orwellian question arises: How did the left manage to divine in meagre hours whose vote was different to expectations? I was given Jake’s name less than four hours after the meeting ended; no mean feat considering it was a secret ballot. I just hope it was some sort of asking around by the ‘factional twits’ that enabled the left to find out, though ballot tampering is not unheard of.

I guess the students will decide whether they think the Board member in question was a promise breaking lowlife or a brave independent when they vote for their representatives next year. For now, let’s see how this new group does at their attempt to bring love, life and some tangible improvements to the student union.