Adelaide Student Politics

By Daniel O'Brien

I read Mark Joyce's article with interest and the naive hope that perhaps, for a change, I would see real engagement with the student body from a board director. Not just a partisan line sprouted in poor grammar and woefully murky structure. I thought “yay, a real submission to the blog! It will open some debate and discuss the issues that affect us all as students”.

Unfortunately, as I should expect after eight years as a university student, my hopes were not met. My initial thought was wrong. His entire article is merely a tool with which to attack views he dislikes and the people who hold those views. It’s yet another symptom of the hatred which seems to infest and overwhelm our political system, at the university level and higher.

Mark complains about the "less than impressive federal budget". Quibbles about the overall worth of the budget to the side, I think it is hard to argue that this was a bad budget for the Higher Education sector.

It seems to me, both from personal observation of eight years of budgets and from reading a number of reactions around the blogosphere, that this was one of the best budgets the sector has had in over a decade. Indeed, despite some misgivings, even Andrew Norton admitted that it wasn't a bad budget (though as he says, it could have been much better).

One of Mark's main complaints seems to be the timing of the changes. Actually, it seems that his main complaint is that he won't benefit from the changes. Indeed few people studying today outside of Law, Engineering, and Medicine will benefit from the changes. I don't see a problem with this. Of course, I can see how it’s an easy way to score points against someone. Just appeal to our inner selfishness.

Change takes time to implement, especially when you want to do it properly and responsibly. In the big picture, three years is not a long time to wait for the changes to come in fully. The system has improved. The world does not work on the semester to semester timeline of students. It has a longer view and I, for one, would rather not discourage our politicians from paying some marginal attention to the long view for a change.

I do wonder if the changes were immediate, would the complaint instead be that the Government was recklessly introducing these expensive new measures?

Mark does raise a number of valid criticisms. Especially about the increased difficulty for rural students, though I wish it had been done in a more constructive fashion than the simple NUS/ALP bashing that I saw it as.

A suggestion or two about how to fix it would've been nice. Something like, for example, making moving more than 100km's for the purposes of tertiary study sufficient for independence (or at least a heavily relaxed parental means test for rural students). I do support the notion that the Government should only pay when you're doing the course at the nearest institution that you could get in to. Rural campuses need students too.

Mark also commented on the changes to the independence criteria. He seems to suggest that they shouldn't have been brought in at all, and that they definitely shouldn't have been brought in as quickly as they will be. I disagree with him on the first, but agree on the second.

I don't think the Government should be encouraging people to take a gap year and I also recognise that those criteria provide a neat loophole for comfortable and wealthy families to ensure that children that they could readily support are instead supported by the government.

His criticism about the timing is, however, of great validity. People shouldn't be punished for having, quite reasonably, assumed that the Government would not change its policy overnight. Students who are taking a gap year this year, before commencing next year, should not be penalised because the system needs to be changed.

Andrew Norton wrote a blog post that covers both these topics a week or three ago. For those interested, it's worth a read and makes the argument I’d like to make far more professionally, eloquently, and successfully than I could. The only thing I’d like to add is that I believe that the criteria for independence as set by having worked for 30 hours per week for 18 months within two years since leaving school should also be abolished.

Mark’s article disheartens me. Will I ever see a piece written by a student politician that is not written on the basis of attacking someone else? Are all of our vocal student politicians so full of hatred for their enemies that all they can do is fight against them, rather than fighting for what they believe is right? Many would argue that there is no real difference between the two, but I believe there is every difference in the world. At times we need to fight to save something, but intent is everything and we should be fighting to save that which we value, not against that which we hate. Mark’s article saddens me, because it shows yet another example where an important issue is rendered in to little more than an excuse to attack the other side.

PS: In a throwaway jab in his opening paragraph, Mark raises an interesting matter about the NUS' President's tour. I've several questions - Did the NUS pay for tour? Is the Mark's implication that the President's interaction with the Board on this trip extended to a whole five minutes accurate? If it was only for an address to the Board, why couldn't a teleconference be arranged - less cost to the NUS and less carbon emissions to boot...

Perhaps the authors of ASP could find some answers for us...

Daniel O'Brien