Adelaide Student Politics

Posted: 28th of August

Eric Parsonage, a 3rd year Engineering student, is the only independent running without a ticket in the upcoming student elections. I tried to find out why.

What the hell are you doing Eric?
I’m running as an independent for the union board. I’ve decided to do the David versus Goliath thing and undermine all the major factional tickets that are running against me, to beat them all and become a truly independent leader of men.
Ok. You realize independents tend not to do very well, and you could have had a place on Activate or Indy-Go. Why did you chose not to side with a left-wing coalition of independents as opposed to your current path?
As much as I endorse and personally enjoy the left-wing philosophies, I don’t feel that personal politics has a place in student representation. I genuinely feel that when it comes to student representation, student representatives should represent the majority, or multiple student view. And although your own personal politics will provide you with a dogma that can inform your decisions normally, it doesn’t really have a place on union board.
You said ‘represent the interests of the majority’, not ‘the views of the majority. Isn’t it better to represent the interests rather than the uninformed views of the majority?
I don’t feel that I am sufficiently qualified to dictate to people what is in their best interests. I trust people to act in their own self interest.
You don’t think that after attending a meeting a month, numerous training sessions, and being well informed with the history of the union and its structure, it’s commercial operations and altruistic ones, you would not be much better informed to make decisions about the future of a student organization that has existed for over seventy years now, than the average first year?
This is an interesting point that you’ve raised. Basically you’re suggesting that training and education will take the place of true, genuine self-interested representation on the part of the students. I honestly don’t believe this to be the case. I believe that, although it may inform my decisions better, anything that I can be told in any amount of training I will be able to pass on the necessities of this to students through proper communication and proper use of the media. And I genuinely believe that is part of student media’s role, to pass on these complexities and the history behind all the decisions.
What about the point that students don’t want to know? They vote once a year, and they don’t wanna hear about you for the rest of the time.
The point is that students don’t want to hear about student politicians in general, not even once a year. But, I don’t believe….let me consider my reply momentarily.
Students will self-select their participation to events that they are stakeholders in. So at no stage do I expect the entire student population to vote for my particularly poll, I don’t expect everyone to take an interest. But I expect the people upon whom it impacts to take an interest. So basically they will self-select themselves out. Only the people who want to be heard and want to hear about what I’m doing will hear. It’s the magic of the internet.
How do you plan to do this? Through your own private website or something similar?
Yes
You mentioned (at the Q&A) focus groups. Do you plan to keep having them if you get elected?I don’t think I would have time. I like having focus groups, as I find people provide more meaningful input than just a yes/no vote in them. And, although people will have the option of being able to email me, I’ve found the focus group format much better in a freeform discussion. I don’t expect to be able to give as much time to the union board as the other directors will be able to, but it’s the best I can do.
Say the Liberals put up a motion to shut down the union. Say they get all their members to flood your site with ‘yes’ votes.
This would indeed be interesting. If they genuinely feel they have grounds for such a motion I will inform my voting site, and I will inform the student population of the nature of things, and I’d like to think they’d vote against it. If it truly turned out that the zeitgeist had shifted in that direction, and that people genuinely felt that the union should be closed down, then that’s the way I would vote.
How would you feel about the legal argument that as a board director you should be keeping a lot of information confidential? What would you do with in-camera motions and the like where you can’t ask for student feedback?
It is my personal belief that the in-camera clause in the constitution has been used far too often in recent years.
How would we know? We don’t after all know what goes on in-camera.
No we don’t. However, the sheer number of times it has happened suggests that there are either severe staffing and legal problems - and if there is the student population should probably know about it - or it’s been misused for factional politics. I strongly believe in a genuinely transparent union as much as is physically possible. If it concerns students they should know about it, and if the opinions of students can be extrapolated from the data I will have collected on issues surrounding it, I will be using that. If I have no data, and it is an issue that the student population is genuinely uninformed then I will abstain.
You were on the SRC this year which is a body which is meant to be more suited to general student interest and participation, as opposed to Board, which is more about the interests of the AUU as a whole. Why did you not incorporate this scheme of yours while you were on the SRC and why do you wish to do it now on Board instead?
This scheme of mine I developed because of my time on the SRC. I was shocked and appalled by the factional wheeling and dealing that happened on SRC, and I feel that student representation was lost. I was going to run on a nice comfortable left ticket, and maybe actually get voted on, about eight months ago. But I’ve become disillusioned.
Ok. Fair enough. You will never have anything anywhere near a majority…Because I’m one person?
Exactly. Do you think that giving students a voice which will constantly be ignored on union board will just lead to disillusionment and further disengagement from student politics? You will, after all, never be able to deliver.
I don’t intend to be able to successfully deliver very much if I get onto Board, because I am going to be on my own. However, with the exposure that I will provide on the wheeling and dealings, and the motions of the union board, the sense of participation that it will give students I believe will lead to a far more accountable set of politicians elected in the next set of elections after I’ve gone. Basically, I’m putting student representations foot in the door.
Is a vote for you a vote for uncertainty?
A vote for me is a vote for yourself. It’s a vote that you can keep on voting on.
So is that why people should vote for you?
Broadly. I asked students in general whether they trusted student politicians, and in general they respond ‘no’. In response to this I say that student politicians don’t trust them. Student politicians have a particular dogma and a particular set of rules that they will follow consistently in the decisions they make. Basically, you will not be voting for particular policies and particular decisions you will be voting for a dogma, for an ideology, that you hope will represent you as much as possible. With me being a fluid, and malleable member of the union board, you can tailor my policies to fit what you genuinely believe on each individual issue.
Every Board member this year was elected by at least fifty students, meaning that every decision they make has potentially the weight of fifty students behind it. You, I’ll guessing, will never get more than fifteen students for every decision you put up (if you’re lucky). Are you not less representative in that way than the conventional ‘factional’ student politician?
No. Beyond the information that they’ve provided to the student who voted for them in the first place, there is no further feedback on the decisions these politicians are making. I am constantly accountable for my decisions, whereas they only need to make the few pork-barreling decisions that they’ve promised, and then they will continue to have the student support. I will constantly be under student scrutiny. I’m a single person, if you have a faction, then although they possibly have fifty students each behind them, they can always make decisions that would be against these students interests, and against what these students would have voted for. These representatives can then lean on the rest of their faction and say it was a caucus decision. Whereas with me, if I make a decision that is against those that people voted for, then they can seek me out, and find me personally, and beat me up, because it will have been my choice and my choice alone. I am genuinely personally accountable.