Adelaide Student Politics

Posted 30th of August

As avaliable here (pages 9-10)

Come 6am Monday the 31st of August, and the university will be teeming with life. The uncharacteristically early start signals the beginning of election week, by far one of the most tumultuous and bewildering experiences to be had at university. Those older and wiser tend to know the ins and outs of not being taken for a fool during the five polling days. For those less experienced, read on.

Activate is aligned with the left faction of the Labor party, and has tended in recent years to be one of the largest and most well-organized tickets contesting student elections. Led by Rhiannon Newman, they operate under a binding caucus for floor votes. That means that for any major decision they vote on, they’ll discuss it privately before the meeting and come to a joint decision. This is used for things such as officer bearer positions (including the all-important vote for Union President), as well as for votes such as whether to accept a proposal to sell Unibooks (all Activate members voted this down when it was presented to the Union Board last May). Wielding a significant amount of power and institutional experience, they faced significant criticism early this year for rushing through decisions made regarding the AUU delegation to the National Union of Students, leaving many independents fuming.

Activate’s enduring opposition has been the Labor right faction. In past years they’ve operated under a number of names such as United Students and Pulse. Now, they’re calling themselves Innovate. Led by relative newcomer Andrew Anson, they were on the same side as Activate in the controversial decisions regarding NUS. Last years elections saw their experienced Board members decimated following their causing the NUS, SRC and student media elections to be cancelled. This was no doubt coupled with a backlash resultant from their providing the votes needed to sell the Unibar and other commercial operations. In the wake of the defeat, Andrew Anson was left leading an inexperienced and relatively quiet faction on this year’s Union Board. By far his biggest impact, apart from the NUS decision, was a proposal moved by him which would have sold the AUU-owned Unibooks in return for $750,000. The proposal was defeated. In these upcoming union elections, Anson has recruited a team of largely fresh faces and come up with bold (or foolhardy) policies, such as having the AUU build international student accommodation, and providing free fruit to students. He’ll need to get a lot of his people elected if he is to assume the Union Presidency, which is widely rumoured to be his intention. Innovate is at this stage understood to operate on a binding caucus similar to that of Activate, though it being a new ticket it is hard to tell how it will operate in practice.

Anson’s occasional allies on Union Board this year have been a faction of several Liberal Board Directors. More or less led by Mark Joyce, they supported the decision to sell Unibooks. Joyce was in the doghouse for several months for his decision to publicize to the Advertiser what he argued had been at best an undeclared conflict of interest over the NUS decisions. Many felt he had broken the AUU’s Media Policy, which is intended to protect the reputation of the organization. Mark narrowly avoided censure over his decision. None of the current three Liberal Board directors are contesting the upcoming elections, and instead are pushing for another team of three to replace them. Daniel Fawcett leads the Liberty ticket, which promises to refocus the union on social activities at the expense of its political advocacy roles.

Eric Fan Yang leads a loose coalition of mainly Chinese international students known from year to year, rather unimaginatively, as the ‘internationals’. In past years they’ve tended to, with some notable exceptions, drop out of student politics after the elections. That said, Fan Yang seems to be the most committed leader they’ve had in years, and as none of them are returning Board directors, it’s almost impossible to say how this ticket will do in both election week and beyond.

Current AUU President Lavinia Emmett-Grey is not contesting the Board elections. She however is still managing her Indy-Go ticket, a motley collection of overwhelmingly left-wing independents. Indy-Go is binding on office bearer positions, but its elected members act as independents the rest of the time. By channeling preferences to each other, its candidates tend to be much more successful than those running entirely on their own. Indy-Go and Activate are likely to combine to push for a Presidential alternative to Andrew Anson, whom both Newman and Emmett-Grey do not want to see in the role. Who they put forward is at this stage uncertain, and likely to be affected by who gets elected to the SRC and other factors to be decided by the 5th of September (when the votes are counted).

This election sees only one high-profile independent running without a ticket. Eric Parsonage is a former SRC member whose politics would see him placed neatly in either Activate or Indy-Go. He’s chosen to go at it alone. His bold proposal is to vote on union board according to the results of an online poll, to be conducted by him on every major policy issue. He sees this as necessary to remake the union in a genuinely representative mould. Last year, no independents running without a ticket made it onto the AUU Board, so Parsonage’s odds aren’t great. Even with preferences, it is uncertain to this observer whether students will want to be engaged with student politics beyond election week in sufficient numbers to deliver Eric the votes he needs.