The WUSA elections have ended and all the stupol hacks have scuttled away from campus. Provisional results have been released and tears of joy and sadness have been shed. Now it is time for us here at Tertangala to dig into what has happened.
These elections saw five tickets contest the elections and 29 nominees for the NUS delegate elections. The alliance that had previously existed between NLS (Labor Left) and Student Unity (Labor Right) called ‘Yeehaw United’ broke down this election cycle and resulted in ‘Amplify your WUSA’ (NLS) and ‘Revive’ (Unity) running separately with Ela Akyol and Joshua Lane heading each ticket. Incidentally, both Akyol and Lane contested the position of General Secretary. Socialist Alternative also contested the elections as ‘Left Action’ (SA) with Ryan Chapman leading the ticket as candidate for Education Officer.
This election also saw the return of the UOW Liberal Club as ‘Action for WUSA’, headed by Joel Johnson running for General Secretary. The Liberals have not contested WUSA elections since 2019 with ‘Yes for WUSA’. This return follows a successful campaign last year for Academic Senate last year headed by Liberal club executive member Oliver Griffiths.
Finally this election saw a new ticket under the name ‘Independent Media for WUSA’ (Ind), headed by Will Olteanu for Tertangala Coordinator, they also nominated two candidates for General Representative. This election also saw the nomination of a handful of independents for positions, partly because some people failed to register as part of their intended ticket and had to run as ungrouped candidates. It is difficult to discern what candidates were actually independent and who were factional but had simply filled out the nomination form incorrectly.
Since 2018 the Presidency of WUSA has been held by either of the campus left factions, Socialist Alternative and National Labor Students (Labor Left). This year has marked the first election since 2017 where there has not been a nominee for president from either faction within the campus left, in fact only one nomination was received for the position of President resulting in the uncontested election of Jessica Wallace from Student Unity (Labor Right).
Okay you have enough background info now here are the results:
President (Uncontested) – Jessica Wallace (Revive)
General Secretary – Ela Akyol (Amplify)
Treasurer – Hanzel-Jude Pador (Amplify)
Education Officer – Ryan Chapman (Left Action)
Tertangala Coordinator – Will Olteanu (Independent Media)
Welfare Coordinator – Mackenzie Hogden (Left Action)
Women’s Representative – Edwina Cooke (Amplify)
Environment Representative – Alexander Thorning (Left Action)
Disabilities Representative (Uncontested) – Abd El-Ghani Sawan (Revive)
Ethno-Cultural Representative – Frank Benson (Revive)
International Student Representative – Abrar Chowdhury (Revive)
General Representatives:
- Kaia Cox – (Left Action)
- Isaac Bankier – (Left Action)
- Matthew Brown – (Amplify)
- Jacob Malby – (Amplify)
- Serena Emanuele (Independent Media)
Here is a neat little graphic to visualise what the breakdown of council will be.
And here is a breakdown of our NUS delegation for 2023:
Left Action (SA) and Amplify (NLS) have obtained a clear majority of council, this creates an awkward situation for incoming president Jessica Wallace (Unity) as the executive and majority of council belong to opposing factions. It is unclear if this will result in a divided union reminiscent of the chaos of 2018 where neither the left coalition called ‘Save Our Union’ (SA, NLS and Inds) or ‘Revolution’ (Lib and Inds) were able to garner a majority of votes on council. Revive (Unity) has maintained representation on council only through the default election of Wallace and Sawan as President and Disabilities Representative respectively and the support of Left Action (SA) and Amplify (NLS) in the positions of Ethno-Cultural Representative and International Representative.
The election of Will Olteanu to Tertangala Coordinator is the first time since before this old hack enrolled here (2016 for those wondering) that a factionally unaligned ticket/candidate has successfully been chosen to head this rag. Congratulations Will, welcome to the stressy club of student magazine heads.
Good luck to the incoming council and I hope you are all ready for what you have gotten yourself into.
*Alec Hall is the current Tertangala Coordinator and a member of National Labor Students (Labor Left)
*These results are subject to appeal before declaration