If you happened to walk by Federation University’s Q2 building at 9am on Tuesday morning, you would have noticed a sorry sight. Hungover people in blue shirts that say ‘Unity’ lying in the sun, student media desperately searching Google Maps for a nearby cafe and others kicking a footy out on the nearby oval. What you wouldn’t have seen was the National Union of Students’ (NUS) National Conference (NatCon) in session. NLS had still not returned from their walk-out Monday night. Bailey Riley, NUS President and NLS member, descended from NLS accommodation rooms to declare the morning session adjourned.
NatCon revived
Bailey returned with the NLS faction to the conference at 2:50pm, ending NLS’ almost day-long quorum siege. Aiden O’Rouke, a senior Unity member, welcomed NLS by blowing kisses and saying, “thank you for coming.”
The conference did not pick up exactly where it left off. The LTSU motion that caused NLS to walk out was not put to a vote yesterday, instead a motion was passed that condemns ‘scab unions.’ It states that student unions should be run by students and rails against the trend of “university-controlled ‘unions’ masquerading as student unions.” It is unclear yet what exactly will happen to the LTSU motion.
However, the main theme of the afternoon session was Palestine. A large number of motions related to Palestine were voted through ‘en bloc’, meaning all at once. One Palestine bloc called on the NUS to release a statement in support of Palestine, particularly support for a ceasefire in Gaza.
Ela Akyol spoke for these motions. She said, “as Labor members, we must condemn Israel. Our taxpayer dollars are going to support Israel’s war crimes… We need to keep our government accountable and we need every member standing in solidarity.”
The bloc motion passed with support from all factions. At this point, there were a number of Palestinian motions remaining, but doomed to fail without Unity’s support. Unity, with the help of a few Liberal delegates, hold a majority on the NatCon floor.
SAlt criticised Unity for not going further on Palestine and for not using the word ‘genocide’ to describe the conflict. A speaker for SAlt said Israel is “the greatest scourge of imperialism and colonialism… We have one faction that refuses to admit that it is a full scale fucking genocide. I don’t know how we can say that it is not.” Grace Hill, NUS Queer Officer and SAlt member, said that Unity would have supported Hitler’s regime when talking about a trip Unity members made to Israel earlier this year.
Smoking on campus
UOW’s Alec Hall, former coordinator of this magazine and member of NLS, spoke on a motion related to smoking areas. The motion states that “the removal of safe smoking areas on university campuses is counter to the many improvements to campus safety made by universities over recent years.” The motion argues that the removal of safe smoking areas marginalises smokers and could push them to unsafe parts of campus or off campus entirely.
In relation to UOW’s move to a smoke-free campus, Alec said, “Our university got rid of our smoking areas except the uni bar. As someone who doesn’t drink that often… It’s frustrating to have to go to that area.”
Housing affordability
The issue of housing affordability was also discussed in the afternoon session. Unity again used its majority to move multiple motions en bloc and, despite NLS, SAlt and Grindies/Grassroots’ best efforts to convince them, they voted uniformly and as they saw fit. A motion calling for a nationwide rent reduction and a five year rent freeze were introduced to the conference floor.
Speaking for the motion, SAlt said Labor had a role in the housing crisis, seeing the government as enabling capitalist developers to profit from housing scarcity. Xavier Dupe, NUS Education Officer and SALt member, said, “I think we can all agree that property developers are pieces of shit, but who enables them? The Australian Labor Party.”
This was contrasted with Unity’s stance, which was an endorsement of free market principles to solve the housing crisis. They argued that removing the price incentive for developers lowers supply in the long term, leading to worsening affordability. A Unity speaker said, “building high density apartments is the only realistic way to solve the housing crisis.” They also point to the government’s Housing Australia Future Fund as evidence of action on housing.
The bloc failed without support from Unity.
Labor bashing, private gifts, and subway surfers
On motions surrounding NUS’s acknowledgement of cost of living and rental crises that students face, it wasn’t long until a SAlt speaker spoke: “We have to look at who is responsible for student poverty in Australia – it is the Labor Party.” A procedural motion was moved (and accepted) to play Subway Surfers split-screen on the TV. SAlt urged Unity to take the conference seriously.
Now onto the education chapter. Unity forwarded an amendment to a motion which sees NUS condemn private lobbying upon educational institutions and union members, and the creation of a public register that declares gifts accepted by union members. The amendment was to alter the motion so that the register is made available to only those who accept the gifts. Harry White, of NLS, asked, “to those moving this amendment, what do you have to hide?” Jasmine Duff, of SAlt, exclaimed that “this amendment is about allowing [Unity] to keep accepting propaganda trips to Israel!” The amendment passed via majority vote from Unity.
A campus count on the amendment of the motion was called because of internal tensions within Unity over this amendment. Nevertheless, all Unity delegates fell to the ‘yes’ side of the motion.
The university accords
The last big motion surrounded the topic of the University Accords. The motion calls for the NUS to refuse to participate in the Accords plan. The motion describes the Accords process as a project that aims to restructure higher education to boost economic productivity and encourage industry development and relations to the military-industrial complex. A SAlt speaker exploded into a rant about the wrongness of prioritising economy over education and refused to get off the mic, with the chair trying to force the mic from her hands before she pushed him off her. She was ejected from the conference and the motion failed.
A motion forwarding NUS’s support for the University Accords was then moved. Unity member, Gulied Abullahi, spoke for the motion: “We’re about fighting, I think anyone who doesn’t support our cause is wasting their time.” Before conference closure, a SAlt member responded: “What are you trying to argue?”
The motion carried via Unity majority.
And then we went to bed . . . Well, at least some of us did.
This article was written by Will Olteanu and Ronan Colley