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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume 33, No. 5 22 April 1970

Salient Interview

page 5

Salient Interview

What is NUAUS trying to do? What's it about?

NUAUS was established in 1933. It got its first full-time education research officer back in the late fifties and from there it really started developing an education lobby for students. It sought a better deal in terms of more and better quality scholarships and campaigned for more money for education as a whole. It also campaigns for student representatives on all university governing bodies, student involvement in the curricula, and a different approach, as far as measuring criteria are concerned, towards examinations.

The Union has nineteen different Departments, five of which have a full time officer, like myself, in charge with a light secretarial staff. These are fields like Abschol, which is providing scholarships for Aboriginals where the Government doesn't and campaigning for a realisation of the needs of Aboriginals as a whole. NUAUS is concerned with action on social issues generally. It campaigns on a myriad of things in national affairs, bringing out quite a large number of publications in many fields.

We do more than just lobby the Government. We were, for example, the only group providing scholarships for all Aboriginals that wanted to enter tertiary educational institutions and for most in secondary education. The Government has taken over, providing a scholarship for tertiary education and for senior secondary. We are still, however, the only people providing them to any significant extent in the junior secondary and in the primary group.

You seem, from what I can gather, to be fighting on dozens of fronts: education, licensing laws, censorship, national service . . . how is this effort co-ordinated?

Well at the moment it isn't all co-ordinated. There is an officer who looks after each one of these sections. The local university provides the manpower. We try to help co-ordinate each section. Any university proceeds to take any task it likes.

Do you think that this is different to NZUSA?

No, it's much the same as NZUSA except that possibly NZUSA does not co-ordinate as much as we do on projects such as Abschol, for example.

What's the attitude of the students on the campuses to NUAUS?

It varies very much from campus to campus. Many people are dissatisfied with NUAUS on some issues while others support it very strongly. It often depends on whether the campus is an active one. If one campus is not interested in the needs of education or is not interested in Abschol or Papua-New Guinea, conscription, immigration, national service, they wouldn't get a peat deal out of NUAUS. They would still receive the welfare benefits—we run a huge travel business, our own friendly society, which includes opening our own discount pharmacies, and our own medical health insurance scheme.

Your style of student politics is a little different from ours—I'm thinking, for example, of the invasion of the SRC offices in Sydney.

There were two invasions. There was the occupation by activists of the administration building and the right-wing occupied the student buildings. The right-wingers didn't last long . . . The activists in the administration building lasted 22½ hours.

Picture of Gregor Macaulay

Gregor Macaulay is the President of the National Union of Australian University Students. He attended NZUSA's Easter Council as an observer for NUAUS.

It seems that there's a gap between the administration and students in at least one of your universities. Is this general?

It's developing in most.

Is any of the blame attached to the students?

Some of it is attached to the students. Sometimes the students demands are unreasonable—at the time. But then you've got vice-chancellors, administrations and even professors and lecturers using harsh retaliatory tactics—then there's trouble. This is what has happened a couple of times. The universities have over-reacted. You've got people who believe that scholarships should be taken off students who are opposed to national service on the grounds that they're breaking Commonwealth law.

The National Civic Council, a very right-wing group, have set up small groups of people in the universities that are just bringing out broad-sheets denouncing student leaders as communists, claiming that the students are provoking the administration and making the old "any violence was caused by students, and the police were right" claim.

Who runs your universities in each state? Is there a local minister of education who is responsible for this?

No, each university is far more autonomous in Australia than it is here; they're run by a university council.

Is this why you have your problems principally with the academic or administrative people rather than with the Government?

Yes, and the universities and the students are fighting to keep this autonomy at a time when the Government thinks that the university student is getting a bit long-haired and should be controlled.

You were talking earlier about only one third of the students who applied for admission to Melbourne University actually being admitted. What were the grounds for rejecting the other ones?

Not enough passes.

What criteria do they use to admit people?

A certain number off the top of the academic scale get in—the rest get excluded. There are literally thousands not getting into tertiary education although they have matriculated, which is like your University Entrance. Paper qualifications to enter a university do not secure entry.

What are you doing about things like your relationship with South Africa—your relationship is probably closer than ours?

Yes, our relationship is economically closer than yours, more particularly with Rhodesia. We've been campaigning and we do this as actively as possible. It's usually more in terms of moral and verbal support. We publicise the question in our publications. I was one of the few people who spoke out against the cricket tour of South Africa. This didn't gain us a great deal, although, remarkably we've recently made some progress against sporting tours.

Opposing sporting tours is, however, scratching the surface—it's the economic aspect that we try to get at. We'll be putting propositions to trade union organisers. If you're going to oppose apartheid you should oppose it right down the line at all times; don't use, for example, tobacco which is still coming out from Rhodesia.

South Africa, however, isn't as big an issue in Australia as it is here because we have racism at home as embodied in attitudes towards Aboriginals and overseas students.

And you're trying to break this sort of thing down—do you feel you're winning or losing?

We're winning, very much so on the Aboriginal question and with it, on the other ones. But we've a long way to go.

The road that Australia seems to be taking is towards America.

This is beginning to be reversed, or at least curtailed. The pressure now against the open sell-out to the USA is such that the sell-out is being slowly curtailed as politics in Australia are being warmed up.

Do you think that the pro-US drift might be replaced by some form of nationalism?

No, I don't think we're ever going to return to the sort of isolationism that we've suffered from in the past. Not with the amount of immigration we've had.

What about Gorton's "fortress Australia?"

Oh, well. Gorton . . . I mean. Gorton says there is no inflationary problem and his own treasurer says there is one. He's just so hopeless, such an embarrassment it's unbelievable-even in terms of Australia he's a joke—to a lot of people.

What do you think of New Zealand's style of student politics, about the sort of matters that come up, and the way in which they are discussed?

Ok, One thing to start with; I only attended your Easter Council which, from what I can gather, your presidents and your more active students attend. What actually happens on the campuses and whether these people represent students' views completely, I couldn't judge. Compared to NUAUS the style is a little different, and a lot of it I think is a function of sire. NUAUS is a bigger organisation, there are more people at the table. The methods of discussing things is a little more formal and the issues are discussed more in principle and then a sub-committee or a conference during the year will sort out the details. An issue which was a battle here, like the capping book controversy, would never come to an NUAUS table.

What if, as it was in our case, the value of the national body was called into question?

The localised issue would be ruled out unless it was a matter concerning the majority of our eighteen constituents or unless it was an issue that was going to grow. For example fee increases in NSW became an issue because other States began to put theirs up too. It started off with one group of our constituents and spread. But minor battles between universities—and these go on—the rivalry between Australian universities is far greater than it is here—these never get considered.

Another difference is that there is more time spent on student welfare—our representation techniques are more developed and the lines of communication are a little more direct to decision-making processes.

Have students ever questioned the value of NUAUS?

Yes, and when this happens we lay out what we're doing for 75c—what it's being spent on, what NUAUS's activities are, and so on. Sometimes criticism has been a little ignorant—many people don't quite realise how much work's being done on most of the issues, and where the money is going.

Are you taking anything back that you actually learned from us? Do you think there's anything that we have that has any value?

I was interested in some of your Accommodation Officer's ideas on non-hall housing. This is becoming an important issue in Australia—the construction of flat-type units.

I also got some good ideas on potential methods of financing. Your idea about debentures to build your own building for NZUSA is an interesting one.

I have been able to have a long talk with the Cultural Affairs Council people and the travel people and I hope to develop further co-operation; joint ventures and exchanges and encouragement of Australian students to participate in your forthcoming congress and Am Council. We hope also to encourage more students from New Zealand to come over to our large Arts Festival which is held every two years.

What are some of the things which we could tidy up on?

I would say that if you really want to take on big social issues you need to get more support from trade unions, employers and white-collar workers. You should encourage more past students to support you. I think you should also press for more direct involvement in decision making—university financing, for example. In Australia all local student groups see our Australian University Commission—which is the equivalent of your Grants Commission—when they're drawing up their priorities. In short you should get to Government levels—spend a lot of time and effort hitting the decision making process where it matters.

What sort of possibilities are there for maintaining contact between Australian and New Zealand students?

One of your Council motions directed Paul Grocott and I to investigate the furtherance of a loose affiliation between the two organisations and I hope to develop this to get more direct involvement. I think you'll see the President and NUAUS officers coming over here more and we hope to see New Zealand leaders in Australia—we hope to see them coming to some of our specialist conferences as well as our full councils.

Another thing I'd like to see developed is more, inter-university exchange where you could do your post-graduate work in Australia instead of New Zealand, or vice versa.