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Salient. Newspaper of Victoria University of Wellington Students Association. Vol 41 No. 3. March 13 1978

Touchdown

page 3

Touchdown

The New Zealand University Students' Association (NZUSA) is to scale down its travel operations. But don't panic. We retain our ISICs and many of the concessions that go with them, including the 50% price reduction on internal flights.

The decision was made last Monday at a Special General Meeting of the National Executive of NZUSA. The reasons for the move are complicated, and even now many factors remain unclear.

Student travel has never been on a stable footing. The amount of business conducted by the Student Travel Bureau (STB) has increased at a rate of 50% per year in the recent past and this has made planning exceedingly difficult. The latest move is an attempt to place travel within definite confines and thus make control easier.

But quite apart from organisational complications, several outside influences have been felt. Last year the Australian Union Student Travel Company (AUSTS) ceased trading for one month and our joint operations with them suffered accordingly. Uncertainty over the position of other trading partners has taken nine months to resolve. In addition travel regulations have for some time been in a state of confusion and it has not been clear just how STB would be able to operate.

At the SGM the Board of Student Service Holdings (SSH), the parent company for NZUSA commercial functions, presented five options. The first involves the complete withdrawal from travel activities including ISIC's. This was called Option O and would mean that some private operator looking for a fast buck would snap up on student concession schemes. The fact that NAC and Air New Zealand currently make about $1 million a year out of students is not to be overlooked.

Option 1 is similar. We would retain the ISIC scheme but engage in nothing else. The problem here is that it would not take long for NZUSA to lose the ISIC franchise (because we would not be providing a proper travel service) and position would revert to option O.

Option 2, which has been accepted, seems the most viable. Sales offices are to be restricted to the campuses in the four main centres, Dunedin's being part-time (thus Waikato and Massey close down). Normal commercial products will not be available, and staff will be cut back to a minimum.

Option 3 involves continuing the present arrangements. To do this would mean shelling out about $30,000 per year, and anyway there is no guarantee that things would not keep on getting worse.

Option 4 involves expansion. A large capital outlay would be needed (which nobody has) and the service would probably become very similar to that provided by most other travel agencies.

So it's Option 2. NZUSA remains committed to the principle of continuing travel operations for students, but still has a long way to go in getting out of the woods. One of the big problems centres around the staff of the various travel bureaux. To start with, it seems they have not been kept as fully informed as they should have been. This is surprising considering NZUSA's record in fighting for the rights of working people. The effect of redundancies is still to be worked out, but it has been suggested that budgetted payments for this purpose are not sufficient.

It is proposed that each office will be staffed by only one person, and that raises the issue of what happens when leave falls due, etc. In any event, it may well be that some offices will have too much work for just one person. Will the salaries be adequate? And will the new streamlined organisation in head office be appropriate to the new structure?

The Board have drawn up a "typical" budget to meet some of these queries, but it in itself raises further problems. Although a surplus is shown this would not occur in the first year of operation and possibly not in the second. The Board admits that the budget is provisional and would have to be altered each year, which suggests that its true use is severely limited at the present time.

One definite proposal which came out of Monday's meeting was that a Joint Planning Committee be set up to investigate ways of making Option 2 work. This committee met on Thursday and reported back to another SGM on Sunday. Many of the questions being raised here may have been answered at that meeting, and two further major complications may also have achieved some sort of resolution.

The first is that SSH companies have a trading deficit of $75,000. Constituent associations are under no legal obligation to pay the money, but they have agreed that it will be paid. A motion from Victoria and Waikato, "That NZUSA and its constituents do in principle undertake to advance to STB Ltd. all monies required to settle its debts as at 31 March 1978", was carried.

There are two possibilities, a levy may be raised on the ISICs, to be paid over in installments. This would tie payment directly to travel operations in the form in which they continue.

Alternatively, the constituents could make loans to NZUSA as a secured second mortgage on the NZUSA building in Blair Street. If this were to fall through, or prove not to provide the necessary finance, the building would be sold.

There are two main arguments against selling the building. NZUSA has spent a lot of money renovating it to the particular needs of National Office and might have to do the same thing all over again. More importantly, can NZUSA take it upon itself to deny future students the privilege of owning a building which they are sure to need? The question of the debt will be of increasing significance in the next few weeks, and we can expect to have it debated fully at an SRC.

The second major complication in resolving the travel issue revolves around internal difficulties within NZUSA. Canterbury and Lincoln intend to secede later this year, and the ill-feeling between them and National Office seems to have spread to Otago president Andrew Guest. To be fair to Lincoln, their reasons for pulling out appear to be largely a matter of not accepting that NZUSA should have a strong political role. But both Guest and Michael Lee, president at Canterbury, are using this issue to force a confrontation. Sunday's meeting was expected to be a stormy session.

Next week we will be bringing you a full story on NZUSA's internal crisis, and hopefully the travel situation will have been clarified.

Simon Wilson

David Cuthbert, Managing Director of STB

David Cuthbert, Managing Director of STB