Salient. Newspaper of the Victoria University Students' Association. Vol 42 No. 20. August 27 1979

1980 Budget

1980 Budget

Below is a rough sketch of the NZUSA Budget for 1980. It is only intended to give some idea of where the money goes. Anybody with further queries should see either Peter Beach and Margaret Underwood (the two F&A Delegates from Victoria).

Staff salaries $47,000
National Officers salaries $24,500
Campaigns expenditure $8,000
Office administration $25,000
Rent etc. $10,000
Travel $11,000
Misc $15,000
$140,000

A few explanatory notes on these figures.

Staff salaries: As well as a number of part-time staff, this figure includes the salaries of two full-time research officers, one full-time Administrative Secretary (who is employed basically to run the office) and one full-time typist-receptionist.

Nation Officers salaries: These are the salaries of the three full-time National Officers (President, Education and Welfare Vice-President and General Vice-Presidednt) and the honoraria of the coordinators of the two Standing Committees (the Women's Rights Action Committee and the National Overseas Students' Action Committee). It also includes various allowances, such as moving expenses, for the full-time National Officers.

Campaigns expenditure: This is an allocation for producing materials connected with the various campaigns that are run. Normally this is in the form of leaflets, posters, supplements in newspapers and the like, although it includes allocations for other activities such as (for 1980) a survey to see how effective existing University welfare services are.

Office administration: This figure is the bogey of NZUSA, the figure that is always examined at Council, and then reluctantly increased. It includes a multitude of costs such as telephone rentals and toll bills, stationary, postage, office cleaning, freight charges etc. Just about all those things that you might otherwise forget about, thinking "well that won't cost very much!", accumulate in office expenses.

Rent: This is actually a misleading title, as NZUSA owns the building it lives in, and therefore by definition does not pay rent.

However the $10,000 is the difference between the income derived from the building (in the form of rents) and the expenditure on it (including the capital repayment of $5,000 per year on the mortgage), which is effectively rent. This figure is dramatically increased from last year due to a 600% (estimated) increase in the ground rent for the land the building occupies.

Travel: This figure includes the personal travel budgets of the three full-time national officers (between $1,500 and $1,800 per year each), much smaller personal travel budgets for the two standing committee coordinators, and allocations for travel by members of constituent associations to some of NZUSA's meetings (such as travel for the 7 constituent Presidents to the 7 National Executive meetings each year and travel of education officers to the various National Education Action Committee meetings through the year.)

Miscellaneous: This is where I became-lazy and stopped itemising smaller and smaller areas of expenditure. Included in it, for example, is allocation for the membership fee to the Asian Students Association ($1,000 per year) and travel to their conferences ($250 per year), allocation for payment to the Press Research Bureau for their clipping service of news items of interest to NZUSA, the cost of NZUSA's library and resource centre, depreciation, expenses from Council and the like.

Image of Brian O'Brien

Brian O'Brien [ unclear: preaching]