What was Decided

Discussions at Council are spread over four days, and split into various discussion groups. Plenary meetings start and finish Council, where major reports and decisions are considered. There is also a priorities plenary to allocate weighting to various plans. Vic's chief (=plenary) reps were Lisa Sacksen and Gyles Beckford. Apart from these, particular policy is discussed in Commissions: Finance and Administration (Vic's rep Mike Curtis), National (Anthony Ward, John Granier); International (Bryony Hales, John Henderson); Education (Rod Prosser); and Accommodation and Welfare (Peter Aagaard, Angela Bellich). Victoria had the biggest delegation, and often the largest number of reps at each session (chief delegates can also vote in the Commissions). This lead to at least one interesting vote: on a procedural matter in National Commission, Clare Ward (Auckland, 9 votes) voted against the motion while Lisa Sacksen, Anthony Ward and John Granier (Vic, 7 votes) voted for it. No one else voted, and the decision was won on the voice vote!

Discussion in most of the Commissions was pretty anaemic, the important issues being:

Welfare Vice-President (Welfare): discussion on the WVP centred around 2 points. The first, resolved that the setting up of a WVP was the priority, but depended entirely on more office space and secretarial assistance being available.

The second point was the relative merits of a resource officer (an appointed position of a skilled researcher without political power) or a vice president (an elected position similar to IVP and EVP, with political power to express NZUSA policy). Eventually the vote was in favour of a WVP, who was seen as being more responsible to students than a resource officer responsible to NZUSA bosses.

Building (Finance): it was felt that the best way to get around the present chronic shortage of space in the national office was for NZUSA to buy a building. Finance wizard Peter McLeod (the accountant) reckonned that if half of it could be rented out NZUSA might make a profit. Most campuses agreed to provide money towards a loan of $20,000 between them to fund the building, subject to General Meeting approval.

Assessment (Education): a rather anarchic idea stemming from the Australian Union of Students abolishing assessment was considered, but the rather more sensible idea of opposing assessment when it interferes with the teaching process was agreed upon.

Unicine (Finance): after no discussion in F&A (but with temperatures very high), final Plenary agreed to ask Unicine (which runs the films on all campuses apart from Auckland and Lincoln) to secure the $2,000 loan given them last year.

Land (Accommodation): Canterbury suggested the nationalisation of all land to get rid of property speculators. This is being referred back to campuses.

General Election (Education): it was agreed to refer this back to the campuses as well, toward gaining co-ordinated national policy at August Council.

National Union of Students (National): it was suggested that a working subcommittee be set up to report to August Council on an NUS. Victoria (i.e. me) was gagged on the original decision to set up the working party and then attacked for being undemocratic and destructive for refusing to support the subcommittee. Alick Shaw made a wide-ranging attack on Vic's position here, misrepresenting many points and often contradicting himself (eg. describing Vic's attitude on NUS as being purely a personal attack — which it isn't), and starting from there to conduct a violent personal attack on the person he imagined responsible for Vic policy. Most of the other constituents considered the attack unfair, but it provided one of the few heated discussions of the Council. After tempers had cooled, Final Plenary agreed to set up the working party (watch for more debate on NUS).

Environment (National): most policy, including proposals on South Island beech forests, were passed with little discussion A very good report was received from Waikato on energy resources, which will be continued and considered at August Council along with policy ideas from Vic and Auckland.

Maori Rights (National): reps from Acord came to discuss the matter, and NZUSA recognised New Zealand institutions as racist before referring Vic's Te Reo Maori submissions and other ideas on Race Relations to August Council to give constituents time to look at them.

Women.'s Rights (National): policy was reaffirmed on women's rights and opposing oppression and discrimination. A pro-abortion stance, and support for the Remuera clinic were agreed upon. As with Environment, the most debate centred on remits seeing the problem as part of the nature of society, attempts at solution being ultimately frustrated by that nature.

New Argot (Finance): see separate article on New Argot and Arts Council.

Salaries (Finance): the salaries of the elected officers were raised to $3803 after a rather unsatisfactory discussion. One of the officers had found difficulty living on the previous salary and brought the matter up in Finance and Administration Commission. The matter was deferred to the final plenary where all the national officers were present. Victoria delegates presented a paper with a financial breakdown of reasonable living expenses for national officers which was variously described as 'idealistic', 'incomprehensible' and 'most abhorent' in the various points it made. What the Vic document said was that elected officers were expected to work for the organisation primarily because of committment to students and not for financial reward. While they were not expected to be financially disadvantaged by working for NZUSA they were expected to have a lifestyle that was not fantastically removed from students.

These provisions, on which any democratic union bases its rate of renumeration of elected officials were not taken seriously by most present. Peter Aagaard had said that he failed to see how national officers couldn't live on what they got at the beginning of the debate. The truth or falsity of that statement was never proven for no case was put for the salary hike. Various opinions on the stress of working in the NZUSA office page break [unclear: in] increased spending and that [unclear: suffered] from repressed spend[unclear: s] and So were not a good bans [unclear: al] officers lifestyle, were ad[unclear: Yet] at least one national off[unclear: old] me that the wage they al[unclear: was] high enough to be 'em[unclear: Vic] eventually dissented [unclear: tion] on the salary increase. [unclear: s] a considerable body of policy [unclear: ssed] and much is being brought [unclear: ne] campus level for consideration. [unclear: hoped] that it will receive great[unclear: ntion] than the NUS proposals [unclear: last] August Council's recomm[unclear: back] to campuses, three out of [unclear: campuses] still had no policy on [unclear: r]. Criticisms can be levelled at [unclear: y] of the chairmanship — most [unclear: fficers] tended to dominate [unclear: missions], though this is un [unclear: due] partly to the reluctance [unclear: situent] reps to do much about

[unclear: ussions] were often not contro[unclear: hich] gave the meetings a som[unclear: racter]. It would be pleasing [unclear: re] due to debates on all cam[unclear: ing] with students agreeing on [unclear: fortunately] this is often not [unclear: on] too many campuses policy [unclear: by] small groups, and little [unclear: made] to draw in wider stud[unclear: on]. Victoria is better on this [unclear: the] others — if only because [unclear: making] body (SRC) is open [unclear: ents] to attend and vote, un[unclear: places]. Democracy in this [unclear: vary] much dependent on [unclear: ents] wish to make of it.