OSS is the common abbreviation for the name of the organisation of which the full title is National Overseas Students Service of the Australian Union of Students. It is the department of ANS which has the responsibility of dealing with the concerns of overseas students, and to this end, its annual conference is composed of a representative of the overseas students on each campus, together with representatives of various national groupings.

This year's conference was held at a camp between Sydney and Wollongong. This year it was decided that OSS should make use of the resources of the overseas students at the University of New South Wales, in Sydney, where there is a particularly large number of overseas students (between 1,000 and 1,500), and a full-time OSS Director on that Campus.

Much of the first day of the conference, after opening speeches had been given by the two representatives from New Zealand, was taken up with a review of the previous year's activities. Initially discussion centred around the report of the Director, B.S. Ang, but it later moved to consideration of the reports from the Overseas Students Service groups on different campuses around Australia, and then finally on to the subject of the relationship between AUS and OSS. Because of the importance of this relationship, and its significance for the conference as a whole, this is worth discussing at some length.

The "Smash the Aus Bureaucrats" Campaign

It would be hard to pick a precise point at which relations between AUS and OSS began to deteriorate this year, but since the Annual Council of AUS in January, conflicts have been developing within the union as the AUS leader-ship has successively tried to undermine the work of firstly the Media Department (which has responsibility for publishing the AUS newspaper "National U") and subsequently OSS. The reasons for these actions on the part of AUS leadership were firstly that they did not like the politics of the Media Officer whom they branded as a "Maoist", and in the case of OSS, secondly, that they had the boldness to point out faults in the AUS leadership.

One of the more remarkable instances of the campaign of sabotage which the AUS leadership carried out against OSS was the so-called "bromide machine" incident. This occurred during the height of a very important campaign being ran by OSS to try and get political asylum in Australia for former Malayan Student leader Hishammuddin Rais, when two overseas students were trying to prepare bromides for posters. One of the AUS Regional Organisers for Victoria, Sandy Thomas, tried to declare that the people from OSS could not use the bromide machine because it was the property of the AUS Friendly Society (part of AUS' commercial operations). When the overseas students proceeded to defy this ridiculous instruction, Sandy Thomas decided that he had better lock the overseas students in the bromide room because he thought they were going to beat him up. And when the overseas students finally got out of the bromide room, Sandy Thomas or one of his friends immediately went back into the bromide room and stole the lenses from the machine, thereby rendering it inoperative, and preventing the overseas students from completing their work.

This piece of sabotage, which was important for political and not merely physical reasons, was, however, only one of the many events which had occured to some relationships between AUS and OSS, and consequently the criticism of AUS was long and bitter, and statements in its defence did not meet with much support. The defence of AUS was not helped by its presentation as the one official representative of AUS present, New South Wales Executive Member David Patch, spoke for one hour and forty minutes solidly, during which everyone would have gone to sleep but for a few comments being made which reduced the entire conference to fits of uncontrollable laughter. One of these comments was a description of the politics of the AUS Executive as "revolutionary Marxist", a comment which caused absolute incredulity amongst the listeners.

During the debate on AUS/OSS relationships, one tactic was used by the AUS supporters which showed up clearly the particularly bogus nature of their Trotskyite pseudo-support for the rights of groups which are discriminated against. Two of them (one of them a homosexual) started harassing a Palestinian student and asking him whether he was anti-homosexual, to which he reluctantly admitted being. The two pro-AUS leadership people then promptly started abusing him, where upon he threatened to take them outside and deal with them. This made the two pro-AUS leadership people run to the meeting for protection, and after some debate, the Palestinian student agreed that he would not take them outside and hit them, and in approval of this retraction and the resolution of the matter, the meeting applauded. The AUS leadership are now claiming this as evidence that the whole of OSS is anti-homosexual.

There was one other occurrence in similar vein, which also demonstrates their scaly style of work. In his report the OSS Director had happened to use the word "degenerate", and chief defender of the AUS leadership, David Patch, immediately siezed upon this work to try and argue that, by using it, the OSS Director, Ang, was being antihomosexual. This was complete nonsense, as the intent or Ang's comment had been to describe the AUS leadership as politically degenerate, not to denigrate any of them for their homosexuality. Yet this ploy, by various homosexuals, to describe attacks of their politics attacks on their homo sexuality, is common within the AUS leadership.

But despite all their dishonest arguments, the supporters of the AUS leadership were able to make no headway in the debate and when the motions came up for consideration the following afternoon, a number of motions were carried un-animously to condemn the activities of the AUS leadership.

The Rest of the Conference :

After such a dramatic opening day, it was almost impossible for the rest of the conference to be carried on at the same feverish pitch, but much of interest and importance did come up. One of the sessions on the second day was a women's session, at which two groups of overseas women students spoke, and presented arguments as to the role and significance of women in the struggle for liberation. The position they adopted was summarised in their slogan "Women Hold up Half the Sky", which indicates the women's movement is not a separate movement, but an integral part of movements for national liberation and national independence. The role of the women's movement is to incorporate women into the revolutionary movement, and to make sure that the revolution achieves womens liberation.

The most interesting and exciting of the sessions on subsequent days were those which were devoted to the descussion of the situation in particular countries from which overseas students came, and the discussion that followed the presentation of a paper on the struggle against colonialism in Africa. This resulted in extensive descussion of such questions as the Somali invasion of the Ogaden Desert in Ethiopia, the Katanganese invasion of Zaire, the role of the Neto faction within MPLA, and the activities of Russian fishing fleets in scraping the sea bottoms off countries which they have established as "friendly" to themselves. All-in-all, a very interesting discussion of US Imperialism and Soviet Social-Imperialism ensued.

After the four days of the conference, OSS emerged with new heart and new vigour, ready to continue the battle on behalf of overseas students, and against the AUS bureaucrats for a strong and united AUS working for the interests of all students, overseas included.

"Promote unity through struggle, consolidate and further develop the Student Movement to oppose Imperialism and support national liberation struggles".

— Theme of 1977 OSS Conference.