Budget and Priorities

NZUSA went into May Council with a budgetted deficit of $6,650. Yet ruthless cutting of expenditure and a few financial fiddles gave us back a balanced budget. Most of the money came from salaries (there's no IVP anymore and we won't have an EVP or a second Research Officer for a month or two) and an unexpected increase in levy revenue.

Education and administration get a minor increases, National, International and Research have taken minor cuts, WRAC gets a little more while NOSAC gets considerably more.

It wasn't an easy process. From 7.30 pm on Saturday night until 3.30 the next morning the financial whizzes and the various lobby groups fought long and hard.

The session began with the setting of priorities. Each commission had already set priorities in its own area, although voting for priorities is done by delegations.

After a short discussion it was decided that the President would not have any priorities as s/he has already been given the direct responsibility for Overseas students and must be involved in everything anyway,

The GVP also has specific responsibility until June 16 for Soweto Day activities

The National Overseas Students Action Committee has no priorities but is of course reponsible for all policy relating to Overseas students.

The $6,000 Question

The next thing up was the budget. Although an earlier Finance and Administration Commission had already managed to pare the deficit down to $876 the Auckland delegates had it in their heads that $6000 was still to be found. So Mery Prince moved: That NZUSA accept from AUSA a second mortgage on the building at 32 Blair Street for $6,000 interest free to be repaid 30 June 1980. Lincoln seconded and the debate was underway.

Auckland's Chris Gosling seemed to be the major force behind the move. Prince supported him, while their treasurer Julian Leigh was clearly against it. Auckland's argument was basically that as they are a rich campus and NZUSA needed money this was an easy way of solving the problem. Gosling made some fine speeches but didn't ever get beyond this position, talking always in terms of easing the sticky position. The underlying assumption to his argument was that there will be a significant levies increase for next year.

At first it seemed like an attractive proposal. . . but only at first. Several people tried very hard to explain that a loan could not solve the problem. Quite simply, NZUSA's deficit budget was a problem of income. A loan is not income.

A levies increase is of course desirable from the financial point of view, but it is rather difficult to tell three campuses threatening to pull out that they must pay more money into an organisation they don't fully believe in. If the levy goes up next year and it's a big 'if the increase will be marginal. Would even Victoria, where relatively strong support for NZUSA exists, stomach an increase when our own fee is going up as well?

Victoria kept up its argument than any debate on a loan was irrelevant until we knew more clearly where we stood, calculators were out and heads were low as people around the table went over and over the figures to find ways of cutting expenditure, but for a while longer no progress was made. Nobody wanted to cut the campaign budgets, recognising that if NZUSA is to become more worthwhile in the eyes of students it must be seen to do more.

But in meetings like this, a saviour always comes along every couple of hours hours. This time it was Canterbury's Nigel Petrie, who announced he had been through the budget and created a surplus of $57. Auckland's motion was withdrawn, and Petrie read out the figures, He had cut out $500 for a Presidential trip to the Asian Students Association conference, chopped a bit off WRAC, eliminated the International budget (except those amounts already spent and $100 for the Soweto Day activities), increased NOSAC's allowance by only $500 and trimmed nearly every other campaign budget.

A lot of the proposals made sense to everybody, a lot were contentious, but Petrie had managed to do the thing which had eluded all others that night, give a specific basis to the debate. Following shortly after this Otago's Rod Carr suggested that NZUSA not pay $1,000 to STB for rent of the office space at Blair Street. NZUSA owns the building but STB is the commercial arm; money is supposed to flow from one to the other . . . it's complicated but the extra money suddenly seemed very easy to accept. This move became known as the "rent fiddle".

Unemployment, the major priority, finally received only $300 to be spent on three posters and leaflets. Bursaries was pushed up to $ 1440 (at least $ 1,000 of which has been spent). International was eventually given $478, $268 of which will be spent by the James Movick Appeal Fund. WRAC ended up $123 better off.

NOSAC was towards the end of the budget. Every time money was found there was a sort of tacit approval that at least some of it would go to NOSAC. The rent fiddle, together with a few other minor adjustments had created a figure of $1,540 to be allocated. But by the time the meeting actually began to consider NOSAC this had been whittled away to $500 odd.

To give NOSAC the increase it needed Victoria moved that the National Officers' salaries be reduced by $500 each. The present incumbents support the idea, and VUWSA has long been arguing for it, but there are a lot of opponents. Bob Lack (one of the student — appointed directors of the STB Board) was in the chair and made his views plain by resolutely steering the meeting away from discussing the matter. John Blincoe, ex-President and Chairperson of the Working Party, wrote a two page speech in case Lack's tactics should prove no no avail. The break came when Accountant Peter MacLeod suddenly stuck his head down and came up with the necessary cash. NOSAC didn't get all they asked for. People began to realise the budget could balance without any loan, without taking a drastic move over salaries and without knocking too much out of campaign allocations.

As Andrew Guest stated, it is a dangerous precedent to play around with salaries when other things want more money. But Victoria's motion, although prompted by the then current situation, was based on a principle. National Officers get $5757 pa. Not a lot, but well in excess of any constituent president. Yet it falls far short of any commonly calculated "fair return for the work done". National Officers don't take on the jobs for the money, so perhaps NZUSA should fully recognise this. The VUWSA proposal knocks them back to $70 pw in the hand, which is not a trifling amount, and still well ahead of our own President's $3000 pa.

Simon Wilson