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Salient. Newspaper of the Victoria University Students' Association. Vol 42 No. 11. May 28 1979

AUS in Trouble

AUS in Trouble

Recently Michael Carr-Gregg was co-incided with a referendum at Macquarie University in Melbourne on membership of the Australian Union of Students (AUS a sort of equivalent to our NZUSA.) Below he offers his analysis of AUS and its problems.

Three weeks ago, Macquarie University Students' Council decided to withdraw from a much troubled and criticised Australian Union of Students. In what was the highest student turn out in Macquarie's ten year history, the vote was 1519 in favor of seccession, and 1236 against.

Steve Lewis, the president of Macquarie, told Australia's weekly news magazine, the Bulletin, that ".....the AUS machine devoted a huge amount of resources to this campaign. There were thousands of leaflets distributed and a Friends of AUS table manned daily. Fifteen hundred copies of a pro-AUS newspaper was distributed and outside speakers - union officials and academics were called in to help, all that and AUS still couldn't hang on to Macquarie."

So far this year, the universities of Melbourne, Macquarie and New South Wales, as well as the Swinbourne College of Advanced Education, the Sydney Conservatorium and the North Brisbane Advanced College of Education have all left AUS. In response to the Macquarie vote, the President of Sydney University, Tony Abbott, moved a motion of seccession for his own campus, and a referendum to decide the issue will be held in the second week of the second term.

To add to the ever increasing worries-of AUS President Chris Hobson, it was revealed last week that there are proposals for Monash, and the University of New England to follow suit, as well, people on Tasmanian campuses are organizing seccessions for next term. The principle thorns in Chris Hobson's side, are the Centre Unity student groups, who claim that they have tried for three years or more to reform AUS, but have been frustrated by what they see as the undemocratic structure of the Union. They have been joined in their protests by the Liberal students who are vigorously opposed to the left wing nature of AUS,

Most Australian students I spoke to, did not seem to question the need for some kind of national body or organisation, but many have recently tried to examine the accountability and relevence of the present AUS, to the average student.

In particular they objected to what they described as an increasing tendency for AUS to become a mini-united Nations, currently supporting South African Liberation Centre, Malaysian News Service, Thai Information Centre and the Squatters campaign. Many kinds of organisations have come under the benevolent wing of AUS. Having supported the PLO in 1974/5, there was still a need to debate the Israel/Palestine and Kampuchean Vietnamese situations at the last conference. AUS then came out in support of "armed struggle in South Africa."

It is only a matter of time now until the traditional left wing leadership of AUS finds itself out on its ear. But what lessons can we learn from the Australian situation? How long will it be until NZUSA is faced with the same problem? What can be done now, to help avoid this type of situation? These are the questions that our student leaders must consider now and act urgently.

Michael Carr-Gregg

When Mr Carr-Gregg handed me this article, he said he believed the issue to be an important one. We agree, and Salient intends to produce an in depth article in the near future.

In the meantime however, Salient believes that facts are important, and therfore we ask readers to take note of the following errors and inaccuracies in Mr Carr-Gregg's article.

1.Tony Abbott, is a very prominent member of the National Civic Council, a fascist organisation which sprang up in Queensland (where else) and had been transporting its adherents around the country to spread its influence. For example at the 1978 AUS Council Abott represented the Queensland University. He is now, one year later at the Sydney University, where Mr Carr-Gregg spent much of his time. Unlike the students mentioned in the article, the National Civic Council is opposed to any form of National Student Unionism and it is the Liberal students who are supporting an alternative student union.
2.After the '78 AUS Council largely because of the cowardice of the leadership of AUS, and their refusal to organise their members into a campaign, AUS found itself by law denied the right to support various campaigns and projects they had funded in the past. The included the South African Information Centre, the Thai information Centre, the squatters campaign, the Malayan News Service and many more, including the Black Resource Centre. The Black Resource Centre is situated at Brisbane and is one of few effective self-help centres run by Australian Blacks.
3.There was no debate in 1979, 78 or 77 at the AUS Councils on the "PLO/Israel question". The debate was on whether AUS should have any policy at all on the middle east. In the 1977 and 78 Councils the National Civic Council (whose anti-semitism is a pure and unrefined as Hitler's) and the Australian Jewish Students Association formed an unholy alliance with the Communist Party of Australia to prevent discussions on this topic, and to constrain the officers of AUS in even privately expressing their own opinions. Many of the "centre left" were surprisingly antagonistic to this ploy.
4.AUS has supported "armed struggle" in southern Africa since 1976 to our certain knowledge, and probably supported it long before then.
5.The "left-wing" leadership of AUS has consisted since 1975 of members of the Communist Party of Australia (the eqiuivilent of the SUP only less so) the Social list Youth Alliance (Trotskyites) and their mangers on. After Patrick Mulrennens [unclear: pi] formance at the SGM on Wednesday one would have thought that this was the type of "left" that Mr Carr-Gregg approved of.
6.The University of New South Wales, [unclear: the] Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and many of the smaller colleges of Melbourne have left AUS not because of the "left" nature of that organisation, but because they believe that AUS at the 1978 Council deserted, without a fight, many of the principles and campaigns they consider appropriate to a national students union. Things such as the Black Resource Centre Malayan News Service, the Thai Information Centre. They were particularly antagonistic to AUS because of the attitude of the leadership of AUS towards the National Overseas Students Service, which was not only monstrously ill-treated at the 1978 Council but was also stripped of all its funding. In addition to this a member of the Communist Party of Australia decided that the 1978 Council was the time to accuse the NOSS of supplying the Malayan Communist Party with funds, and certain leading people in NOSS of being members of the MCP. But these allegations are capital crimes in [unclear: Malayasia] Fine inspiring leadership, showing great' concern for the well-being of its members, but left-wing? hardly!

The demise of the Australian Union of Students is as tragic as it now seems [unclear: mev] table. But the conditions that apply and [unclear: com] plied in Australia are completely different what has happened in New Zealand for the last few years. While there has been the [unclear: smae] resurgence in the right, with extremist [unclear: group] like to NCC and the National Front [unclear: port] huge sums of money into campaigns to [unclear: de] troy student unionism, the leadership, the aims, the work, and the objectives of the two organisations have always been at variance. Proximity should not be taken for complicity. To try to draw the parallers between the two organisations is neither just nor honest.