Salient. Newspaper of the Victoria University Students' Association. Vol 42 No. 11. May 28 1979
The Policy Decided on
The Policy Decided on
This attitude was reflected in the National Commission in the fate of the first three [unclear: motions] presented on this topic. The first was That NZUSA condemns all conscious and [unclear: the]page 5cious racist acts - a motion that was [unclear: pas-manimously]. The second motion read NZUSA recognises that the violence [unclear: rated] with the haka party at Auckland [unclear: entity] was a direct result of domestic [unclear: ra-] and the inability of society's "normal nels" to adequately bring about social [unclear: Be].
After much heated discussion this motion was also passed, with one dissenting voice and one abstention. Unfortunately this motion was emasculated at final plenary, where each delegation gets the chance to change the way they voted on motions (and even the motions themselves.) The motion ended up with all the words after ".......domestic racism" deleted. Well, at least half of the reason for the haka party incident will be recognised by NZUSA.
The third motion was That NZUSA condemns physical violence as a means of expressing an opposing view in New Zealand. Apart from being an extremely badly worded motion (what about Australian violence) it fails to recognise the point made earlier that in this case, violence had become the only way to solve the conflict. With a division of opinion, this motion was lost.
It is my opinion that these motions constitute good policy for NZUSA. They recognise the evils of racism, they recognise that members of He Taua are sufferers of domestic racism and in effect, condemn the Auckland engineers for their racist act. As a result, NZUSA will tour a Maori activist (probably a member of He Taua) to further inform students of the evils of domestic racism, and the question of violence in society.