On Thursday 21 June, a scant two hours before Muldoon read out his budget, the students of Canterbury University completed voting in their referendum: That UCSA withdraw from NZUSA at the end of 1979. Just before Muldoon announced the brand new TSG (Tertiary Study Grant) we in Wellington heard that the referendum had been convincingly lost; 800 votes to 500.

Membership of NZUSA has been a contentious issue at Canterbury for the last 18 months, with innumerable votes taken at meetings, and two full scale referenda, so it seems optimistic to believe that this latest binding referendum will resolve the matter for once and for all. This is because it has always seemed that the moves against NZUSA are not "ground-swell" movements of large numbers of students who are dissatisfied with the organisation, but have tended to come from the leadership of UCSA. It is no secret that UCSA's 1979 president, Tony Stuart, favours UCSA withdrawing, and a number of his Executive (and a few hangers on outside it) seem to have turned destroying NZUSA into a personal crusade.

It must be emphasised that the intention of those individuals is to destroy NZUSA, not to reform it, but to smash it once and for all. NZUSA's strength and effectiveness comes from its national character, the fact that it represents all 38,000 university students in this country. If Canterbury were to permanently leave the organisation much of NZUSA's effectiveness would be lost. The shell of the organisation might remain for a while, but ultimately that too would crumble.

Why We Don't Need NZUSA

The arguments against NZUSA, which have never been particularly clearly articulated, stem from two beliefs. The first, more widely held, is that NZUSA devotes too much time to matters which do not "concern" students. The second, which follows from this, is that, in the area of student welfare, individual constituent associations could perform as an effective a job as NZUSA does on their behalf.

The claim that students' association are expending too much effort on matters which do not directly affect their members is one that is frequently levelled against all the members of NZUSA as well as NZUSA itself. It must be admitted that NZUSA expends a greater proportion of its energies into these matters than do the individual constituents. Even at Victoria (regarded as the hot-bed of concern for "irrelevant" matters) the amount of money and time spent on, say international issues, is quite insignificant. NZUSA however does spend some time and money on matters of national, and less frequently, international importance. There is a General Vice-President (one of the five full-time officers) who is charged specifically with work in this area and a part-time Women's Rights Officer whose field is Women's Rights generally. The work of these two individuals is normally outside the range of what is normally regarded as "relevant students issues"!)

However it is unfortunate for those that advocate removal of all such issues from NZ USA's field of activity, that the expressed interest at campus level suggests that there is a need for this type of work within a students' association. Now clearly, by their very nature, these activities are of a nationwide significance, and therefore it is logical that most of the work around them is most effectively done if centralised through a nation-wide body. The result is that NZUSA spends a greater proportion of its resources on national issues than most of its constituent members, but not because the "political heavies" who, it is claimed, dominate NZUSA, able to implement these policies that they are unable to propose on their own campuses, but because these issues are best handled on this level.

Putting it a different way, if we consider the abortion issues, the issues involved the background work required, the publicity material etc do not vary from university to university. Therefore it is sensible to have all this sort of work done once, on a nationwide basis which co-ordinates the work on all campuses. So, rather than providing the resources at Victoria, Auckland Otago, etc for seven different individuals to work away at the same thing, in essentially the same way, it is done once, for all the constituents, at the national level. It is the allocation that NZUSA makes for this type of work that enables, for example VUWSA, to devote more of its resources to other areas.

It is also significant that those who have criticised this aspect of NZUSA's work the most, have not succeeded in preventing the associations of which they are members from becoming involved in these issues. All the constituent associations of NZUSA have policy on the abortion question, none have taken the position that this is an issue that has no relevance to students. However [unclear: oppornents] of NZUSA have still attacked the organisation for having a Women's Rights Action Committee which allows for more efficient work in this area.

The second argument against NZUSA is that, even in matters relating to student welfare, it is unnecessary and the individual students associations could do the job equally well. The objections to this are many and varied. There is the question of expense. NZUSA employs two Research Officers, at not an insubstantial salary, to get the background information and prepare the necessary submissions and reports. Both of them work Very hard (often harder, or at least more efficiently, than some of the elected officers), and generally their work relates to all the associations. For example in the work that was done on the bursaries issue, the matters raised related to all of, or portion of, the student population in each university in the country. Yet some seem to argue that each association should have have its pair of skilled and trained research officers working away diligently, each duplicating what is being done in each centre. It seems to me that this involves a needless repitition of effort.

There is also the question of presenting the best case for students. On the bursaries issues for example (which as an aside [unclear: ha] cupied the vast bulk of NZUSA's work [unclear: is] year) NZUSA has presented a unified [unclear: oc-prehensive] case to government, and the [unclear: i] cation Department. With seven [unclear: individu] each presenting their own ideas with [unclear: dif] rent priorities, not only would it be [unclear: alm] impossible to convince anyone on what national bursary policy would be, but it Id enable government and other bodies [unclear: t] have a field day playing off one [unclear: associati] against another.

There are a variety of other argument that can be used to rebut the allegation [unclear: t] NZUSA is unnecessary. For example the liaison between national officers based in Wellington and Governmental and [unclear: Deparmental] officials is built around a persona contact basis. It is not possible to fully [unclear: uderstand] what is going on, why it is going on and whose doing it, ensconsed in the [unclear: i] latial luxury of Canterbury's student [unclear: uni] building, 300 miles away from Wellington Another informal, but nevertheless vital function that NZUSA performs is that of, allowing contact between the constituent associations. By coming together through a common national association, all involved gain a better understanding of what is happening right around the country. NZUSA provides a contact between organisations scattered over 1000 miles that would otherwise probably not occur.

The rash of "restructuring" that seems to be popular right throughout the country (even Muldoon claims that he's doing it) has also infected the students associations. So far however, none of these restructuring ventures have met with support from, the students, and failing to win at he me, many have turned to attacking NZUS This technique has more chance of success as, sadly, few students seem to understand what their national association is and what is does. The thrust of most of the attacks attempt to continue this ignorance, and [unclear: rely] on rumour and basic prejudice. One [unclear: beneficial] thing to come out of the [unclear: Canterbu] referendum was that people did get out [unclear: an] explain exactly what NZUSA did, how it [unclear: c] it and why it was important for it to continue. Presented with this evidence the response of the students was quite conclusive - they wanted to retain NZUSA.

Peter Beach.