The Australian party Family First has sold out on its constituents by voting for the VSU legislation in its entirety. I’ll have a longer rant on this shortly but two things are clear:
- Family First doesn’t believe that childcare facilities, free legal advice, medical assistance etc is needed by families with parents or children who are students
- The other Queensland National Senators have sold out their constituents (as have all small l Liberals and other National senators).
You can believe in subsidising childcare and medical treatment without believing students should be the ones to foot the bill.
In fact, if you believe in a progressive tax system - where the rich pay more than the poor - then you reflexively object to students footing the bill. Especially when the users of university childcare tend to be either lecturers or mature-age students with dependable jobs (or a spouse with such a job)!
Judging from experience in WA and Victoria, probably only around 10%-20% of students will join a student union once it becomes voluntary. Doesn’t that suggest that fully four-fifths or more of people do not consider it in their best interests to belong? And doesn’t that suggest that the unions have failed to prove their worth and value to their members?
10-20% joined? Nice to see some still care. Yet, have you benefited from the services provided by the University student associations? If it’s so horrible, why not run a campaign for VSU to be adopted *within* the university rather than an ideological based executive decision by a Coalition drunk on their own power politics.
The concept of them are the same. Regarding WA’s experience, I refer you to the Court decision on the legislation. The after effects are still being felt.
Additionally, I suggest you read of the historical reasoning for investing the power of the fees into the students hands as a method of distancing them from the political fallout that may occur from various decisions. Somewhat similar to those feudal lords allowing the peasants the vote and a say in where there taxes go. Extended from that, let us apply “VSU” theory to taxation and see whether your ‘10-20%’ figure stacks up. Given the issues the ATO has in ensuring the most wealthy pay, and the pistol whip of Centrelink for those who do not earn that much to ensure that they pay their ‘fair share’.
I was preparing a long reply, but instead I’ve just shoved it on my blog:
http://splatguy.blogspot.com/2005/12/student-unions-do-not-equal.html
I’ll take this in turn (and I do wish that you’d have invested money in your own blog so that trackbacks would be enabled - get with the times and the technology son).
First of all, student ‘unions’ have nothing to do with trade unions in anything but the six letters used to spell ‘unions’. Thus the primary reason that they have been targeted has nothing to do with choice (look at ‘workchoices’, another sublime example of euphemisms where there is no choice between collective bargaining and bargaining individually), and everything to do with ideology.
Further:
bq. the SA Full Court rejected the notion that these provisions amounted to compulsory unionism. The student ‘union’ was “not a union of the kind well known in the industrial and commercial world†and membership was merely “an adjunct of enrolment as an undergraduateâ€
Second you mention ‘public good’ infrastructure. Many of the study areas around university, (at UNSW Kensington Campus in the Library and elsewhere) a large portion of university computers for free access by students, food retail outlets (including academic gowns), cooking facilities, free student legal advice, emergency loans, health and dental care, careers information, counseling services, reduced cost facilities for events and so on are provided out of the money that comes from service fees. These have historically been shifted from University Administration to student based administration due to the need for (whoa, get ready for this) transparency and accountability in spending - that is to say, the students determine where the money goes, what ‘public good’ infrastructure to invest in. I assume you will publish figures to prove your thoughts that services constitute only a small fraction (what is that btw, in percent of course would be nice), which are of course provided annually by student associations. You claim ‘most will be picked up by the Universities anyway’, I ask with what funding over the long term when the equivalent of between half a billion dollars and over “three billion dollar”:http://anulib.anu.edu.au/about/steele/knowledge_choreographers.html in real terms has been removed from the sector by the Howard’s Coalition while at the same time enrollments have increased and students per teacher have increased at the same time.
Third, when speaking of services, it is definitely an interesting one. With current providers on campus receiving reduced rents when compared to the land value as an attempt to semi-subsidise the high costs associated with providing retail/food facilities for only 50% of the year (at most) at full capacity (when compared with those business operating in commercial, industrial or residential areas where capacity factors of the businesses are far higher.
Finally, with respect to a “student’s right to freedom of association”:
bq. The Full Court of the Supreme Court of Victoria, in Clark v the University of Melbourne (No 2) [1979] VR 73, held that, under compulsory student unionism, there was no breach of a student’s freedom of association because they were not forced to be a student at any university and, therefore, not forced to become a member of any association.97 As the Court stated, the “essence of the University’s powers is that they are powers of self-government affecting only those who choose to become members by enrolment†and that “they [the University] cannot touch anyone who does not voluntarily bring himself within their worldâ€.
and
bq. Harradine v the University of Adelaide, the South Australian Full Court of the Supreme Court found that international covenants protecting freedom of association were not applicable to Australian students because the international covenants had not been enacted into Australian law and, therefore, did not give rise to any legally-enforceable rights. The SA Court then went on to reaffirm the Victorian Court’s conclusion in Clark regarding there being no breach of the student’s freedom of association in any event.
Two points:
1. Freedom of association is a basic right that does not depend on convincing 51% of the students on campus to agree. If that is your view, should gay students have to convince a majority that they have the right to sleep with whomever they choose, or Muslims convince a majority that they should be free to practice their own religion? Individual rights and liberties belong to individuals, not the “community” however defined.
2. The fact that international instruments do not have domestic legal application is hardly a novel legal thesis. But your basis for claiming that compulsory unionism does not violate freedom of association is predicated on the “choice” a person has to be forced to join a student union OR not to be enrolled at a university. Some choice!
Let’s think about that in the context of other freedoms, such as freedom of worship…”Sorry Mr Habib, if you want to send your son to any state school you must be a Christian - of course, you have the right to not send your child to a government school”.
Doesn’t sound too good, does it?
Frankly, if a private university wants to discriminate on any basis (and is stupid enough to do so), so long as they are not receiving a cent of taxpayers’ money, my view is live and let live. But if you are a taxpayer-funded institution (as are practically all universities in Australia), then taxpayers are entitled to require that basic human rights be upheld as a condition of funding.
No exceptions.
VSU - QED.
“I’ll have a longer rant on this shortly”
Can’t wait…