Some twenty Federal Labor MPs are reportedly unhappy at moves to reduce MPs’ printing allowances and more tightly regulate the use of their printing equipment, stationery and subscriptions.
Media coverage has focused on the misuse of parliamentary printing entitlements for partisan electoral purposes. However one aspect of this problem has escaped notice.
It is virtually impossible to work, study or reside at an Australian university for any length of time without periodically experiencing the inundation of one’s campus with thousands of leaflets, posters and/or anonymous slander sheets dealing with the politics of the local student representative organisation. Further, if one knows anything about the economics of bulk production of leaflets and posters, one knows that it would be rather difficult for a group of average students on average student means to afford to produce and distribute posters and leaflets – usually of high-quality layout and print quality – in such numbers. So how do they afford it?
The truth, in many cases, is that they don’t. Having been a sometime participant in student politics, I can vouch for the fact that at least one faction in student politics associated with at least one of the major political parties gets its printing and photocopying done at the electorate offices of members of parliament and/or local government. I would also suggest, with reasonable confidence, that each of the other two factions in student politics associated with one or the other of the two major parties benefits in similar fashion from the involuntary generosity of taxpayers and ratepayers.
Further, without naming names, I can also state that an elected office-holder (who is no longer working in that capacity or involved in party politics) once stated in my presence that they could assist a particular ticket in a student organisation election in the manner described in the previous paragraphs, but that they would be asked by their party faction whether, and how, the faction would benefit from the success of that ticket in the election. I have no reason to believe that this kind of expectation is, or was, confined to that particular faction or party. [NB: The ticket in question eventually made do without the assistance of the elected office-holder and their entitlements, and was defeated by a ticket which did not scruple to ask for and receive such assistance from other elected office-holders, and subsequently reciprocate using student council resources illegally.]
I would like to think that these practices have not spread beyond the major parties, but I don’t know that.
Many of us who post or comment at LP know that this goes on, or at least did go on prior to the Howard Government’s destruction of many student representative bodies through VSU legislation. Some would know more about it than I do. I think it’s time we said that enough is enough, that if student representative bodies are to be restored one of the conditions should be that a level playing field exists in their internal processes between student factions associated with political parties and those with student-focused agendas, and that if the reforms to parliamentary entitlements helps to end taxpayer-funded paper floods and shitsheeting on our campuses, this is an unambiguously good thing.
Well said, Paul, and I’ll join you. It’s beyond time, if only to prevent the effects flowing on to the larger political environment.
(But I should also add that my experience was that those factions without access to major parties’ facilities tended to resort to using, where they could, the student association’s own copiers; including in one instance I know of, breaking into a student association and physically removing a 200kg+ machine).
Yes … I’d agree with that as well, even if only on environmental grounds.
Wistfully we must look back as Students at a Higher Education Facility,must we!?Pity the unemployed like myself in younger days protesting on the streets,where no students were often not seen,and shoving leaflets into peoples’ hands on the streets of Melbourne and letterboxing often with lowly paid workers.Snotty characters ,you are!Still privileged beyond your capacity for anything that actually changes a bloody thing.
Students could always, you know, study for their degrees or something like that.
Or they could “customise” existing posters as the Guild has done at my Uni with this one.
http://theworstofperth.com/2008/08/08/ixnay-on-the-untcay/
A simple template fo all occasions.
Liam #1, another example I can think of where the wider political environment was contaminated occurred in the 1995 Queensland State election when a marginal seat adjoining a certain suburban university campus was letterboxed with leaflets falsely claiming that the sitting member was endorsed by a medical practitioner who worked at the health service of aforesaid campus, with the GP’s signature scanned onto the leaflet. The sitting member lost her seat, albeit for reasons other than the dodgy leaflet.
By that reasoning, #4, shouldn’t you be off, I don’t know, doing your job or something like that? Goose, gander, you know…
haven’t seen one of these for a few years, they sound like fun
Thinking as one does of the environment, I guess its a good thing if the pollies stop providing the students with free printing but I don’t expect to see a reduction in the paper wars at uni any time soon.
Was there an an element of ideological disdain for “bourgeois legality” on the part of the group which nicked the copier?
Their Morals And Ours, Paul. IYKWIM.
Mind you, they broke back in to put it back after polling day, which must have created an interesting set of ideological paradoxes for further discussion.
I agree that shit-sheeting should stop, for everyone – I need to get spammed by my MP like a hole in the head.
This said, forgive me if I can’t shed a tear for anything that weakens student politics. God, if there’s a more depraved, venal, asinine, bestial and fatuous cesspit of congenital morons, poseurs and syphilitic sycophants, I’m yet to see it.
I don’t know about the experience in your day, Liam, but when I was involved in student elections in the mid-2000s (2004-7) we (non-Labor left) mainly relied on paying for printing at places like Kinko’s, although we did get some support from using photocopiers for free with various progressive organisations (never a Member of Parliament’s offices, Kerry Nettle’s office wouldn’t have anything to do with that). And we were badly outgunned as a consequence of actually paying for most or all of our printing.
Got it, Liam.
I have to say in fairness to the Spartacist League that whenever they denounced myself and my comrades in print they did so:
* out of their own pockets;
* authorised under their own names;
* politically rather than personally, on the basis of a particular ideological take on known or knowable facts.
On all these counts they were ethically superior to the ALP Right in recent decades.
Like the space-tavern scene in Star Wars, but with slogan t-shirts, sunburn and Turkish pide. Man, you’re taking me back to my early 20s, Patrickg.
You know, there ought to be meetups for ex-student politicians to reconcile their early adulthoods over really small glasses of tawny port. You know, “I called you a fascist pro-Zionist war crime apologist, and you called me a politically-correct feminazi Gestapo goon, but really, we aren’t that different”.
Liam’s photocopier anecdote has jogged my memory.
In the last few years of its existence, the Australian Union of Students possessed an industrial-strength photocopier known as Davros. Documents copied using Davros exhibited a characteristic shadow on the typeface.
The last Special Council of AUS in 1984 decided that the winding up of its affairs and disposal of its assets should be overseen by a committee of three people, all of whom were members of the Socialist Forum sub-faction of the Victorian ALP Left formed on the initiative of the Taftite defectors from the Communist Party of Australia, one of whom subsequently acted as the Socialist Forum’s accountant, and another of whom was the partner of a Socialist Forum organiser. The legality and propriety of this decision was vigorously questioned by a minority of delegates to the final Special Council.
In 1985 the Socialist Forum began producing a newsletter, copies of which found their way into other circles of the left. Some people who had been involved with AUS in its final years immediately noticed that the Socialist Forum newsletter and other documents not only used a similar typeface to that of AUS documents produced in the 1982-84 period, but also exhibited the characteristic Davros shadow on the typeface. One of these people phoned the SF office pretending to be undertaking market research into photocopier brands, and was very rudely and abruptly informed that SF didn’t have a photocopier and outsourced all its printing.
I make no accusations against any of the ex-AUS individuals in relation to Davros, but do wish to point out that during this period an ethically challenged attempt was made by certain ex-CPA members of the SF (and their Queensland counterparts) to procure a portion of the CPA’s assets of far greater value than Davros in a way which morally, if not legally, could be considered a form of theft.
Paul N @13
Indeed, this was a strict and binding policy of the SL and by extension, its Melbourne OC. No member was allowed to accept any donation in cash or kind unless it was fully receipted and all printing big enough to go outside the organisation could only be done at fully unionised (i.e PKIU at the time) workplaces.
Occasionally over-enthusiastic supporters would wink at doing something at work but they were always told in no uncertain terms that this was unacceptable, in part because the party didn’t want to give “the bourgeois state a pretext for attacking the party”.
“You know, there ought to be meetups for ex-student politicians to reconcile their early adulthoods over really small glasses of tawny port. You know, “I called you a fascist pro-Zionist war crime apologist, and you called me a politically-correct feminazi Gestapo goon, but really, we aren’t that different”.
Liam@14, I once found myself standing next to someone who’d I’d been involved in some petty student politic ideological spat with a dozen years previously. The occasion for our reunion was some Fabian Society forum and, overcome by the all encompassing air of moderate gradualism, had more or less the type of conversation you suggest, although perhaps in a more avoiding-eye-contact, bloke-to-bloke mumbling type of way.
I tried to resist saying this, but I really couldn’t. Sorry.
Howard isn’t to blame for “destruction of many student representative bodies”. Rather, students are. They are the ones who refused to join the representative bodies.
Howard did nothing to attack the bodies, only gave students a choice to join them or not. The students voted with their feet/wallets.
on a lighter note, at the recent student council elections on campus a serious young man from the centre right responded with “you should see their policies, THEY (Socialist Left) support land rights for gay whales” when I said they (the Socialists) got my vote. Very nice young man he was too…
#18 aside, Howard most certainly was to blame for most of us younger folks being unable to spend any time or money on anything other than supporting ourselves while studying. Making sure the majority of students were too flat-chat and impoverished to ‘waste time’ on the democratic process certainly did shut a lot of us up, and quite effectively. Its hard to give a toss about political stuff after spending all day in class and then working ’til midnight. People like me left the student unions when we could because that meant being able to afford textbooks*. And the occasional muffin. Mmmm, muffins…
And that was after I had to put my studies on the slow to even qualify for YA. Me, bitter? You betcha.
Tim Andrews@18
Strictly speaking, Howard did make a contribution to this by increasing HECS since this teneded to change the overall composition of students to those who were much more career-oriented. Fairly obviously, if you’re paying substantially for a course, you’re much more likely to see it in vocational terms, and it’s not surprising that many saw student union membership as purely discretionary spending that could offset their costs, or were less interested in the more cultural aspects of student unionism.
Understand that I’m not saying that this was necessarily a bad thing. I’m far from convinced that student “unions” (aside from their purely service functions) are inherently worthwhile or have the same kind of claim as workplace unions do on the participation of workers. It seems to me that in so far as people assert that students ought to have a political lobby group, then this should be purely voluntary and if there are indeed campus based services that it is sensible to provide then that should be provided out of the general pool of funds by universities.
But to say that Howard played no part in the decline of student “unions” is not correct.
@20 I will readily concede the point that the way YA was structured under Howard was a complete unfair joke. I do not, however, think that that diminishes my point about student organisations primarily losing out because students were unwilling to join them when they had the chance.
Some student organisations did an awesome job in attracting students and kept afloat. To those that didn’t, the blame must go either to student politicians who failed to provide a service worth joining up to, or to students themselves for choosing not to join.
And of course the best arguement against student unions was the old chestnut “why should poor students subsidize the beer of rich students?”
@21 – Considering most students repaid HECS after graduation, I don’t think an increase in HECS would have deterred political activity, and I don’t think that “if you’re paying substantially for a course, you’re much more likely to see it in vocational terms” – I at least certainly didn’t see it as such.
I will obviously concede that VSU led to a decrease in the funds available for student organisations, I would just attribute blame differently. I know it’s a cliched argument to use, but really, there was nothing concrete stopping every student giving money to the student organisation.
Anyway, sorry for moving this OT somewhat – I did think it was a good post otherwise!
I think we need to get back to traditional values and have the CIA fund left wing student organisations like they did in the 60’s and 70’s.
Reminiscences from Melbourne Uni circa 1968 – 1974: as far as I could tell, a lot of student political printing was done off campus.
NCC-aligned, very crisp black printing, different masthead title at each campus (Monash, Latrobe, Melb, Sydney etc.); common stories, so I heard
“SDS” – more or less CPA aligned, printing done at more-or-less aligned unions?
Maoist group, CPA-ML aligned, printing done… ? Prahran at the Monash-Maoist-linked centre?
The DAVROS story rang a bell: you would notice similarities in typeface, paper quality, printing quality….
quite apart from content
I don’t remember too much of this stuff, I must admit. I ran away and joined the Psychedelic left as soon as I discovered that sex, drugs and rock’n'roll were a hell of a lot more engaging than interminable discussions about what Gramsci (who the hell is Gramsci?) actually meant.
Somewhere at home I have a parody of “The Man from Snowy River” which I wrote shortly after 1982 AUS Annual Council, with TMFSN and Clancy of the Overflow replaced by The Trot from La Trobe Uni and Candy of the Overkill, and similar substitutions for other characters, “and all the hacks had gathered to the fray”. I promise to try to find it and post it on a new thread.
Tim! Always nice to run in to people you haven’t seen in ages. How are you? As for the ALSF guff about how Howard did “nothing to attack the bodies, only gave students a choice to join them or not.” I mean really. Taking away funding doesn’t count as an attack then? Excellent well let’s stop monies going to the ridiculously inefficient private healthcare funds and see how relaxed and comfortable their members feel. The end of this petty little revenge for failed SRC runs the 70s has been the imposition of a sterile, TAFE-like culture on many campuses where you pays your exorbitant HECS (or whatever they’re called now) fees, you goes to your classes and you buggers off back home and banish any thought of extra-curricular activity.
As for MPs helping factions, it depends who and where. There is a certain Greens MLC in WA who could be relied on to allow printing of pamphlets by the DSP so I was surprised to see Ben’s comment about Kerry Nettle and I know of other MPs who helped out with printing for other people’s tilts at office at different unis round the state.
For myself, when I was running for the Guild we funded our own printing – $10 per person if you were running for council, $20 for the Divisional Reps and $50 if you were running for an executive position, that delivered more than enough to see off the last serious Liberal ticket at Curtin.
I would dispute however the article’s assertion of being student focused and being politically aligned as being mutually exclusive, the disgraceful rorting that went on by Unity in MUSU and Griffith and by the Libs at UNE aside, the great majority of people involved in student politics are there for the right reasons and genuinely care about the welfare of students and the quality of the education they receive.
I gladly admit that I don’t particularly miss student politics. I met lots of interesting people, sure. Then there were the educational moments, mostly of the “staring into the abyss” variety; but for the most part it interfered with my studies and friendships.
Right, I’ll get the port.
Goddamned good-for-nothing pinko students studying silly bummey subjects bludging my tax money for their commie purposes, foul absolutely foul.
Paul – I would like to think that these practices have not spread beyond the major parties, but I don’t know that.
.
Well, Paul, I was briefly associated with a local (trying to be a) Green Campus Club and, I can tell ya, they don’t even get advice. So you’re clean.
.
The concern here is that the major parties can dominate student politics and turn it into an extension of national politics; a training ground for them exclusively. Which is what they’ve always wanted.
.
And now that it’s voluntary the Tories’ll play too.
.
When I first got to campus there were posters of a certain quality everywhere you looked. Funded by the student funds on the campus, GUUS or GUBoR, not sure. But they all depicted a man with long hair and a beard, glamourized by lighting and a fan, saying: TRUTH, PURITY, LIGHT.
.
The dude was somewhat of a legend and’s persisted in his pointless battles since those days.
.
Thing is the students paid for it. Why? I doubt 5% of ‘em knew who the guy was. And, as I’m sure you know, I could list a bucketload of such infringements. I live near Melb Uni campus and there’s an election on now. Same basic factions. Same basic sctick. What I do see is the Candy Brand Tickets disguising: The Australian Loony Students Federation, The Natural Awfulness of Labor Students and the Retro-Revolutionary’s Club For The Middle-Class Poseur.
.
The rest of the year I have to say I notice the student union making one hell of an effort to service its students. Just sayin’.
.
I think what’s needed is a genuinely independant student press, online of course, that knows who the Hacks are and nails them to the wall. I know. We’ll call it The Shit Sheet.
I should add that print is kinda outre these days and, besides the net which eschews big capital advantages, there’s also old-fashioned oratory. some public debates on campus could attract interest. If they could find some hacks actually worth, um, listening to. Here’s the NOLS Grade A Debate Squad in action.
.
The star speaker still has a little trouble spelling acronyms obviously.
no port thanks, i’ll stick to my lager. Man we missed out being in a territory. there was some printing done at a big house far away, but the individual that provided it didn’t stick to party lines, tho one side was definatly favoured. i noticed it all changed after “self government”, and the electoral paper storm got more professional.
Adrian – “Well, Paul, I was briefly associated with a local (trying to be a) Green Campus Club and, I can tell ya, they don’t even get advice. So you’re clean.” I knew a “Green Campus Club” that got their printing done at the office of a local rep of one of the major parties, but that was pre federal greens.
When part of a coalition between the Labor left and non-Labor left groups I was once asigned to do the photocopying at the office of a now cabinet minister. I was a bit nervous and even decided to bring paper I’d paid for out of my own pocket. The staff pretty much laughed at my ethics. I was even assured it was legal.
A couple of years later, with the coalition broken down I’ll admit I abused the copier of an independent MP, but at the time it seemed necessary to combat the fact that our opponents had access to many times as many tax-payer funded publications. These days most Labor and Liberal students I meet don’t even seem to think there is anything wrong with it, which I find even more disturbing than the “well yes its not bad, but the other side do it so we need to” attitude I developed by the end.
On the other hand, I had one conversation with a campus Green who was so ethical about things she said she would refuse access to the party’s own photocopier if it was offered, let alone those of the MPs. I thought that was taking things to extremes.
Hi! I was surfing and found your blog post… nice! I love your blog.
Cheers! Sandra. R.
Cheers, spamdra742!
Norman #29 wrote:
A fair point. Whilst I didn’t intend to suggest that being politically aligned and being student-focused were mutually exclusive, I probably shoud have worded the relevant sentence more circumspectly to preclude such an interpretation. The main point I was trying to make is that access to electorate office printing resources gave those groups with such access an unfair and unjustifiable advantage over those who lacked such access and lacked other forms of major institutional backing.
What I think can also be said with reasonable confidence is:
(a) That political alignment and the associated political convictions can shape how activists conceive of “the welfare of students and the quality of the education they receive”.
(b) That situations can arise when an elected student representative’s obligations to students and their external party or factional commitments can come into conflict, for instance when conflicting calls are made on their time (which I’ve known to happen) or when mutual hostility between factions or parties external to the student union causes people to be unwilling to cooperate on student-related issues on which no real disagreement exists (which I’ve also seen happen).
“the great majority of people involved in student politics are there for the right reasons and genuinely care about the
welfarerelationship status of students and the quality of theeducationdiscount alcohol they receive”But yeah, also with the do-gooders.
Norm – I would dispute however the article’s assertion of being student focused and being politically aligned as being mutually exclusive, the disgraceful rorting that went on by Unity in MUSU and Griffith and by the Libs at UNE aside,
.
Rorting. But they were the Clean Team. Weren;t they? You could also add the bankruocy of the Meb Uni Student Union a few years back. The Libs or the ALP Right were repsonsible I’ve heard conflicting accounts. That said I’ve seen plenty of rorts across the board by various groups. The mainstream parties do it better. They’re professionals.
.
the great majority of people involved in student politics are there for the right reasons and genuinely care about the welfare of students and the quality of the education they receive.
.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
.
Oh I am sorry. I think perhaps I might share a diferent perception. I, for example, did try 70% of the time to be a good hack. But the process totally alienated me from non-hacks. I didn’t know who they were. I think it’s called parliamentary idiocy.
Erstwhile Liberal student activist Charles Richardson points to another reason why the centre-right factions might be more prodigiously prodigal than the lefties – basically that the sort of activities which the centre-right think student unions should be focused on are the sort of activities where the potential for waste and misuse of funds is greatest:
To which I would add that even greater potential for extravagance and corruption was eventually found in the various business ventures which Labor Right and Liberal student union managements were seduced by from the 1990s onwards, which is basically what brought down the old Melbourne University Student Union.
This brought back many memories. Back in the mid 90’s no-one paid for copying their propoganda. The big 3 parties of the time were all at it, often multiple offices of the same party working against each other.
I ran as an ‘independant’ and still did all of my publishing at a different MP’s office to the ‘official’ party sanctioned ticket. In addition to my own material I even printed up a ticket designed to look like an ‘official’ ticket of the senior party but with the preferences reversed.
Good times.
However now that those days are long behind me I agree that student political activity is a waste of taxpayer funds. Someone should stamp it out!
The first time I did something political involving the student union was to organize a protest against the Vice-Chancellor’s veto of funding for a new TV studio at the School of Film and Media. This had a direct bearing on my future as the facilities then available were quite sub-standard and that was my chosen major.
.
We did quite well. We organized a peaceful and yet highly embarrasing demo sitting in the VC’s office. The Media called it a ‘peaceful storming’, n’uk. And it worked. We got out studio. Funnily enough the VC was quite chipper when he finally saw the facilties. And my fellow media bots and myself learned a few skills on a professional sound stage with up to date online post-production equipement etc.
.
Methinks it is that kind of political activity that the AVCC and the like want to oust. It gets in the way of their Napoleonic sctick. I don’t know whether the SRC was really required for us to do it.
.
On shit-sheeting and electoral propoganda. The way the GUSRC used to do it was to alot a certain portion of resources for the purpose to each candidate. Easy.