I basically want to give a 10 minute overview on Voluntary Student Unionism. It’s the issue at the moment among others that’s confronting students. Basically Voluntary Student Unionism is legislation that the Howard Government is putting through at the moment. It’s been a long term policy of the Liberal Party and they introduced it into Parliament earlier this year in March. Now effectively what the legislation does is prohibit the collection of any compulsory fee for a non-academic purpose from students. So effectively what that means is that university’s will no longer collect amenities fees which are then passed on to student organisations to fund a whole range of services and representation on campus.
To understand the issue you need to understand the context of it. The issue has been a fetish of the Liberal party since the 1970’s. Prior to that there was a bipartisan consensus around support for universal student unionism. Someone like Robert Menzies for example, was a big supporter of Student Unions and the cultural contribution they played on campus. The 70’s changed all that. What you saw was that there was an explosion of student radicalism, students really emerging as a powerful political voice and particularly getting involved in campaigns such as the Vietnam War, apartheid in South Africa a bit later on … all these sort of issues. They really galvanized the Liberal parties desire to get rid of Student Unions. That lays behind the desire to get rid of student unionism. And despite the veil of rhetoric around choice issues and all those sort of issues, fundamentally voluntary student unionism is there to silence and stop student politics and its particularly being driven at the moment by people like Sophie Panopolous, Eric Abetz and Peter Costello - people who were in student politics in the 70’s and 80’s and have a huge vendetta against what they see as student radicals. And now that they have the capacity to end all that, they’re jumping on board.
It’s about stopping things that have been intensely critical of the Government. That’s manifest itself across a whole range of issues. Students have been critical of the Government on issues such as higher course costs. Student Unions were highly critical of the Government last year when universities were increasing HECS fees and fee playing places quite substantially. Issues such as student income support, which is a huge issue and other issues such as refugees, the whole range, the whole raft of social issues.
VSU has been introduced in a couple of forms in the past. It was introduced in Western Australia in the current form and that was prohibiting the collection of any amenities fee. Despite Nelson’s rhetoric of that being a major success story, that is completely at odds with what happened in Western Australia. And I think that that’s something we really need to pick up on. What that did was absolutely demolish campus life and destroy essential services on campus. Even someone like John Gardener who was the Development Director of the Young Liberals described the environment on Western Australian campuses as chaos, that students do not have access to adequate services that everywhere else are provided by student organisations. The most dramatic impact is felt by services that aren’t there to provide essential services to students. Services like medical schemes, free medical and dental services on campus, women referral services and emergency loan schemes. All these services that are not there to make a profit but to provide a basic service to students. They cannot be sustained under this form of VSU. VSU was also introduced by Kennett in Victoria but it was a completely different form of legislation. It actually allowed the collection of amenities fees but limited the activities that this revenue could be spent on. So it prohibited activities such as political expenditure, things like student newspapers as well as prohibiting Victorian campuses affiliating to the National Union of Students. Essentially this legislation did not work. That’s why they have adopted the kind of scorched earth model at the moment. That legislation allowed student organisations to seek additional revenue sources to fund prohibited services. This in some ways hurt student Unions. It forced them to become more commercial in their outlook, but it did not stop political organising on campuses. And that is the sole reason the Howard Government is introducing the current form of legislation.
Government arguments really do tend to centre around freedom of choice notions. Brendan Nelson is really fond of asking why should a single Mother from the Western Suburbs subsidise the activities of the abseiling club, for example. And this really ignores the fundamental reality that services such as affordable child care on campus, probably needed by Brendan Nelsons proverbial single Mother are subsidised by members of the abseiling club. The current system works by ensuring that everyone has access to essential services. I think the Student Unions really do need to take the Government on, on this notion of “choice”. The version of choice put forward by Brendan Nelson is a really truncated notion of choice. It’s fundamentally choice as mediated through a market framework. And it’s choice between which for profit provider to purchase from. It’s not a choice to decide which basic services are run. They are run for profit, whether they’re run for profit or not it destroys choice through the democratic processes of student unions.
So what you see is the democratic control of services mediated by student unions is replaced by a much more limited kind of choice, limited by market structures. And its also a really limited notion of choice because it’s only available to students who can afford to pay hundreds of dollars to be represented by a student rights adviser, if they fail a couple of subjects and the university wants to kick them out for example. Or who can pay a huge amount of money every time they want to use the dental service on campus . And so its not a kind of universal notion of choice. It’s not choice for everyone. It’s choice only for students who can afford to pay. And given that student poverty is skyrocketing and student income support is so manifestly inadequate, the number of students who have access to that amount of money is very, very limited. Nelsons arguments about choice also fail to recognise that without the collective pooling of resources provided by student organisations many services simply disappear. This is not because they are not valuable to students but simply because they are not there to run a profit and they cannot be sustained if you don’t have that collective pooling of resources.
Another problem with this choice argument is that students have chosen to retain the current system of student organisations supported by a compulsory levy. People have chosen because Liberal students have run on VSU platforms every student election and almost without exception these Liberal students have lost. As a result of their failure to win the issue through the democratic processes of student organisations we have the Government over riding those processes and ending the issue from on high. And there’s not even any choice. In the 70’s when Fraser introduced some very limited form of VSU part of it was about on-campus referendums and there’s absolutely no thought of that at that moment. Essentially the government is over riding the will of students and implementing VSU in a really top down way even though it’s not wanted.
I guess VSU is part of a broader agenda that seeks to silence dissenting voices an alternative opinions in Australian society. It is really a part of the same thrust as attacks on Trade Unions on charitable organisations and NGOs that engage in advocacy work and other groups that oppose this governments agenda. And despite a reported commitment to pluralism and the centrality of this principal in Liberal philosophy the Howard Government seems intent on crippling alternative opinion as much as possible.
VSU also ties into the narrowing of the learning experience. Universal membership of student organisations had its inception in the early 20th century. Melbourne University was the first university to introduce a compulsory amenities fee and that was in 1906 and by the 1920’s everyone had them. This was used to fund a whole range of co-curricula activities. Since then student organisations have played a real pivotal role in fostering campus life and broadening the learning experience. This has included funding student theatre, sporting clubs, student media outlets and a whole raft of other facets of campus life. Even someone like Gavin Brown who is the Vice Chancellor of Sydney University was correct to state that moving to a voluntary fee for service is to take a narrow minded view of the university education which would be selfish and instrumental.
Student Unions allow students to engage in a range of issues that facilitate personal development and critical thinking and VSU would really narrow the learning experience. This also ties into a broader development of a customer kind of ethic at university. Going to university is increasingly being seen as a passport for a well paying job and the number of vocational based courses in campuses increased dramatically over the past 20 years. And traditional ideas of the university experience as being a broadening of horizons and developmental experiences are really threatened. VSU will really contribute to this as well. VSU will further limit the learning experience. Modern universities are increasingly becoming, I hate to use the often used cliché, a degree factory. Manufacturing really mass produced units of production and not critical and thinking citizens.
The current situation is fairly bleak. Despite meeting with opposition from almost every stake holder in the field, from the Australian Vice Chancellors Commission to Australian University Sports, to groups like the National Liaison Committee which is a peak body for international students as well as almost every student association in the country the Government is incredibly determined to push this through. Representatives of the National Union of Students who have been lobbying Liberal backbenchers in Canberra have said certain Liberals have described this as a totemic issue for Liberals. This is the issue they got involved around in student politics ten, twenty, thirty years ago. And this is really the chickens coming home to roost for them. This is their opportunity to do what they couldn’t do 20 years ago and to pay back on the student left. The unanimous opposition from stakeholders really doesn’t appear to be denting this Governments fervor at all. It’s an article of faith. Despite this their have been rumblings of discontent in the Liberal party and among Coalition ranks. Barnaby Joyce who is a Senator elect and is someone who holds the balance of power in the Senate has expressed serious discontent with the legislation and particularly the impact that this is going to have at rural universities, where services funded by student organisations aren’t available in the broader community. Things like sports clubs and sporting facilities and all those dental and medical facilities are really community assets and their reach extends beyond the university campuses. He’s also expressed his concerns with the impact of this on sports clubs. And it will have a really dramatic impact on sports clubs. I think any form of compromise that were currently looking at there’s a distinct possibility it will only be a compromise it relies on Barnaby Joyce’s vote. So that may involve something like increasing grants to regional universities to offset lost revenue from amenities fees. There are a few possibilities. I guess the concern amongst the student community is that any result is not going to help the vast majority of students unions, it’s not going to help students retain control of services and it’s not going to help student unions retain the ability to represent themselves.
I guess that’s the long and short of VSU. I might just talk now about a couple of other issues in the context of VSU. I guess VSU will prevent the student movement students from campaigning around broader issues that effect students, issues like higher fees and student income support. If VSU is implemented and we’ve become completely atomised we will really lose the capacity to have any say over the way universities are run. One of the voices that has been critical of the new university will be completely silenced.
I might just talk a bit about student income support and the higher course costs and how they’ve contributed to this consumer ethic, customer ethic in higher education. Essentially student income support is a really under-rated issue in higher education at the moment. Despite a lot of the current debate it’s in my personal opinion the most serious barrier to entry into higher education is inadequate student income support. It has been cut and cut and cut away since the Howard Government has been elected. It’s suffered a death of a thousand cuts and student income support is currently manifestly inadequate. It’s particularly hard for people who have a family to support, single Mothers or other people involved with such situations. It makes it intensely difficult for them to sustain themselves at university. It also forces students to work substantial hours. The average hours worked by students is increasing every year, currently its about 17 hours per week. When your trying to juggle 17 hours per week plus maybe 15 hours per week at university plus study plus other extra curricula pursuits, then you really don’t have much time to engage in the broader university experience. It’s one of the smarter tactics of the Howard Government because it really entrenches the kind of get-in, get-out mentality. University is such an intensely hard experience for so many students. The aim is just to get in their, get your degree, get your bit of paper and get out as fast as possible. This prevents students from engaging with their university environment. It’s caused a massive decline in campus life which has been really dramatic. People who have been around a while have said its occurred in ten short years and its been a direct result of government policy.
High course costs have also really contributed. Education is seen as a private good for private consumption increasingly. And this is to do with the nature of courses and the costs associated with those courses. The Howard Government has progressively shifted the burden of costs for universities from the public sector on to private sources - and this has been increasingly students and that’s been happening under the Howard Government. It started off with the introduction of full fee paying courses in 1996 it continued with the introduction of the differential HECS in 1998, it continued last year with increases in full fee paying places by 35% and increases in HECS by 25%. This has created a huge issue in terms of being a barrier to entry. HECS in it’s initial form in the early 1990’s, which was non differential, meant you paid the same amount for every course. You paid, I think, $1,500 per year. The impact of that on access to the higher education sector was not particularly nasty. I think that’s turning itself around now. I think HECS and full fee paying places are really becoming a dramatic barrier to accessing the higher education sector. I think this is manifest in things like the fact that 60% of students in university come from private or Catholic schools and those schools compose 40% of schools. And this is particularly marked in the group of eight universities where it’s incredibly rare to find someone doing law or medicine who actually went to a public school.
Universities have also been incredibly affected by the imperative of profit. The Federal Government has been a master of managing of driving the university agenda from a distance. It pulls all the strings. It controls the purse strings. It’s been incredibly successful in manipulating public discontent onto the universities themselves. A really good example of this was the increases last year, where it left it up to universities to choose how much they want to increase their fees by. Now the reality of it is, given the declining levels of public funding it was highly unlikely that universities would be able to resist that.