Labor gains in campus elections
By Wendy Robertson
The latest round of student elections has resulted in the ALP (both the "left" and right factions) gaining ground on many campuses, including those traditionally controlled by the activist left.
Of particular note is that Labor won the position of president at the two most "prestigious" universities, Sydney and Melbourne, for the first time in more than a decade.
In some previously left bases, Labor either won control of the most important office-bearer positions or won outright control of the student council. These include Melbourne University student union, where Left Focus, a coalition of activists from organisations ranging from the ALP left to Resistance, lost both the president and education officer positions to Student Alliance, a coalition of the Labor right and Liberals. Left Focus had controlled these positions for more than five years.
At Sydney University also, Labor increased its strength. Eleven years of left control of the student representative council (SRC) was brought to an end last year by the election of conservatives. This year, the presidency was won by the Labor "left", who out-polled the left-wing Activate ticket by 400 (out of 1200) primary votes.
At Newcastle University, a former stronghold of Non-Aligned Left (NAL), the executive and a majority of the National Union of Students' (NUS) delegate positions were won by the Labor "left".
Pro-Labor forces strengthened their position at campuses where they have controlled the student union for some time. Labor consolidated its position at the University of Queensland and at the Australian National University, a campus previously controlled by independent activists, the new president and executive are closely aligned to Labor.
Some of the conservative "apolitical" student union administrations, such as at the University of NSW and Macquarie University, were consolidated.
While the majority of the voter swings were towards Labor, some campuses have become strongholds of the misnamed "Students First" tickets. These forces argue that student unions should not be political and should not support campaigns to defend students' rights. They feed into the anti-student unionism agenda of the more explicitly conservative forces on campus.
A challenge
The swing to Labor presents serious challenges for the left, especially in a context in which higher education and student unionism are severely threatened by a second-term Coalition government.
Labor's record while in control of student unions has been to pose as "radical" but do little to organise or mobilise students to defend their rights. Even Labor "left" student officers have tended to concentrate more on empire building than fighting for students.
So why was there a swing towards Labor on campuses? Many students share the illusion held by large Â鶹´«Ã½ of the Australian population that Labor is a progressive "alternative" to the Liberals. There are few undergraduates left on campus who have lived under a Labor federal government and remember the 13 years of attacks on education that the ALP carried out.
The ALP contenders for campus positions clearly benefited from the massive extra publicity their party received during the federal election campaign. The perception created during that campaign that politics is limited to a choice between Liberal and Labor undoubtedly aided the ALP students.
In addition, some students are turning to Labor as an easy option — at least an easier one than continuing to organise and fight. Three years of Coalition government education funding cuts have led to some students losing confidence in their collective power. Given that, offering support to Labor seems to be the best option.
Labor students believe that student organisations should "represent" students, rather than involve them in political action, and their approach of "let us do it right for you" has some appeal.
Prospects
The student election results are not all bleak; some indicate where and how a left revival may come in 1999.
After two years of re-building itself at UNSW, for example, the activist left won a higher percentage of the overall vote than in the last election, and gained several council and committee positions.
The left has re-won its control of the student unions at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and the Victorian University of Technology, (albeit with little serious competition), and looks set to also keep the University of Technology, Sydney.
Most importantly, the left has won back from Labor control of the SRCs at Griffith University in Queensland and Monash University in Victoria.
The broad left ticket's sweeping victory at Griffith was a result of the Labor-dominated SRC being exposed as conservative by its failure to defend students' rights and its blatant misuse of student funds (for example, it spend $12,000 on a mail-out to all students begging them to vote Labor in the federal election).
The victory at Monash was made possible by the left's leadership of a campaign to defend the arts facility against threatened cutbacks. This campaign, in alliance with academics, mobilised and raised the political confidence of thousands of students, and proved the left activists' effectiveness as leaders.
Left unity
"The left needs to take stock of the increased support for Labor", commented Zanny Begg, NUS Queensland's education officer and an activist at Griffith University. "We need to re-emphasise our commitment to winning students to support our anti-Labor, pro-campaigning agenda.
"We don't have the benefits of multi-million dollar election campaigns behind us, or the assistance of national Labor's dirty tricks department, and we won't play to sentiments of exhaustion and demoralisation.
"What the left depends on is politically convincing students, and mobilising them. It would be a major error if, in response to our defeats, the student left watered down its election platform to accommodate the lower level of student consciousness.
"In fact, the lesson from those campuses where we did well this year is the opposite: the left can make progress when we explain our ideas clearly and generate some confidence amongst students that, if you fight, you can win.
Begg argues that the only effective option for left student activists is to band together on a national and campus-by-campus level to win back the ground they have lost recently. "For a start, Resistance is pushing for a unified broad left caucus of all non-Labor left factions in the NUS this year. More generally, we need far more cooperation and discussion between left activists."
[Wendy Robertson is the national campus director for the socialist youth organisation Resistance.]