Student services like sports and childcare and clubs at Australian universities are "critical", "vital", "essential" to the University experience say those managing the universities. Or so they told the ABC the other day.
So essential that they are reluctant to fund them or refuse to.
For reasons that boil down to power, those within student unions including a few Labor moderates who really should know much better, are not demanding University bosses pull out the cheque book, they're not insisting the bloated Commonwealth big-spending government pay for these "crucial" services, they are demanding the feds impose a tax on students in the form of compulsory "services fees".
It is a far cry from their stated commitment to "free education."
Why? How could this possibly be? Union officials demanding their members be slugged? It's truly weird. But there is an explanation.
Those running student unions - not the mostly irrelevant elected ones but the permanent staff who really run them - don't want to be responsible for taxpayer funds, they'd much rather pretend the money they get is more like a union fee.
Why?
So they can continue to be completely unaccountable for it. They dread the interference that government could impose if they were just sending the money from taxpayers.
USEFUL IDIOTS
And student leaders, many of them have the best of intentions in my view, are sadly just "useful idiots" for the very well paid student union bureaucrats and managers who really run the show and who fear outside scrutiny like a cockroach fears light.
Elected student leaders obviously want the money to sustain the stuff they're rightly and understandably interested in. For fully functioning student clubs and student newspapers and student representation and national conferences and all that good stuff. Clearly all of that is important.
STUDENT POLITICS IS WONDERFUL
It was important enough to me for me to spend a few crazy years doing not much else in the arid badlands of Australia's politically nastiest university and I loved practically every minute of it, the skills I learned there have been useful nearly every day since, the friendships forged there are embroidered on the fabric of my life, the political beliefs that my experiences there helped shape are what you see here every day (some might think this to be no good thing in which case I wonder they keep coming back).
I saw close up just how hateful and intolerant the extremes of politics are. I saw the violence in the eyes of those who preached peace loudest. I saw heroic people inspire the silent majority of the less than interested into election victories against corrupt, slimy fanatics who sought to monopolise power for extreme-left causes. Even the bad parts of the experience were brilliantly useful to me and I wouldn't trade them for all the tea bribes in China.
WHO SHOULD PAY
So, being adamantly opposed to the government poll-taxing students to hand the loot to student unions doesn't make me opposed to student unions. I'd much rather the burden for footing the bill for these services which are said to be so crucial rest with all taxpayers who are paying most of the tab for the teaching anyway.
It's important enough that I believe the federal government (and therefore taxpayers) ought to be funding it, yes even that area of student life never defended in public, student politics.
While there are many political loons sheltered in student unions, the truth is that they help train some of the nation's best elected representatives on both sides of mainstream politics. For that alone, it provides the nation a valuable service. From Julia Gillard to Michael Danby to Joe Hockey to Peter Costello, we can see that their experience in university politics was formative in making them the highly effective public servants they have have proved themselves to be. Training the next generation of political leadership seems to me to be an entirely legitimate application of public monies, indeed I could think of few other more important areas of spending.
Too many of those who support voluntary student unionism on ideological grounds are driven by a desire to throw student representative bodies over a cliff. That's not the OC's view, however flawed they are, they are important, just as important as student services more frequently cited.
These things are an important part of the University experience for many people and as I have shown are important for the nation. And if they are central to their university experience then they are part of the "core business" - to use the market jargon University bureaucrats throw around but seldom understand while of course never imposing real competitive market pressures on themselves - of universities and ought to be funded in the same way as teaching and the enormous salaries for vice-chancellors are funded, from the people.
THEY PROMISED NOT TO IMPOSE A STUDENT TAX // THEY PROMISED NOT TO ADD IT TO STUDENT DEBT // THEY PROMISED NO GOING BACK TO THE BAD OLD DAYS
Kevin Rudd promised not to reintroduce a student tax in the form of compulsory union fees. He promised not introduce a loans scheme for fund it by adding to student debt through HECS either. His spokesman Stephen Smith was very specific on that in responding to questions from journalists prior to the election. When asked on 22nd May 2007:
JOURNALIST: So on the funding side, have you canvassed, or are you contemplating some sort of loan or deferred payment?
STEPHEN SMITH: No, absolutely not. One thing I can absolutely rule out is that I am not considering a HECS style arrangement, particularly a compulsory HECS style arrangement. I don’t know where that came from, that may have been a suggestion made by one of the interested parties to the journalist concerned. But I certainly do not have on my list an extension of HECS, either voluntary or compulsory, to fund these services. So I absolutely rule that out.
What part of absolutely not and I absolutely rule that out don't some people understand?
Despite those very specific undertakings, the responsible Minister Julia Gillard is floating the balloon of breaking these campaign commitments. They have no mandate to do anything of the sort. They have a very busy agenda of promises that will very tough to meet in Rudd's first term with a global economy entering some trying times. They've started well and will be a good - hopefully great - government.
WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?
The sad fact is that Julia Gillard is surrounded by many who have an ideological commitment to compulsory student union fees. Not just in her ministerial office but in the Department as well. Not just in the department but those administering universities too. Student leaders, clock-watching bludger student union bureaucrats all seem to want it too. The silent majority, those who'll be stuck paying up to $500 a year, won't get their voice heard very much at all. They won't be invited or have time or have enough interest to show up to the "consultation" meetings that the government has organised.
A great government needs to go beyond those with a vested interest and look at just how few people are joining student unions right now, when they have a choice. It's even higher than I suspected it would be, 90% or more. The membership model has failed here, so bury it and move on.
A great government needs to consider that it's not only young Liberals who don't want University students taxed for services that are said to be so essential. This is a social justice issue that couldn't be any clearer.
A great government will ensure services and representation for Australian universities are sufficiently well funded for both to function well. A great government wouldn't dream of making teenagers and early twenty somethings pick up the tab when they can afford it the least. A great government will honour the Australian people by honouring the promises - all of them - they made in order to get elected.
Game on.
Click here to Read More on this post...
Click here to display headline summary only...
