The argument in favour of VSU

[injuryupdate]

I put this in for a bit of balance, but you can see where this guy is coming from - the presumption that the only people who play sport are private school rugby boys.

Barnaby! Stop coddling the jocks!
Andrew West (SMH Blog)
December 8, 2005 09:46 PM

The battles you choose to fight, eh. Barnaby Joyce, the piss-and-wind "rebel" Nationals senator from Queensland, last week sold out every working Australian by supporting the industrial relations changes. But fear not, Barnaby is sticking up for those who most need it -- the private school jocks who want others to pay for their fun.

Barnaby has decided to take a stand on principle in the senate by blocking the government's plan for voluntary student unionism. http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200512/s1527174.htm This is the issue on which he has decided to become a rebel -- an issue so completely irrelevant to the lives of most Australians.

Last week, the man who claims to have the balance of power in the senate was crowing about how he had saved Christmas Day, by securing the most infinitesimal amendments to the IR laws to prevent people being sacked because they refuse to work Christmas Day. Geez, what a blow for human rights. That means the boss has to wait until Boxing Day to do his dirty work. A real disincentive.

But threaten the compulsory fees, paid by every student, which are used to heavily subsidise rugby union or lacrosse or tennis teams at our universities, and Barnaby is there at the barricades. It's the Paris Commune all over again.

The truth is that this bill has nothing to do with unionism. That was last week, Barnaby, in case you hadn't noticed. That was about protecting employees' rights to organise and win living wages for themselves and their families. That was about the protection of people's livelihoods and family time.

This bill is about saying to the kids from Shore or Knox or Scots or Kings, "Sorry, you're going to have to pay for your own rugby jerseys because the kids from Campsie and Liverpool and Hornsby are no longer going to be coerced into subsidising your leisure activities."

Labor has wasted enormous political capital fighting voluntary student unionism, when it has nothing to do with the protection of basic human rights and everything to do with the preservation of privilege.

Earlier this year, when the bill was released, we had an elite outcry about the harm this legislation would inflict on university sport and the implications for Australia's future elite sports men and women. http://www.theage.com.au/news/columns/political-football-is-out-of-bounds/2005/07/22/1121539153679.html (How telling that the cacophony included Macquarie Bank chairman and Liberal grandee David Clarke, and stockbroker Geoffrey Travers. http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/liberal-big-gun-joins-critics-of-student-fee-ban/2005/06/22/1119321795448.html ) My initial reaction was, I admit, was something like, "Right, and your point is what exactly?"

But Australia already spends vast amounts of public money on sport. http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=126 http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:8vdCQMLxnEAJ:www.tai.org.au/Publications_Files/Papers%26Sub_Files/sportsfunding.pdf+%22Australian+Institute+of+Sport %22+%22taxpayers%22&hl=en Participation in university sports teams, at least at the old "sandstone universities", is heavily lop-sided in favour of kids from the GPS ("Great Public [i.e. Private] Schools", as the English termed them).

While on many campuses it is impossible to avoid deriving some benefit from the union or guild's social services -- ie. its indifferent, mass produced food or its rather good university health services -- the vast majority of students never derive any benefit from the sports unions or care a wit about the activities of the Student Representative Council. (Yes, I disclose that I was an unsuccessful, but hardly aggrieved, candidate for office at Sydney University in 1990.)

If university sports teams face a funding crisis without the payments forcibly extracted from students without the time -- and, yes, even in Australia, the inclination -- to participate, let them seek corporate sponsorship. I mean, it can't be that hard. Just ask Dad.

[injuryupdate]

Barnaby attacked over uni law delay
From: By Samantha Maiden
December 09, 2005

JOHN Howard last night abandoned hopes of securing passage of voluntary student union laws before Christmas as angry Liberal MPs accused him of talking "the language of appeasement" with the Nationals.

An emergency partyroom meeting of all MPs and senators resolved last night for the legislation to go ahead without amendment.
However, the Prime Minister said the House of Representatives MPs could go home, ensuring the laws cannot pass until next February if amended.

A proposal to establish an $80 million compensation fund for universities could be delivered in separate legislation, if agreement can be reached in the Senate today. Mr Howard said there was little point forcing a vote if agreement could not be reached over the VSU laws.

Education Minister Brendan Nelson is still pursuing talks with Family First senator Steve Fielding, after the Government confirmed it could not support Nationals senator Barnaby Joyce's amendments to allow universities to charge compulsory fees for basic student services that did not involve political activities.

The partyroom agreed the Senate should sit today in an effort to find a deal with Senator Fielding, who said last night he did not support compulsory student unionism but hadn't made up his mind over the legislation.


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During angry clashes in the meeting, veteran Liberal MP Wilson Tuckey lashed out at Senator Joyce and said the problem was not the partyroom, it was the Coalition.
Senator Joyce's amendment compromise plan would allow universities to collect a compulsory fee for services and amenities fee that could only be used for non-political purposes.

Liberal senator George Brandis told the Prime Minister he "hated to hear leaders talking the language of appeasement".

The Nazi reference prompted a cool response from Mr Howard, who had stressed the need for compromise.

Liberal MP Sophie Panopoulus and senator Mitch Fifield, the chairman of the backbench committee on education, also spoke strongly in favour of the VSU laws. Dr Nelson said yesterday he was prepared to compromise on the VSU legislation but would not agree to Senator Joyce's plan.

[injuryupdate]

From Fairfax papers:

Cash delay threatens student services
By Stephanie Peatling
April 17, 2006

Student activities and services such as drama and sports clubs, medical facilities and child care face being axed because universities will have to wait for several months before being paid Federal Government funds to help them to adjust to the end of compulsory student unionism.

From July 1 universities will no longer be allowed to charge students up-front service fees and will have to raise money elsewhere to keep student associations and campus facilities open.

However, the $80 million in funds the Government promised to universities to help them cope with the new system will not be available until January 1, and the Government will choose which university programs are worthy of funding.

Universities warn this will mean many services will be without the funds to tide them over until they find other funding.

"Organisations have circumstances where funding is necessary now," said Tom O'Sullivan, director of the Australasian Campus Union Managers' Association. "If you have the funding now you can do something. It might be too late if you don't get it until next year."

Universities also fear the Government will favour sporting facilities over other widely used services such as medical and child-care services.

"We would see this as being a matter for the universities to decide and to have that flexibility," said John Mullarvey, the chief executive of the Australian Vice-Chancellors' Committee.

"We don't think the money should be restricted."

The Government ended compulsory student unionism last year, arguing that students should not be made to pay up to $500 a year to prop up facilities they did not necessarily use or to fund clubs with political affiliations.

The Nationals senator Barnaby Joyce voted against the Government, forcing it to woo the Family First senator Steve Fielding to ensure the legislation was passed.

The $80 million fund was offered as a sweetener to the universities who opposed the changes. When that money will be handed out and who is likely to get it are included in guidelines in a Government discussion paper, believed to have been approved by the Minister for Education, Julie Bishop, before its release early this week. Her office confirmed the first tranche of the money would not be available until January 1, six months after the new system begins.

"The fund is to assist those sport and recreation services which have a demonstrated principal and historical reliance on the compulsory fee," Ms Bishop said in a statement to the Herald.

Mr Mullarvey was critical of the Government's wish to spread the transition money over three years saying universities would be forced to repeatedly apply for funding to keep projects going.

"One of the things that would be really silly would be for universities to have to put in a couple of applications over a couple of years," Mr Mullarvey said. "That might mean the money is too late for some projects."


FAREWELL TO FEES

- From July 1 students will no longer have to pay a services or union fee.

- The fees were used to cover the cost of clubs and services such as sports centres and medical facilities.

- Legislation abolishing fees passed last December.

- The Coalition's education committee agreed to give universities transitional funding for facilities after fees were abolished.