injuryupdate
27-07-2005, 07:13 AM
No one is writing articles on how the VSU legislation will help universities become better places or how it will increase sports participation at universities - because it is an unbelievably destructive piece of legislation.
Here is Greg Baum's view from the Age:
Political football is out of bounds
By Greg Baum
On Saturday
July 23, 2005
One of the first pieces of legislation likely to come before the Senate when Parliament resumes next month is a bill to abolish compulsory student unionism.
To the Liberal Party, student unions are as loathsome as all other unions, and compulsory fees serve only to raise funds for politicised student bodies to use to assail the Howard Government.
Remarked Sydney student Dominic Knight recently in the Sydney Morning Herald: "With John Howard on the warpath, the only union that's safe is the Australian Rugby Union."
But, increasingly, even some within the Government are beginning to discern a baby in this teetering tub of bathwater, and are growing anxious about summarily upending it. Compulsorily collected fees are used on many campuses to fund counselling and child-care services, for instance, and on all to fund sports.
Swinburne University is a case in point. Its sports and recreation body gets $800,000 from student fees, more than 80 per cent of its budget. Executive officer Michael Hudson said yesterday that if the voluntary student unionism bill was passed, the likelihood is that his facility would have to shut its doors.
The effect on staff is that all eight would lose their jobs immediately. The effect on students is that they would have to take out gym memberships elsewhere, for around three times the price. For some, of course, that would be unaffordable.
It would also jeopardise the future of individual sporting clubs at the university, and make it impossible for Swinburne to take part in the University Games. The story would be much the same around the country. Sport at universities would wither.
Outspoken Liberal MP Tony Smith won't shed any tears. In The Australian recently he wrote: "Sport wasn't invented by universities or unions. Drive along any suburban main road on a weekend and you'll see thriving sporting clubs that are based on voluntary membership, none of which was brought about by compulsory unionism."
But Smith wilfully misses the point. Sport at university is not an incidental bonus to education. It is intrinsic to education, and a furthering of it. It opens doors, teaches skills, instils confidence and fosters friendships that last lifetimes.
It promotes a powerful sense of community. It brings acclaim to the universities individually, and sometimes to the country. More prosaically, it addresses the problem of the dramatic fall away in healthy activity among school-leavers.
Decorated footballers and academics David Parkin and Mike Fitzpatrick attest to all this, and have put their names to a national campaign to oppose the legislation.
So has David Clarke, Macquarie Bank chairman and former federal Liberal Party treasurer. "When people actually understand what this legislation is going to do," he told the Sydney Morning Herald, "I find there is very substantial opposition to it amongst people who would be regarded as traditional Liberal voters."
New National Party senator Barnaby Joyce, already established as a maverick, supports the abolition of compulsory student unionism, but is aghast at the idea of the decimation of university sport that would ensue. "The fact is that when you go to a university, you acknowledge that there are both buildings and fields," he said on television recently. "In regional areas . . . you are going to have to support those fields and support the hockey clubs, the netball clubs, the rugby grounds, because that is essentially what a university is."
Joyce proposes a service fee in lieu of the compulsory student union fee. He is supported by National Party Senate colleague Fiona Nash and Family First's Senator Steve Fielding, and their bloc would be enough to cancel the Government's Senate majority. But Smith scoffs, saying it is Voluntary Student Unionism-lite, and unworkable.
Smith typifies the belligerence of some Liberals on this issue.
If 84 per cent of students oppose the legislation, he harrumphs, then they have nothing to fear, for 84 per cent will surely sign up voluntarily for student unions in the new era.
But life does not work like that. When Western Australia experimented with voluntary student unionism from 1997 to 2002, less than 20 per cent of students paid fees. User-pays works for public transport, for instance, or with football, but not nearly so well for sports and recreations. Cricket has already learned this in the parklands.
The Liberals are the party of effrontery when it comes to sport. They laud it as part of the answer to the growing problems of inactivity and obesity. They bask in the glory it brings the country; at the Olympics, many of those glorified made their start at universities.
But they fund sport selectively, concentrating on gold-medal prospects and marginal electorates. They lever their campaign to enforce compliance with WADA's drug code by threatening to withhold funds. Minor sports signed on because they had no choice. Major sports signed on while gritting their teeth.
Do not presume that because the AFL was the last, it was the most reluctant. Cricket and rugby league were just as troubled by the grandstanding.
Politicking has endangered sport at university, but politics might save it. The bill is the work of Education Minister Brendan Nelson, whose star is rising and who will not want to lose face now.
But nor will the Government be deaf to the discontented rumblings on its own side. There is a school of thought that Howard might seize on this issue as a chance to demonstrate that his Government will not use its newfound Senate power indiscriminately. It may settle for an end to compulsory student unionism, but a reprieve for a fee that would fund non-political activities such as sport.
But when you next see Howard or one of his ministers beaming and shaking hands with an Australian sporting winner, be certain to look out for the political football at their feet.
Here is Greg Baum's view from the Age:
Political football is out of bounds
By Greg Baum
On Saturday
July 23, 2005
One of the first pieces of legislation likely to come before the Senate when Parliament resumes next month is a bill to abolish compulsory student unionism.
To the Liberal Party, student unions are as loathsome as all other unions, and compulsory fees serve only to raise funds for politicised student bodies to use to assail the Howard Government.
Remarked Sydney student Dominic Knight recently in the Sydney Morning Herald: "With John Howard on the warpath, the only union that's safe is the Australian Rugby Union."
But, increasingly, even some within the Government are beginning to discern a baby in this teetering tub of bathwater, and are growing anxious about summarily upending it. Compulsorily collected fees are used on many campuses to fund counselling and child-care services, for instance, and on all to fund sports.
Swinburne University is a case in point. Its sports and recreation body gets $800,000 from student fees, more than 80 per cent of its budget. Executive officer Michael Hudson said yesterday that if the voluntary student unionism bill was passed, the likelihood is that his facility would have to shut its doors.
The effect on staff is that all eight would lose their jobs immediately. The effect on students is that they would have to take out gym memberships elsewhere, for around three times the price. For some, of course, that would be unaffordable.
It would also jeopardise the future of individual sporting clubs at the university, and make it impossible for Swinburne to take part in the University Games. The story would be much the same around the country. Sport at universities would wither.
Outspoken Liberal MP Tony Smith won't shed any tears. In The Australian recently he wrote: "Sport wasn't invented by universities or unions. Drive along any suburban main road on a weekend and you'll see thriving sporting clubs that are based on voluntary membership, none of which was brought about by compulsory unionism."
But Smith wilfully misses the point. Sport at university is not an incidental bonus to education. It is intrinsic to education, and a furthering of it. It opens doors, teaches skills, instils confidence and fosters friendships that last lifetimes.
It promotes a powerful sense of community. It brings acclaim to the universities individually, and sometimes to the country. More prosaically, it addresses the problem of the dramatic fall away in healthy activity among school-leavers.
Decorated footballers and academics David Parkin and Mike Fitzpatrick attest to all this, and have put their names to a national campaign to oppose the legislation.
So has David Clarke, Macquarie Bank chairman and former federal Liberal Party treasurer. "When people actually understand what this legislation is going to do," he told the Sydney Morning Herald, "I find there is very substantial opposition to it amongst people who would be regarded as traditional Liberal voters."
New National Party senator Barnaby Joyce, already established as a maverick, supports the abolition of compulsory student unionism, but is aghast at the idea of the decimation of university sport that would ensue. "The fact is that when you go to a university, you acknowledge that there are both buildings and fields," he said on television recently. "In regional areas . . . you are going to have to support those fields and support the hockey clubs, the netball clubs, the rugby grounds, because that is essentially what a university is."
Joyce proposes a service fee in lieu of the compulsory student union fee. He is supported by National Party Senate colleague Fiona Nash and Family First's Senator Steve Fielding, and their bloc would be enough to cancel the Government's Senate majority. But Smith scoffs, saying it is Voluntary Student Unionism-lite, and unworkable.
Smith typifies the belligerence of some Liberals on this issue.
If 84 per cent of students oppose the legislation, he harrumphs, then they have nothing to fear, for 84 per cent will surely sign up voluntarily for student unions in the new era.
But life does not work like that. When Western Australia experimented with voluntary student unionism from 1997 to 2002, less than 20 per cent of students paid fees. User-pays works for public transport, for instance, or with football, but not nearly so well for sports and recreations. Cricket has already learned this in the parklands.
The Liberals are the party of effrontery when it comes to sport. They laud it as part of the answer to the growing problems of inactivity and obesity. They bask in the glory it brings the country; at the Olympics, many of those glorified made their start at universities.
But they fund sport selectively, concentrating on gold-medal prospects and marginal electorates. They lever their campaign to enforce compliance with WADA's drug code by threatening to withhold funds. Minor sports signed on because they had no choice. Major sports signed on while gritting their teeth.
Do not presume that because the AFL was the last, it was the most reluctant. Cricket and rugby league were just as troubled by the grandstanding.
Politicking has endangered sport at university, but politics might save it. The bill is the work of Education Minister Brendan Nelson, whose star is rising and who will not want to lose face now.
But nor will the Government be deaf to the discontented rumblings on its own side. There is a school of thought that Howard might seize on this issue as a chance to demonstrate that his Government will not use its newfound Senate power indiscriminately. It may settle for an end to compulsory student unionism, but a reprieve for a fee that would fund non-political activities such as sport.
But when you next see Howard or one of his ministers beaming and shaking hands with an Australian sporting winner, be certain to look out for the political football at their feet.