Spent part of the morning hearing submissions on Roger Douglas’ bill.
Brief comment from Sir Roger – written not that coherant. coherent.
Then brilliant submission with high quality supporting material from NZUSA. Legal opinions on Bill of Rights issues and a PWC report which makes it clear that university fees will have to go up by much more than the student association fees mainly because of the large voluntary input in associations.
Good supporting submission from VUWSA – challenged by a couple of nats on committee but they ended up looking like they wished they had read the submission before they asked questions.
Dr Ian Murphy talked about the role of University Sport NZ and how it would be fatally wounded by the inevitable withdrawal of association funding. A significant proportion of our high performance sportspeople are students and international university games are part of their pathways.
This bill is a clear case of an old failed ideology coming up against facts and a pragmatic approach.
Unfortunately I think some of the committee members closed their minds before they entered the room.
Off to electorate engagement so Grant gets to listen to the right wing submissions.
The people who say SAs are needed for political advocacy have not given any reason why the SAs need to be compulsory when all these other organisations out there are doing the same thing without a guaranteed source of income.
If a university takes over providing student services itself there will be robust scrutiny and very likely public pressure and accountability will ensure that political activity is not engaged in, which would be really good news for students who do not want their fees going to political causes they do not support.
@spud
“Ok spud – what do associations provide for the many, that MANY students take that is worth the $140 fee?” Advocacy, representation, events, facilities, courses, events, discounts, equipment, an avenue for putting forward ideas that you would like them to help implement, lost property, food bank, student support, radio station, magazine, a lot of stuff.”
All stuff most of which is superfluous, it is effectively taking money from one student to give to another and is not actually a necessary good. As all these things are accessed by a minority and would not be able to pay out to the same level if the majority chose to access them as in theory should be their right. In addition most of these things duplicate what is already available and out there for example government welfare and privately owned facilities.
So the above is really just a feelgood wishlist, a grab bag of ideas that are really just created in order to justify the compulsory fee extraction. Along the way a percentage of that money goes into the overheads and bureacracy that the organisation imposes, with plenty of wastage.
@Loota April 28, 2010 at 6:56 pm
HAHAHAHA LOL
the first casualty of war is the truth? Why is it that the only way you can make your point is to twist the meaning of words? “Compulsory” membership gets twisted to “universal” etc.
@Loota April 28, 2010 at 7:15 pm
There is absolutely nothing in any of your posts which convinces me in any way whatsoever that this advocacy cannot be undertaken by the youth wing of, say, the Labour Party and by taking a much smaller membership fee than what an SA typically charges.
Saying the university only want one body to consult with is like saying that body can be absolutely assured to represent all of the views that come within its ranks when there is no accountability to ensure that this is so.
@ Loota April 28, 2010 at 7:15 pm
Right so now you’re saying let us have a multitude of SAs, let everyone pay their SA fee to any one of a multitude of SAs. Start up your own SA and pay yourself your SA fee effectively.
It doesn’t take very much effort to see that this would be the net outcome of such a proposal, just start your own SA that can receive your own fees so effectively you pay nothing and the SAs as we know them would largely collapse or be nullified by such an idea. Sounds a bit like an own goal sort of outcome.
@ Loota April 28, 2010 at 10:15 pm
Obviously not the case in NZ where the more typical experience was that the dictatorship that needed to be toppled was somewhat more likely to be found within the trade unions themselves.
That is, that the huge number of politically motivated or otherwise strikes that happened in the 70s and 80s era of compulsory trade union membership, have withered away to such an extent that the CTU is now at pains to prove there has not been an increase in strikes in general as a result of replacing the ECA with the ERA.
When I grew up in the 70s and 80s there was some group or other of workers on strike just about every week, it was the standard industrial relations bargaining tactic of the era and was also quite legal as a means of political campaigning completely unrelated to workplace issues, it took the hardline approach of Ruth Richardson and Bill Birch in writing a piece of industrial relations legislation that hardly even mentioned unions to get the message through at last.
@ Loota April 28, 2010 at 10:15 pm
And now having addressed that point since you invoked the question about trade unions let us come back to the relevance to Students Associations.
Which is in fact, next to nothing as SAs do not have the coercive power that trade unions have, withdrawing from your course does not have anything like the bargaining power that trade unionists have in withdrawing their labour from a work place do. A call by an SA to withdraw from a course is likely only to be followed by a minority who can be bothered in any case.
The only “power” that an SA has that is of any relevance is to get involved in campaigning on matters that have no relevance whatsoever to their core functions in relation to tertiary institutions and these matters are also handled by numbers of voluntary institutions so there is absolutely no justification for SAs to engage in them except for the self justifying reasons advanced by the executives of the SAs themselves and which ride roughshod over the democratic rights of those opposed to such causes to choose not to support them.
Now as I have said I am sure the same claims were made about trade unions yet their membership became voluntary as it was necessary to address the fact that they were using the public and employers as pawns to support completely unrelated political activism. Just as Student Associations seek to justify through their political campaigns.
@ Loota April 28, 2010 at 11:13 pm
Yes and it is absolutely the right and prerogative of the people to elect a government with the important purpose of excising such blatantly self serving political structures from within society.
Such was proved necessary in 1990 when Richardson and Birch took an axe to compulsory trade union membership as this had become a serious challenge and impediment to the rights of employers and business owners to exercise their democratic rights in wider society as well as in the workplace.
Labour wisely chose not to reverse this change in 1999 due to the public’s negative perceptions of the previous regime, the result being that trade union membership remains nominally voluntary and industrial action is confined to a narrow set of circumstances prescribed by law rather than a free for all determined on the whim of some union secretary.
If you want to make a strong case that SAs are necessary then making their membership voluntary on the premise that some sort of benefit can be accrued, just as it can by trade union membership these days, is quite achievable so let us say enough of this self serving justification by vested political interests.
Anyway enough of that, off to bed.
Swapy said:
[blockquote]@ Loota April 28, 2010 at 7:15 pm
Right so now you’re saying let us have a multitude of SAs, let everyone pay their SA fee to any one of a multitude of SAs. Start up your own SA and pay yourself your SA fee effectively.
It doesn’t take very much effort to see that this would be the net outcome of such a proposal, just start your own SA that can receive your own fees so effectively you pay nothing and the SAs as we know them would largely collapse or be nullified by such an idea. Sounds a bit like an own goal sort of outcome.[/blockquote]
The proposal to have a freer system of SA’s answers the criticism of not meeting the standards expected under the principle of Freedom of Association.
You decide to ignore the fact that a simple set of procedures could be implemented to prevent the scenario you paint (e.g. a minimum number of members required for an SA, the need to submit reports and annual accounts (just like a “real” SA would), etc. So the concerns you raise are, well, non-concerns if you thought about it for 30 seconds.
Swampy said:
SA’s do have much more limited power than trade unions and you are quite right, they do not have the power to demand a withdrawal of labour to make themselves heard.
Therefore compulsory membership is a means to maintain the meagre resources, influence and democratic relevance needed to do their job to represent and advocate on behalf of the student body.
You have identified issues of poor democratic processes etc within SA’s – fine those can be sorted out. What next?
Oh, after you spent the first half of your post explaining why SAs are not like workers unions at all, you use the last part of your post to explain why they are just like workers unions. Hmmmmmm.
@ Loota May 1, 2010 at 8:16 am
Well the argument for the status quo is to maintain single SAs and they are just as much under threat from allowing a competing SA on the same campus. Imagine what will happen, Act will form a competing SA promising to do nothing except rebate 99% of students’ SA fee. So an interesting idea but may as well just make membership voluntary.
Woah
That’s the biggest response I’ve ever seen, s wampy!
“All stuff most of which is superfluous, it is effectively taking money from one student to give to another and is not actually a necessary good.” – Food bank and advocacy to name two are pretty important support mechanisms for students. Yes a magazine is superfluous, but it is well read and liked. It’s fun and brings the whole campus together in the form of letters to the editor.
” In addition most of these things duplicate what is already available and out there for example government welfare and privately owned facilities.” Are you giving a plug for government welfare?
Using privately own facillities would be more expensive than the not too bad, one off, SA fee that is paid at the beginning of the year. 
People on the student loan and or allowance don’t have much to live off and can sometimes find themselves in need of a foodbank.
“advocacy cannot be undertaken by the youth wing of, say, the Labour Party” – I don’t think most students are that politically hard core. A SA advocate knows the ins and outs of all the university rules and they have experience. Plus they have no political colours. I mean some poor wee young Nat might be bullied by some lecturer and need some advice. He wouldn’t lose face by approaching young labour when he could see a SA advocate.
@Loota May 1, 2010 at 8:22 am
Yes, hmmm, the only thing that is different for SAs is they are still compulsory, TUs are voluntary.
I bet the same arguments came out for TUs in 1983 and 1990, the employer wanted to negotiate with only one representative of the workers, etc.
The fact is that the tertiary institution can easily set up the representation system themselves, or with a voluntary association, if you want to be a rep pay your membership fee to the SA. There is not much involved in administering these groups, it can get broken down to the secretariat of the faculty concerned to run the meetings etc.
“executives of the SAs themselves and which ride roughshod over the democratic rights of those opposed to such causes to choose not to support them.” – They can’t, they have to hold a meeting with the students and there has to be agreement over a certain percentage before they can pursue anything. That is my understanding anyway.
Wow, S wampy, you must be tired.
@SPud
I’m sure you’ve noticed there are these foodbanks out there in other groups. There are massive amounts of community welfare resources outside the university. There is nothing special about the student association’s foodbank.
The only advocacy that matters is that which is directly related to the courses i.e. a representation group in conjunction with specified courses. I belonged to such a group when I was doing a full time tech programme 10 years ago. There was no overt sign of involvement of the SA that I could see. The faculty organised the whole thing and we had our meetings and that was that.
If you’re talking about advocacy not related to the university then it is getting to the point where you expect students to bankroll irrelevant stuff and that is unreasonable.
As you know Spud, these meetings only have to have a tiny quorum compared to the membership meaning they will go on regardless of the fact most students have chosen not to attend them.
If you really believe in “democratic reform” of SAs then one good step would be to increase the quorum in members’ meetings to at least 10% of the association’s membership.
@Swampy, – I’m going to comment and then leave for a while so that I don’t get into trouble for posting too much.
Yes there are other food banks, but they are stretched with feeding other people. So a student one is good to have.
I am talking about academic advocacy: Some examples are academic grievances, academic appeals, harrassment – these things cannot be dealt with by a class rep.
@Spud
Advocacy is advocacy whoever is doing it and in wider society a lot of groups do advocacy without exacting compulsory membership, to say that it must be done by a compulsory SA is nonsense.
@Spud
Yes I suppose we all face the same risk
I’ll just leave you to ponder this posting by Cliff Heine, another contributor to this thread.
http://clintheine.blogspot.com/2010/04/sack-more-of-them-national.html
His posting is about the public service gravy train and how it operates in practice.
We can see analogies in Labour’s defence of compulsory student association membership. Compulsory SAs are a nice little training ground and vehicle for Labour and other parties of the left to capture with their youth wings. All of the same arguments that came out for compulsory membership of trade unions are the same. Labour would defend this to the hilt because they don’t want to lose access to that guaranteed supply of income.
However as you or I know the public in general have recognised rights to political freedom but a massive hypocrisy exists in denying the freedom to students and trying to obfuscate it in all kinds of weasel words. The reason left wing capture of the SAs exists is simple, Labour and others put resources into organising on the campus, other parties put resources into abolishing the compulsory SA gravy train.
So any debate about SA membership which this debate is, is as equally valid as having a debate about how parties supporting CSM have resourced the CSAs as a means of a training ground for youth politicians, and of ensuring the CSMs support causes that are aligned with Labour policies.
Swampy – advocacy groups need funding to function effectively. And SAs do a heck of a lot more than advocacy, as Spud has pointed out.
But the membership fee is peanuts compared to what they get and they’re not obligated to do anything.
god is this still going…shame oliver’s gone off somewhere
@ Swampy refer to the arguments Me , Nick C , Oliver and Peter McCaffrey made earlier – all of us put in submission supporting VSM and some were attending on the first Oral Submission day
“shame oliver’s gone off somewhere” – no it isn’t. Run Oliver, get out while you still can!
I just don’t agree that it is a training ground for Labour because anybody of any political background can run for president etc.
If SAs are gravy trains, then I have to say that all students, including hard core right wingers, have access to a lot of that gravy.
I like your line Spud. Don’t the children of NACT supporters also go to uni? If they imbue their parent’s values surely they too would be politically active in SA and bring their own viewpoints to the table?
I do agree that the SA’s need to work harder at being democratic organisations which allow every possibility for ordinary students to participate.
Don’t worry Spud I haven’t left you, just up flown to away for the weekend for a conference.
I have the exact same opinion, we are arguing back and forth about the respective value of SA services, if they are valued by students then excellent students won’t leave. Doesn’t detract from the fact that I want to leave with full refund but cant? doesn’t detract from the fact that no one else is forced to join an association – like the teachers, or the EPMU. Why discriminate on us? because we are young?
Some of these arguments have got way off track
central point is, we have the human right not to be compelled to belong to an association, CSM is breaking that human right for no justifiable reason. Students should be given freedom of association
- Win
SAs don’t do anything useful, that can’t be provided by other organisations or the university itself. They are just a waste of money and resources.
Oliver – I support your right to quit, so I half agree with you.
S wampy – Yeah, but think of it as a one stop shop!
And they give value for money just a smallish fee at the start of the year!