Quiz score: 70%
Council tickets: Stand Up for Student Welfare, Stand Up for the Campus, Stand Up for Feminism
Represented by: Grace Lagan and Daniel Bowron
In a comfortable equal second place is Student Unity (Labor Right), running under the brand Stand Up. Current SRC General Secretary Grace Lagan and General Executive Daniel Bowron sat down for the interview and the quiz, painting the faction as striking the delicate balance between activism and accessibility.
Having recently disaffiliated from the national faction (with which they maintain a “working relationship”), Stand Up self-described as being a “broad church” in which “a wide range of philosophies” congregate.
Asked what this practically looks like in terms of maintaining a working faction, they told us that they cohere over big ticket issues like strikes, while smaller issues attract “interesting discussions.” While they shared the far-left’s concerns with the Albanese Government’s Universities Accord, they viewed it, in principle, as potentially productive.
Similarly, they added that lobbying the government could be useful on a case-by-case basis, but were willing to criticise the Labor government for failing to go far enough on climate action. They described the perceived divide between services and activism as “manufactured”.
Despite claiming to support activism, they struggled to explain why a Stand Up ticket promised to ‘redirect funding from endless activism’, saying that it reflected a frustration with the SRC’s messaging confining itself to activist statements. This frustration is reflected, perhaps more productively, in Stand Up’s policy commitments to better publicity for the SRC, and to attract better funding through grants and SSAF applications.
Disclaimer: Zara Zadro was, until recently, a member of Switch. She was not involved in any of our election coverage.