Welcome back to Honi Soit’s NatCon coverage – Day 3 edition.
Lucky for you, today was the closest attempt to a complete Conference day you are going to get. Mark our words: tomorrow will not be the same.
Every planned session was actually held (albeit delayed anywhere between 30 to 90 minutes) and the Conference moved through the remainder of the Education Chapter, International Chapter, Womens Chapter and Ethnocultural Chapter.
Unfortunately, Day 3 was not saved from a barrage of inter-factional misconduct, personal insults and confusing Conference Chairing.
The morning session discussed the state of the HECS debt crisis, access to free education, and a contentious debate regarding India’s Modi government drawn from the International and Education chapters.
A procedural was passed at the beginning of Motion 10.3: Student Unions Should Oppose the Modi Government, to anonymise the identities of all speakers in the interests of their privacy and safety. Consequently, Honi can only report on what was said – not who or why.
While most speakers condemned Modi as a “fascist leader” of a “right-wing government”, others defended him as “democratically elected by the majority of Indians.”
Some went so far as to state that “claims Modi is oppressing women and people in the caste system” are “untrue.”
We struggled to pick our jaws up off the floor.
After NLS, SAlt and Grindies passed Motion 10.4: Free Education for International Students, we moved to a condemnation of Labor’s anti-migrant measures. In a move that made absolutely zero sense, Unity continued their attempts to conflate the immigration issues facing international students with those of refugees.
When SAlt reminded them that it is the ALP “making life harder for international students”, Unity deflected by role-playing as “a bus driver with two kids” complaining about paying taxes. Don’t ask us what this means, because we still don’t know.
After the morning session was adjourned, Honi arrived back at exactly 2:30pm for our next meeting.
Following a half-hour wait, the Women’s Chapter was noticeably tamer than anything we had seen in the last three days.
There was a distinct focus on the structural oppression of women through the underfunding of sexual and reproductive healthcare.
While Unity and NLS were unified (haha) on endorsing free menstrual products across all universities, SAlt condemned Labor politicians for causing period poverty in the first place.
Speakers from NLS discussed the desensitised struggles of people of colour in the workplace, in tertiary education institutions, and in the face of the cost of living and housing crisis.
In particular, Jasmine Duff (SAlt) questioned NLS’ strategy to “do both” – that is, organise resistance on the streets and negotiate with ALP bosses. NLS responded with their classic line: “if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.” You can decide if we’ll ever truly see “change from within.”
At this point, Unity attempted to pass a procedural to restrict the Women’s chapter speaking list to exclude cis men. Jacklyn Scanlan (USyd NLS) made the disturbing accusation that SAlt had pressured an NLS man to speak by encouraging him to pretend to be non-binary/transgender/gender fluid, as well as making transphobic jokes during the motion.
Phoenix O’Neill (ANU Grindies) seconded the blatant transphobia embedded within Unity’s procedural, saying “you’re judging people over the way they look. I’m disappointed you’re not acknowledging all those [including cis-men] affected by this.”
Following the completion of the Women’s chapter, the latter half of the afternoon session centred the much-anticipated Ethnocultural Chapter.
Despite convening an hour and a half late, Honi noticed the tone of the evening session took a markedly different tone.
For those following our live coverage on X, by “something is happening in the carpark”, we meant that Satvik Sharma was filming an impromptu press junket with The Tert. Although a crowd of Unity lackeys quickly gathered to watch, Honi heard the phrase “Israel has the right to defend itself”, heckled, and quickly walked away.
The evening session then resumed with the Ethnocultural Chapter.
To no one’s surprise SAlt, NLS, and Unity quickly resumed their antics by refusing to adhere to speaker times, breaching physical conduct rules and going off on incomprehensible accusatory tangents against one another.
After Grace Hill (SAlt) ignored the Chair’s instructions to stop yelling about Unity’s decision to vote down Motion 11.16: NUS Endorses the CARF Campaign Against the NSN (N*zis from the National Socialist Network), she was named three times, asked to leave, and security emerged on the floor.
The scene resembled RepsElect 2022, if anyone remembers.
With an uncanny knack for timing, an NLS member yelled, “its about fucking time you removed them!”
Despite the conference decorum almost escalating to a physical fight, every faction member, delegate, observer and student media representative was brought to a minute of silence after a request from a speaker from NLS.
For the first time in three days, the conference was brought to a standstill during personal testimonies from Unity’s Sabrine Yassine and Nour, NLS’ Salwa along with SAlt’s Jasmine Alrawi and Jasmine Duff.
This was the first time since we arrived on Monday afternoon that we truly felt a sense of solidarity, understanding and compassion between NUS delegates. It was beyond heartening to see this national institution take a strong pro-Palestine position.
But to echo Cherish Khuelmann’s (SAlt) sentiments, and in light of Australia’s decision to support a ceasefire in Gaza earlier today in the UN General Assembly, we must also ask: “what will the NUS do now to build this movement?”
And with that, the Day 3 conference ended with everyone in the room shouting “Free, Free Palestine.”
Honi made an amendment to the phrasing of Phoenix O’Neill’s quote pertaining to Unity’s decision to bar cis-men from speaking on the Women’s chapter. It was previously misquoted.
Honi also amended that the speaker who moved a minute a silence for Gaza was not Palestinian, as well as that Nour is a Unity member and Salwa is from NLS.
Disclaimer: Simone Maddison is a current member of USYD Grassroots & Zeina Khochaiche was previously affiliated with state Labor.
