Last Friday night, a factionally contested Labor Club Annual General Meeting (AGM) took place where National Labor Students (NLS) unsuccessfully attempted to remove the incumbent Socialist Labor Society (SLS) from the executive of the USU club.
Occurring within the confines of a dusty Quadrangle lecture theatre, this marked the first contested AGM since 2014, with both factions putting up candidates for each role on the executive and SLS coming away with a clean sweep. The final count for the presidential election was 45 votes for William (Haigang) Yang (SLS) and 17 votes for Gerrard Buttigieg (NLS).
The Labor Club has historically been characterised by factionalism, as Kristian Marijanovic (SLS) pointed out in his opening speech: “we’ve always had it shaped by forces outside of the university”. “As the home of SLS”, Yang later stated, “this society is essentially our Leningrad. And like Leningrad, we have been put under siege from our inception.”
The most noticeable difference between the two Young Labor Left factions is SLS’s lack of engagement with the SRC. When questioned as to why, Yang explained it in terms of “economies of scale” as Stupol spaces are “overcrowded”. “Where we need to have more people”, he continued, “is inside the Labor Party.”
This AGM marks the 99th in the Labor Club’s history, meaning the Club will celebrate 100 years in 2025. When asked why NLS was interested in securing the executive of the Labor Club, Buttigieg disagreed with the framing of the question, making it clear that his intention of running for President was not “to take it for a particular faction, but it was to get USyd Labor Left back on track on campus and rebuild the mass student movement.”
In his candidate speech, Buttigieg claimed that the current purpose of the Labor Club under SLS was to “stack out the Labor Party for factional objectives”. Since 2013, the Club has been dominated by SLS, with NLS having run a separate — but now defunct — Democratic Socialist USU club.
When asked why the Club had been deregistered, Buttigieg declined to comment.
In his nearly 15-minute executive report, Yang made numerous thinly veiled political jabs at the opposing faction, claiming multiple times that “a certain group” operates in “bad faith”, despite their “so-called militancy” and effectively acts as “controlled opposition” within the Labor Party.
After claiming NLS will “try to moralise everything and talk about identity politics as they always do” within their candidate speeches, Yang pointed out the diversity of SLS’s ticket in the face of NLS’s overwhelmingly white ticket. When questioned about SLS’s overly male composition, Yang claimed this problem affects “every single society, every single party and every single group”. After Yang was asked whether this extended to USyd NLS, which is majority female, he said it would be difficult to come up with a percentage that determines whether an organisation struggles with female representation.
Reports from the outgoing executive were followed by candidate speeches. Victor Zhang (SLS) referenced his sister, who had her visa revoked, before claiming “the Opposition can say all these left-wing things, but when they get into parliament, they are the people that are going to be passing these laws”.
Multiple NLS candidates reiterated the vision that the Labor Club should engage with student unionism. Jasmine Donnelly (NLS) spoke about the need to “engage with student movements on the ground because we’re getting our rights encroached on”, referring to the Campus Access Policy. Jonathan Gilliland (NLS) echoed similar sentiments, “this Campus Access Policy has been crushing our student activism” to which SRC Education Officer Grace Street (Grassroots) heckled from the far corner of the lecture theatre “what activism?”
When asked about NLS’s light presence in the SRC’s Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Buttigieg again disagreed with the framing of the question, stating: “we were first out there in the Palestine encampment. I personally slept in the encampment. I helped with its organisation.”
Buttigieg declined to comment on how many nights he slept at the encampment.
Notably, Callum Cartwright (SLS) limited candidate speeches to 30 seconds each. Cartwright warned Buttigieg that he would be asked to leave as his speech ran over time and also claimed that he had “no control” over Yang’s lengthy speaking time as it was an executive report. In response, Buttigieg hurled from the stands “you’re a stain on democracy”. Most procedures on the night were rapidly conducted, with “all those in favour against abstentions carried” blurted out by the various SLS chairs before a single hand could be counted.
Resident Stupol observer Alastair Panzarino commented after the meeting: “tonight was a piece of lacklustre performance from two factions a part of a party complicit in genocide. For NLS, I suspect their aim was to take over the club and deliver their factional boss Albanese a receptive, rent-a-crowd audience for his 100-year anniversary visit next year. As is now habit at USyd, NLS lost. Despite this, SLS’s oppositional positioning to Albanese is more a matter of their factional exclusion from federal politics, rather than political principle or vast ideological difference.”
Disclaimer: Ravkaran Grewal is a member of Grassroots.
