Honi would like to acknowledge that NatCon is being held on stolen Wadawurrung lands. We pay our respects to Elders past, present and emerging. Sovereignty was never ceded. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land.
Credits to Imogen Sabey, Purny Ahmed and Ella McGrath for live reporting.
Content warning: mention of distressing topics including youth incarceration and Maralinga.
Day 4 of NatCon began with a new strain of brain-rot: hydraulic compression videos! A fitting start to the final day of student politicians tearing each other apart. We then received an even more dismal attempt at entertainment: multiple minutes of the first round of motions approving this year’s finances.
Module 1: Queer Space
LGBTQIA+/queer rights were the first bloc of motions presented for discussion. As expected, the debate quickly descended into factional warfare.
Unity and SAlt, while ostensibly aligned in supporting LGBTQIA+ rights, found themselves at loggerheads over how to achieve them. A Unity member from Australian Catholic University (ACU) opened the discussion by demanding an “end to weaponising public funds” against LGBTQIA+ individuals. They pointed to an incident in 2023 where the ACU had “shamefully” accepted public funding to ban the Pride flag.
A member of Forge from the University of Queensland (UQ) highlighted the need for all-gender bathrooms on campus, describing the lack of inclusivity as “a major barrier” to ensuring queer and trans students feel welcome at university.
SAlt, ever combative, criticised these motions as “milquetoast.” One SAlt member dismissed the advocacy for gender-neutral bathrooms and pronouns on forms as “total bullshit”, arguing that student unions should be demanding far more substantive changes for LGBTQIA+ rights. SAlt’s focus lay in achieving recognition in the census for LGBTQIA+ people, improving access to trans healthcare, and ensuring safety and acceptance in religious schools, which are currently exempt from the Anti-Discrimination Act under the provisions of the Discrimination Bill.
“We need to wake up in the NUS and demand a hell of a lot more,” the SAlt member said.
Next was a motion to endorse the NUS Queer Officer’s Campaign for Abortion Rights (7.8). A SAlt speaker declared: “We have to stand strongly against that and use our power as student bodies to fight these disgusting freaks [the far right] and send them back into the sewers where they belong.”
SAlt highlighted their recent activism, including protests outside hospitals denying access to abortion and trans healthcare, against transphobes and their month-long campaign against neo-Nazis in Melbourne, urging the NUS to take a more proactive stance in combating oppression.
The conversation turned to the use of proper acronyms within the NUS. NLS took aim at SAlt, accusing them of perpetuating “blatant queerphobia” by failing to use the full LGBTQIA+ acronym in their statements.
SAlt, ever defiant, fired back. “Stop taking potshots at people who have been leading the fight against the far right and against hospitals that are discriminating against queer people in this country,” one member argued. “When we talk about oppression, we’re talking about real, structural inequality in society. We believe that oppression is not just in the realm of people’s ideas. We believe that oppression exists in material realities, in the literal inequality that gay & trans people face.”
Finalising this bloc was a procedural motion to condemn a SAlt speaker’s transphobia at the 2023 NUS conference, which SAlt has now apologised for.
The room descended into shouting and heated exchanges, but the motion on the use of proper acronyms ultimately passed.
Motions 7.6, calling for increased availability of trans healthcare; 7.10, advocating to end religious discrimination; 7.12, opposing book bans; and 7.13 condemning Donald Trump also passed.
Module 2: Regional Australia
Factions battled over regional students’ challenges, unionism, and structural inequality, with delegates locking horns on the role of colleges, policing, and government policy. Each side fired sharp salvos to defend their positions.
SAlt opened the floor by arguing that regional Australians are not geographically disadvantaged. They accused the ALP (surprise, surprise) of perpetuating class divides and racism, particularly in regional and Indigenous communities.
“Oppression isn’t when you have to live a little bit further away from the city. Oppression is structural inequality. Oppression is when people are being held down and disadvantaged and right now in society” A SAlt speaker argued. “The ALP holds up the conditions for disadvantage…to exist.”
Unity, back at it, countered by defending regional students and institutions like Adelaide residential colleges, describing the colleges as “essential” for regional access to education, citing improvements since its “scandals” in 2018.
SAlt argued that Unity was “defending the class system.”
Unity responded with a zinger: “Hearing that slander from SAlt, I think that they might be compensating for something else small and regional,” defending the Colleges as essential for regional students.
Ultimately, the motion passed to condemn hazing (12.8), with a focus on promoting positive role models in colleges.
Regional healthcare has been in crisis, with students from NLS sharing troubling stories of traveling hours to Sydney to see a gynecologist and flying to Brisbane for surgery. Discussions segued into the mental health crisis in regional areas. NLS shared harrowing stories of high suicide rates, inadequate healthcare, and the struggles of regional youth.
“My town has one of the highest suicide rates in Victoria,” an NLS speaker revealed. “There are no doctors around, and the ones that are available are expensive and hard to access.”
SAlt questioned whether factions truly cared about regional inequality, accusing them of using regional issues to distract from systemic ALP failures. Heated exchanges erupted, with accusations of political posturing dominating much of the discussion.
The motion to improve mental health services in regional areas (12.10) was passed.
The issue of youth crime in regional areas brought some of the most passionate clashes. SAlt denounced bipartisan support for policies such as imposing curfews on Aboriginal communities and the use of spit hoods and solitary confinement in detention facilities. “This moral panic [of youth crime] is being used to justify solitary confinement and apartheid-like conditions in places like Alice Springs,” a speaker from SAlt said.
A Forge member from UQ, added that “in early 2023, the Murdoch media descended upon my town Toowoomba reporting on this so-called “youth crime crisis”, which was a lie, and yet … [it] brought back corporal punishment from the Queensland police. Our police system is broken and needs radical reform.”
A Western Australia Independent (Windie) who grew up in the small town called Fitzroy Crossing in the Kimberley, recalled watching police coming to his primary school to take children to jail and seeing a child in handcuffs at the airport: “Youth incarceration is a blight upon our nation.”
Unity took a more cautious stance, advocating for internal reforms to police practices rather than full defunding. They pointed to the dangers of reduced police presence in regional areas, citing recent terrorist attacks in Queensland as an example of the risks. SAlt retorted that increased policing only exacerbates systemic racism and inequality.
The motion to reject curfews and punitive measures targeting Indigenous youth (12.19) was carried.
Module 3: Environment
In an efficient turn of events, the environmental motions of NatCon were mostly moved en bloc. SAlt kicked off with a denunciation of nuclear energy, citing a long history of the nuclear non-proliferation movement and the shameful history of nuclear testing in Maralinga, in which killed many in the Aṉangu community.
An NLS speaker condemned the Labour Party during these motions for lack of action with climate change, spurred by their time as a volunteer rural firefighter on the frontlines of emergency fires last year. Unity stretched the timeline of renewable transition, believing that it was time to heavily invest in fossil fuels and gas to… counteract the cost of living crisis? We hadn’t done gymnastics since primary school so we found it difficult to follow the backflips of their logic.
A Windie speaker, describing Unity’s position as “very odd”, spoke to the environmental position on the ground in WA, with the Government being funded and influenced by “these fucked up mining companies like Woodside and Rio Tinto.”
SAlt added that “Global warming’s here to stay, we just have to accept it.” The Windies also found this odd, with one person asking “Why are they more right-wing than Labor?”
The last bloc finally carried, with everyone except Unity in favour. We’re sure they miss the numbers.
Module 4: Self-examination
But all was not yet over! The NUS executives began speeches, and the student journalists prayed that they would be more concise than the rest of the conference.
Jonathan de la Pena, the 2024 General Secretary, began by saying “How good is the NUS? How good is the NUS and the Labor Party?” Good question.
SAlt couldn’t stand listening to his whole speech, and marched out while Unity called to lock the doors. NLS also tried to leave, but got dragged back by some of their own comrades… (another internal conversation that they might need to have) so they could listen to the speech of Ngaire Bogemann, 2024 NUS President.
Ngaire commented on the much-discussed efficacy of the NUS: “The NUS continues to be somewhat ineffective, because within ourselves as a union we can’t agree on what we want to do and how we want to do it.” The empty chairs in the room didn’t have a heckle for that.
However, during an incoming executive’s speech, there was an unexpected skirmish. An unknown individual marched into the room and started yelling at the speaker. A few moments later, a security guard approached the man and physically dragged him up the stairs towards the door, as he shouted, “They took away my vote! They took away my vote!” He was pulled towards the door, with the guard and individual knocking over a chair as they exited. The identity of this individual is unknown by Honi.
Ultimately, NatCon ended with uncharacteristic punctuality, a typical din and depressingly commonplace discord. Despite this, the Honi editors left feeling reasonably uplifted. God knows why; we’ve probably got Stockholm syndrome. Perhaps it was because of ending before 11pm for once, or the scrumptious salad rolls. Or the bloated bar tab ($4,000, if you’re wondering where our accreditation fees are going)!
Module 5: Recap Quiz
- What did ACU accept public funding to do in 2023?
- Which Australians, according to SAlt, are not geographically disadvantaged?
- Which faction, according to the Windies, are “more right-wing than Labor”?
- What does Unity believe it’s now time to invest in?
- How good is the NUS?
