Disclaimer: All information in this article is alleged.
The Students Representative Council (SRC) Executive, led by New South Wales Labor Students (NSWLS) President Angus Fisher, has withheld approval of funding for tote bags planned by the Enviro Officers for their Welcome Week Stall.
Lilah Thurbon, co-Enviro Officer for 2025, told Honi that when initially asked for the reasoning behind their refusal, Fisher told the Enviro Officers that the graphic on the tote bags “looked bad” and repeatedly emphasised that they were “pejorative”. It is worth noting that, given the SRC’s position as an activist student union, merchandise is often explicitly pejorative, political, and progressive.
Thurbon alleges that, when further pressed on his reasoning, Fisher pivoted to the position that the bags breached the terms of the SRC’s Student Services and Amenities Fee (SSAF) funding. He referred to a clause which requires SSAF fees not to be put towards supporting the election campaigns of any political party. Fisher allegedly explained that by depicting the likeness of the Prime Minister, Minister for the Environment and Leader of the Opposition, the graphic was campaigning, by implication, for the Australian Greens and Victorian Socialists. He also stated that the graphic equated the environmental policies of the Australian Labor and Liberal parties.
Whether the graphic equated these policies seems irrelevant to the technical question of SSAF funding. The graphic also attacks non-politicians such as billionaire mining magnate Gina Rinehart, and is clear of references to any alternative federal political parties. The Enviro Collective maintains that the aim of the tote bags was to raise awareness against Australia’s ‘climate criminals’ and highlight the hypocritical treatment climate protestors receive.
Fisher provided Honi with a statement:
“The SRC Executive decided unilaterally — so, each person individually — to withhold approval. This is standard Executive procedure. It’s how funding approvals work. The majority of the Executive determined that spending $1400 on 125 of those tote bags was a poor use of students’ funding.”
It is worth noting that only Labor and Liberal aligned Executive members withheld funding approval. Executive members aligned with Grassroots, Penta, and Socialist Alternative voted to approve funding. Additionally, it is well-established that collectives are allowed to spend SSAF funding on merchandise; marketing is a standard allocation in organisational budgets.
By the Executive’s own logic, accepting this interpretation of the SSAF funding would also prohibit Fisher from condemning the Liberal party as implicit — almost explicit, given his alignment with NSWLS — support for the Labor Party’s federal election campaign. Additionally, activist factions within the SRC frequently produce resources critical of both major political parties, and yet their SSAF funding has not been called into question nor have their requests been denied. For example, the Women’s Collective have organised and received funding for merchandise promoting their ‘Abolish the Colleges’ campaign, which is explicitly supported by the New South Wales Greens and Jenny Leong MP.
Both 2025 Enviro Officers, Deaglan Godwin and Lilah Thurbon, also provided Honi with a statement:
“This censorship is particularly worrying considering the repression student activists are facing from University Management, that we can’t even rely on the president of our student union to uplift voices that oppose the political establishment and its many shortcomings. We query the ability of the SRC to meaningfully advocate for the interests of students if its leadership will ultimately be beholden to the PR concerns of the Australian Labor Party.”
Honi understands that the Executive’s rationale sets the effective precedent that any SRC activism surrounding an issue that both parties are — regardless of their level of involvement — actively complicit in can be construed as campaigning for a third party and thus a breach of SSAF funding. Framing this decision within the rhetoric of ‘implicit campaigning’ obscures the underlying Labor-aligned anxieties that motivated this decision.
Based on information provided by Thurbon and direct anonymous sources on the Executive, Fisher and other NSWLS members admitted themselves that the designs were rejected because they were critical of Labor and may cost them the federal election. The implications that this Executive decision and logical precedent sets for SRC activism is grave; it creates a mechanism for concerningly easy justification to withhold financial backing for activist collectives which oppose the two major parties, particularly the Australian Labor Party.
