On 17th April, the University of Sydney Union (USU) held a Special General Meeting (SGM) to vote on a constitutional change to alter the structure of the USU’s board of directors. Lacking the two-thirds majority required for a constitutional amendment, the motion failed.
The proposed board composition would give the immediate past president (IPP) and immediate past vice-president (IPVP) the right to sit on the Board as one of the eleven members after their term was over. The movers claimed that this was a “necessary prerequisite” for the incorporation of the USU. Changes to the constitutions of USU must be approved by the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Education) or — if rejected by the DVC-E, appealed to and approved by — the University Senate.
The proposal put forth at the SGM would mean that the university would have to approve two sets of governance changes from the USU. While the DVC-E Joanna Wright has given in-principle approval for the governance model, no draft constitution was provided to the university executive nor the USU membership.
The university may choose to approve the governance changes passed through the SGM but there remains no guarantee the university will approve the incorporation itself. Should this have eventuated, the USU would have been left with an unpopular governance structure without the benefits of incorporation.
No draft constitution was provided to the membership for consultation until 24th April. Without a draft constitution for the university to endorse in writing, there was no reason for the membership of the USU to vote for the changes at the SGM.
Proponents for the changes in the USU governance structure, including current USU President Bryson Constable (Liberal), 2024 USU President Naz Sharifi (Independent), USU Vice President Ben Hines (Independent), and former CEO now Senate Appointed Director Michael Bromley, delivered speeches for nearly an hour extolling the virtues of incorporation — such as the ability to claim grants that they were otherwise unable to, to have protections against being defrauded — but did not justify why the process was split into two.
Sharifi implored the membership to think about the staff of the USU and for the membership to “think beyond ourselves, beyond our factions”.
Bromley spoke of his time as interim CEO of the USU and said that the university executive approached and “told me [him] point blank, if we wanted you [the USU] to be taken and there’s nothing you could do to stop it”.
Hines responded to the argument put forth by those against the governance change that a voting IPP and IPVP “is slightly more of a removed democratic process… but I don’t necessarily think that makes it undemocratic.”
Hines claimed that the “in principle support that the university have said they have from the Chief Governance Officer, from the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Education) is the highest form of support we could have gotten” and had there only been the AGM to vote on the decision to incorporate “it will just be rejected and we’d be back to square one”.
He did not justify why the university would reject the incorporation proposal beyond detailing instances of the university’s past hostility towards incorporation under the current governance model.
Accepting the narrative of hostility on the part of the university as presented by Bromley and Hines, Honi finds it then perplexing that the membership of the USU should simply accept the word of the university relayed through the USU Board.
Without clear written evidence from the university accepting or rejecting a draft constitution — something the USU could have produced given the fees already spent on consultancy — the membership of the USU had insufficient evidence to accept that incorporation would actually succeed with or without the changes to governance at the SGM.
Afterwards, Constable admitted that despite the failure of the proposal, USU incorporation would go forward nonetheless. This contradicted the entire substance of his speech.
Honi has now been provided with a draft Constitution as of 24th April and will continue to monitor the situation.
