Ah, a balmy evening in May. It’s been a long one; between the USU Soapbox and election prepping, Council is one of the last things the Honi editorial team needed. So thank goodness it only lasted twelve minutes and two seconds. We started off with the low number of six out of 18 councillors needed for quorum at 6:24pm.
Julia, the Secretary to Council, received 14 apologies before the meeting began, which wasn’t quite enough to declare the meeting postponed, nor to be sure that it was going ahead. Theoretically, the Council could be quorate were the remaining Councillors to show up.
President Angus Fisher (NSWLS) commented that “It’s good to see the two most serious factions here.” NSWLS and SAlt were the only factions at council with the remaining factions absent. Honi understands that Grassroots and NLS were absent due to being at a rally defending the Abortion Law Reform Amendment Bill 2025.
The Bill was introduced by Greens Member of the NSW Legislative Council Amanda Cohn to mandate that NSW hospitals provide abortion access, introduced following the reports that public hospitals were refusing abortion access and that only two public hospitals in NSW were providing formal abortion services.
After some back and forth maths between councillors, Fisher calculated that the council would likely not meet quorum. Deaglan Godwin (SAlt) proposed to use his position as Chair of the SRC Standing Legal Committee meeting to rule that the council had met quorum, but was told by the Secretary to Council that he could not, in fact, make interpretations over maths.
Such a ruling would require a change in the regulations, which requires two weeks’ notice. In an attempt to manipulate the math of quorum and disprove math as a general concept, Godwin claimed, “Infinity is, like… very debatable.”
Jasmine Donnelly (NSWLS) announced that she wanted to say something (re: quorum count… maybe?) but didn’t want to be yelled at.
Godwin responded “we would never do that”. This was met with giggles from all over the room, but no one would ever accuse a student politician of being a liar.
Yet, this did not stop Donnelly from taking the mic after council was dismissed and loudly expressing her individual goodbyes to the Grassroots representatives that were present via Zoom. Such a sweet moment of unity between the factions.
Fisher seemed frustrated by the lack of quorum. He commented, “I was looking forward to being brutal.”
In the meantime, Fisher announced that he got into his second round of RBA applications, which only Godwin was interested in. This led to a wholly necessary debate between Godwin and Fisher about said RBA application. Fisher made a ‘revolutionary’ argument: “I need a job, everyone needs a job, it’s economics.” I can’t believe we give up our Wednesday evenings for this.
A quorum count was held at 6:32pm — 11 councillors were present, meaning council was sadly inquorate. NSWLS quickly declared that they were off to The Royal, and did not wait for Fisher to catch up with them before heading off.
Though we weren’t able to hear from the councillors and speakers this evening, the motions on notice were important topics of discussion. Starting off with domestic violence and femicide, and moving to condemning the attacks on university education, the motions will likely be moved to next month’s agenda. Some of the events that would’ve been platformed in the meeting were important upcoming protests — please see those linked below. And until the next council, we’ll be at the back of the ABS room, waiting… and waiting… and waiting.
Upcoming Protests:
May 10th: National Rally Against Violence
May 14th: USyd Women’s Collective Sit-In Against ‘Abortion Abolitionists’
May 14th: SGM – Against New Definition of Antisemitism
May 15th: Al Nakba Day protest
May 24th: National Day of Action Against Trump
