Honi would like to acknowledge that EdCon is being held on stolen Ngunnawal and Ngambri lands. We pay our respects to Elders past, present, and emerging. Sovereignty was never ceded. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land.
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Well, wasn’t that an eventful four days. We have officially left Canberra, and we’re writing this on the infamous Murray’s bus trip back to Sydney. Three more hours to go!
Unfortunately, we weren’t able to stay for the full final day, though we’ve outlined the workshops we will forever regret not being able to attend.
Module 1: Labor Hacks of the Old and Young
What Honi did have the (dis)pleasure of witnessing was the opening plenary about leadership and organising, hosted by Stephen Donnelly. The heckles began early on, strangely not by SAlt, but at SAlt.
Donnelly began by acknowledging Country and telling us how the last EdCon he had attended was in 1999, at a time when voluntary student unionism was being drafted and student unions were on the rocks.
Donnelly asked the crowds of StuPol hacks “who was born in or before 1999?” A shout from NSWLS was heard saying “come on SAlt, get your hands up!” — which, of course, brought on a bunch of giggles amongst the attendees.
The bulk of the presentation was your typical leadership-OLET-style slideshow. You know… the one that you look at right before the semester ends and you still get a HD grade. A bunch of graphs and the “4Cs”: connection, context, commitment, and catapult, which sounds vaguely reminiscent of a Connections game.
However, the trouble began when Donnelly referred to himself as “a trade unionist and Labor party activist.” SAlt, of course, saw the latter as an oxymoron, and had no qualms with making their feelings known — loudly.
Every time Donnelly gave generic advice on organising movements and connecting with people, SAlt jumped in to heckle him. When Donnelly asked the rhetorical question “Who are my people?” SAlt replied “The bosses!” When Donnelly then asked “What is the motivational change we’re seeking?” SAlt replied “To invade Iraq!”
Donnelly continuously used lines that were clearly meant to be inspirational, such as “We’ve got initiative, we are acting, we are mobilised. We’re taking clear action together.”
SAlt suggested, “To demolish public housing?”
Donnelly told a particularly provocative anecdote about his involvement with the Obama campaign in 2008 — SAlt cried “Shame!” when they heard this — and showed a photo of himself shaking hands with Obama, which everyone in SAlt detested.
The heckling became so intense that Donnelly ended up directing his presentation almost entirely to the right side of the room, where Unity and some NLS students were seated. NUS executives threatened to name or kick out various SAlt members, but they did admittedly have strength in numbers; as soon as one sat down, another piped up.
The traditional discussion time within a plenary was similarly derailed, as Donnelly went to great lengths to avoid answering questions from SAlt. He used the excuse that he was “working [his] way across the room”. Having started discussion time one minute after the plenary was scheduled to end at 11:15am, Donnelly found an extraordinary number of non-SAlt students to call on for questions, all while many people in SAlt not only had their hands up but loudly heckled him for avoiding them.
In response to a question (from Unity) about engagement in campaigns, Donnelly said “I found out very, very quickly, but that task, motivation, design stuff is so, so important, if we skip on that and just run a phone bank where we don’t take the time to get to know the folks that are coming along, build relationships with them.”
For us, the highlight of the plenary was having NUS President Ashlyn Horton tell the NUS about the Student Journalism Conference, which yours truly are hosting in August.
Module 2: The Things We Wish We Could’ve Seen
Of course, with Murray’s bus stealing us away from the conference, we did have to miss out on some major workshops that we, personally, would’ve loved to attend. The first of these was ‘Cut Ties with Trump’s America’ — a topic that encompasses the majority of the issues discussed throughout the week. It was a workshop led by Maeve Russack and Raph Duffy, and covered the reasons why the Australian government should cut ties with America. With specific mention of the global rise in the far right, it would have been a notable workshop to discuss the position of the NUS, and what the broader student union can do about it.
Moving forward to the next round of events. Our university (USyd) has had an array of problems with management repressing student protesters — namely with the implementation of the Campus Access Policy (CAP). This type of repression has not only been implemented at USyd, but at universities across Australia.
With our management dishing out academic misconducts to anyone who puts up a poster or hosts a bake sale without ‘permission’, the workshop ‘Tear Down the Poster Policy: Organising Against Campus Censorship’ would’ve been a crucial event for members of the broad student union to attend. Led by Dylan Adams and Harrison Oates, the workshop delved into how these forms of repression are mobilising students, have helped build (or heal) cross-factional consensus, and allowed attendees to workshop goals to tackle this problem in the near future.
Another interesting workshop was ‘Labor’s Climate Crimes’, led by Wren Somerville (SAlt) and Cherish Kuehlmann (SAlt). Including a three-year overview of how the climate crisis had developed under the Albanese government, this would have been a kicker. Under the Labor government, coal mine expansions have been approved, Woodside gas projects have continued and expanded, and there are 116 new fossil fuel projects that have been approved and are in progress.
An article titled ‘Labor’s Climate Crimes’, published by Red Flag, examines how the Labor government has not only maintained the pro-fossil fuels agenda of the Liberals but “served [the fossil fuel industry’s] interests… better”. Moreover, the government has subsidised the fossil fuel industry to the tune of $11.1 billion.
Happening at the same time, though, was a workshop called ‘Why is the UTSSA [UTS Students’ Association] the Gold Standard of Student Unionism?’ Run by Neeve Nagle, Mia Campbell, and Salma Elmubasher — all of whom are OBs of the UTSSA — this workshop focused on why the UTSSA had been recognised as the gold standard of student unionism in the 2025 NUS policy platform. The workshop provided practical strategies for student advocacy, using examples of successful campaigns that the UTSSA had run.
The second plenary, ‘Queer Office: The NUS’ Role in Defending Trans Rights’ took place at the deeply inconvenient time of 5:30pm, when we were already well on our way back to Sydney.
It wasn’t only us who had made our departure from the conference. Many had flown the coop and the cavernous H. C. Coombs lecture theatre apparently had a great deal of empty seats.
Here is a crucial piece of feedback to the NUS organisers of EdCon: never put important plenaries or workshops at the very end of the last day. It is shameful, yet unsurprising, that the NUS prioritised the attendance of a lecture by an old Labor hack over a panel about trans rights. Something for the NUS to linger on in the future.
And with that, EdCon came to an end. Thank goodness.
Fortunately, we will never see the NUS again. Best of luck to the next Honi team, you’re in for a bumpy ride.
