Education Minister Brendan Nelson got 51,356 votes in the seat of Bradfield at the 2004 federal election.
That resulted in $99,834.50 being paid to his party – the Liberal Party – under the public funding provisions of the Australian Electoral Act.
The taxpayers do not get a choice in this. In all, taxpayers paid $41 million to political parties and independents after the 2004 election, $18 million to the Liberal Party.
It is a compulsory levy raised from the taxpayers to fund political activity, with which at least half the population disagrees.
You would think that the political parties which voted for the voluntary student union legislation would find this an anathema and hand the money back. After all, one of the philosophic objections they said they had to compulsory student unionism was the compulsory levying of money to be spent on political activity. But no, they are happy to drain the students’ trough while wallowing in their own.
Taxpayers also compulsorily fund a host of other services and perks for Members of Parliament some similar to services that will end for students and officers of student unions.
One rule for the politicians and another for everyone else.
The voluntary student union legislation goes under the Orwellian title of the Higher Education Support Amendment (Abolition of Compulsory Up-front Student Union Fees) Act. The titles of many Bills and Acts these days are propaganda statements bearing a meaning exactly the opposite of what the legislation provides.
The new law is a political pay-back from the early 1980s when conservatives reasserted themselves on Australian university campuses after decades of leftist dominance resulting from the Vietnam War. It was easy to turn a student into a leftie if he or her boyfriend faced being ballotted for two years’ compulsory military service. (And there’s another inconsistency: it’s fine to force someone into compulsory membership of the military, but not a student union.)
The conservatives on campus fought their toy political war in student unions and associations. Now some of them are in Parliament and want to settle old scores.
A couple of misdirected ideologies underpin the campaign. The first is the objection to compulsory unionism. It is unfortunate that these student associations called themselves “unions” instead of, say, “service associations”. They are nothing like industrial unions. De-facto compulsory membership in industrial unions in the 1970s and 1980s slowed Australia’s economic growth and stifled innovation and efficiency as unions threatened strikes over manning levels and allowances over new technology and other efficiencies.
The student “unions” provide services in the same way that governments provide services. Not everyone uses all the services that governments provide but we all pay for them to make a better community overall. Rock-music fans pay taxes to subsidise opera.
Moreover, actual membership of the union is no longer compulsory. Conscientious objectors do not have to be members – but they have to pay an equivalent service fee to the university.
The second misdirected ideology is privatisation. The theory is that once the subsidised services at campuses end, private providers will move in and students can pay for only those services they want at a commercial price. The trouble with this is that a lot of the services are not available commercially in regional centres where many universities have campuses. Secondly, a lot of students will prefer to go without than pay the commercial rate.
In short a lot of services, especially help for sport, will end, and university life will be the poorer for it. The Vice-Chancellors were unanimously against it.
What can be done before the new law takes effect in second semester.
The law provides that any university requiring fees for non-academic reasons will lose $100 per student in Commonwealth funding. That’s indexed, of course, unlike the taxation scales. So universities cannot withhold teaching or degrees from students who do not pay union fees.
But life can be made easier for students who do. Indeed, it would be interesting if a cunning university offered discounts on academic fees to student union members. It would be cheaper than defying the ban.
Universities could increase all parking fees and give union members a discount. Universities have a fair amount of space and can give it to the student union and its commercial, social and sporting arms so that outside providers would find it difficult to compete.
The unions themselves will have to act. For a start, they could stop calling themselves “unions”. They could look at their fees. They range from between about $150 and $600, so some unions could look at lowering fees and becoming more efficient.
Students are usually cash-strapped. Without compulsion they will desert the associations that have contributed to university life. Despite all the demonstrations against voluntary student unionism, the wallet will be more powerful than the feet.
Unless the university administrations and the unions themselves act in the next six months to make membership attractive to the point of being compelling, universities will become just degree factories and our graduates will be the poorer for it.