Page 1439 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 6 April 2005
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
I think that it was the last year they did so—elected as president of the SRC a member of the Liberal Party. In fact, he is now a minister in the federal government and his name is Joe Hockey. That was their right. That was their entitlement.
I do not agree with a lot of the things that Mr Joe Hockey comes out and says. He was there just before I was involved and I would not have agreed with him when he was the president. In fact, I know that one day Mr Joe Hockey turned up with a computer, which sat buzzing on Hilary’s desk in the SRC. Nobody could ever work out how the damned thing worked because Mr Hockey had actually, as I understand it, got it off a mate and it came with no manual. The students, in their eminent wisdom, have not since re-elected another Liberal president of the Students Representative Council, which is interesting, I think.
I have talked about a number of the services that are provided and I have also talked about the fact that we should not confuse student unions with industrial unions. There is a difference. These organisations do provide very valuable services. Yes, there are going to be some people who get better value for money out of their student organisation than other students will. Mr Seselja talked about there being no cheap food and said that poor students brought their own lunch. When I was attending university, it may have been the case that a number of students would bring their lunch, but there were a number who were doing it tough and who looked forward to the union specials on a weekly basis for their food, making sure that they checked them out in the Daily Bull, as they were what they bought for their lunch each week.
I will finish on this point: I found it quite amusing and ironic that Dr Nelson said that you can get a sausage roll cheaper in Newtown than you can at the University of Sydney—and with a smile. I will just say that I do not know which bakery he is going to in Newtown, because I cannot get a smile anywhere in Newtown.
MS GALLAGHER (Molonglo—Minister for Education and Training, Minister for Children, Youth and Family Support, Minister for Women and Minister for Industrial Relations) (3.43): The government will not be supporting Mrs Dunne’s amendments. The motion brought forward by Mr Gentleman today is excellent on a number of levels, one of which is that it shows those opposite for the extremists on the right that they are. I have sat through the entire debate and listened to the drivel that has come out of all of that side’s speeches. I think they think they are being quite clever in trying to use freedom of association as a way of discrediting the ALP’s support for compulsory student services fees. One of the issues here is that, unfortunately, student unions have adopted the name “union”. In current times, if they were known as student service organisations or simply student organisations, they would not be under this attack by the federal government that we have seen.
It seems from what has been raised here that the issue that members of the opposition do not like about student unions is the level of political activity. My understanding is that it is an extremely small part of what student organisations do and I actually think Dr Foskey’s speech was probably one of the best I have heard in this place. Here is someone who has studied and worked at a university and who actually understands what is going on, and she can see the impact that this decision is going to have. I thought the comments she made about it were extremely enlightening, because they came from someone who has had an experience of university life that many of us have not had.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .