In a late ticket launch for the 2024 ANUSA election, ‘Globalise the Resistance for Palestine!’ promise an activist student union that puts the full weight of its resources behind fighting for a free Palestine and demilitarising education. 

The ticket, which is composed of Solidarity-aligned members, is running under the presidential candidacy of Beatrice Tucker. Tucker is a two time former ANUSA Education Officer and an ANU student who was (formerly) expelled after speaking about Hamas and Palestinian resistance on ABC radio in April. The expulsion was overturned a few weeks ago, after a petition in support of Tucker and circulated by Students and Staff Against War (SSAW) gained over 1200 signatures. 

Globalise the Resistance for Palestine! is running with three priorities,  Freeing Palestine and ending ANU’s ties to apartheid Israel, stopping the militarisation of education and ending the “drive to war”, and supporting an independent, activist-focused student union at ANU. It focuses almost exclusively on targeting educational ties of ANU and tertiary educations more broadly with military industry, genocide and imperialism. 

Alongside their dominant Pro-Palestinian advocacy, the ticket promises also to fight against cuts  to courses and degree programs (especially in the arts), and staffing reduction. They aim to resist the “ANU’s efforts to shoehorn students into the military industrial complex” with the launch of their Defence Institute and the AUKUS engineering/ physics partnership.

As Tucker states, they believe it will be their experience in activist organisation, not ANUSA administration that will allow them to “enable the full weight of ANUSA’s resources to be part of the campaign that will force the ANU to cut ties with apartheid Israel and stop the militarisation of our education.” 

The strong activist incentive of the campaign stands in stark contrast to the liberal-aligned Progress ticket, which condemned activism within the union as “counterproductively politicised” and questioned the relevance of protested issues to ANU students.  

Like fellow activist ticket, Left Action, it also responds critically to the consultant-commissioned ANUSA governance review, maintaining that the review’s recommendations for “apolitical departments” and for intentional limits to the “campaign potential of ANUSA” represent a concerted attack on student power and the union’s ability to represent and protect student rights. 

While the ticket’s media launch may lack any comprehensive outline of which ANUSA services they plan to offer or administer, or even really any popular appeal as to the individual benefit that students would gain from casting their vote in the ticket’s direction, one can’t help but feel that that’s not the point.

As the ticket themselves state, “Voting in the ANUSA elections won’t be the force that makes the ANU cut ties with Israel, our true power comes from when we stand together, and now is the time for you to take the step to join the struggle. Vote with your feet and join the movement in the streets, as it’s a strategy of activism and mass activity that will win a free Palestine, fight the militarisation of education, stop the cuts to degrees and win a better world.”

Their candidacy in the ANUSA election presents as just one component part playing into the “global student movement for Palestinian resistance” and the activist campaign to force “ANU to cut ties with apartheid Israel and stop the militarisation of our education.” 

Although acknowledging that the election itself will not be the sole catalyst that forces all the change the ticket aims for, they point to the achievements and potential in Pro-Palestinian activism across Australia and ANU in the past year, including the pressure placed by the ANU Gaza Solidarity Encampment on the university to alter their Socially Responsible Investment Policy and promise divestment from “controversial” weapons ties. 

The election, for Globalise the Resistance for Palestine!, provides an opportunity to spread awareness about the aims, victories and opportunities for campaign work for students, and agitate generally for a fighting student union that has a free Palestine as its foremost priority. They encourage students to use their vote as an opportunity to consider who is “more interested in winning their name to the role, rather than standing by the politics of what’s right.”

Last week, Australia abstained from voting in a historic United Nations General Assembly motion to call for an end to the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory.

As Israeli raids and bombings continue in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, the estimated death toll in Lebanon have risen to 1000 over the weekend. Israeli bombardment in southern Lebanon have continued even after the death of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, with some reports saying Israel may soon launch a ground invasion into Lebanon. 

Minister for Foreign Affairs Penny Wong has urged Australians in Lebanon to return home, warning that the government lacks the capacity to assist them all in the event of an all-out war.