As we welcome Semester 2 with open arms — praying for warmer weather and a fresh start at boosting our GPA — we also fear the state of our Messenger DMs in the coming months. One by one the people around you will begin to fall victim to the plague of matching Facebook display photos, and you may realise that even those closest to you are not above pursuing their dreams of student politics (‘StuPol’) hack-dom. 

That’s right. It’s ANUSA Election season. And no one can escape its wrath.

In the great spectacle that is pestering students trying to walk to class and jeering at one another in the comments of anonymous forums, the same political factions from last year will form a ticket under a new name and again attempt to bring down the mostly  ‘grassroots independent’ incumbents (‘grindies’, colloquially).

At the end of the day, however, most candidates will simply be begging you to vote in the first place. Every year Facebook groups are flooded with complaints directed at ANUSA, but voter turnout come election time is consistently dire. It is all too easy for people to use ANU Confessions (or Schmidtposting for the more bold) to complain about the functioning of the Union with little understanding of how these systems actually work and little desire to do anything to change it themselves. 

ANUSA receives 55 percent of the total sum of Student Services and Amenities Fees (SSAF) that the ANU collects from students (yes, you) annually. This is more than the 38 percent allocated to the University of Sydney Union, 37 percent to Arc@UNSW and 35.5 percent to The University of Melbourne Student Union. 

Don’t get me wrong, a well-funded Student Union is vital to a university that truly values student experience. In an ideal world, the entirety of the SSAF paid for by students ought to go back into the hands of students themselves. 

However, this argument becomes difficult to maintain when even the union with the highest SSAF allocation in the country struggles to engage students in their systems of governance. In 2023, 1362 people voted in the election for ANUSA President, 1199 for Vice President, 1178 for General Secretary. This number continues to decrease with each position. At best, this is a voter turnout of 7 percent. This number is down from ~11 percent in 2022, however this is mostly due to the recent inclusion of postgraduate students, as undergraduate participation remained more or less consistent. 

Whilst I wish I could go back to a time where ANUSA occupied less space in my brain, this 7 percent has pestered me for much longer than I care to admit. Why on earth is it so low? I have a few theories. 

Free Toast isn’t Political… Is It?

The average ANU student is likely unaware of what exactly their vote goes towards. It is easy to feel like the clubs system, O-Week, and Market Day are inherent to university life and are thus a product of ANU, not of ANUSA. The members of a club will probably not know that  their club’s continued existence is contingent upon satisfying certain requirements laid out in the ANUSA constitution. If they did, perhaps more people would take an interest in informing their vote (or maybe that’s wishful thinking).  

Even for students who do engage more actively with ANUSA’s services, this involvement does not necessarily translate to an understanding of how the Union functions. I have no doubt more than 1000 people use the Brian Kenyon Student Space (BKSS) annually, but every day it would be easy to find plenty of students using the space who didn’t vote last year. These services have become so commonplace and obvious at ANU that students are unlikely to draw the connection between them paying their SSAF fee and the free tote bag they receive on Market Day.

Some BKSS staff members report that students frequently misunderstand who provides the services on offer. Whether they believe that these services are wholly ANU funded, or simply guaranteed year to year by some other means, many students are happy enough to receive their free toast for breakfast or free vegetables from Student Bites on Fridays without really looking into why these things exist in the first place. 

But many ANUSA services are newer and less secure than they seem. Prior to an initiative by 2022 Vice President Chido Nyakeungama (from the Independent ‘Grassroots for ANUSA’ ticket), the BKSS didn’t provide free food. Moreover, The Mutual Aid shelf, situated outside of the ANUSA Office and providing free toiletries, textbooks, and other products, was only introduced in 2022 by Welfare Officer Grace King (from the same ticket). 

The services currently offered by ANUSA are clearly nowhere near as secure as the people who use them think they are – these initiatives themselves are the best example. StuPol veterans will remember that Socialist Alternative (SAlt) have continually argued against ANUSA’s provision of free food services. This is based on the argument that mutual aid contradicts claims to be an activist union which fights for the improvement of student living conditions (i.e providing free things is not activist enough).  It thus remains unclear what a vote for SAlt would mean for the future of the BKSS. 

Clearly, free vegetables, toast, and microwaves are inherently political. 

Student Privilege 

With a high proportion of ANU students living on campus at increasingly expensive student accommodation, and only 4 percent of students reported to have come from a low socio economic background, ANU oozes privileged private school. This inherently affects the perceived necessity of the services ANUSA continues to offer.

On campus residents can find community in their hall in the absence of clubs. Students who don’t need to work while studying are also less likely to need ANUSA grants or free lunches. Whilst privilege does not preclude students from passive involvement in the services ANUSA offers, these students have less incentive to care about ensuring they are sufficiently maintained because they rely on them less.

A common complaint this year in particular has been that while salaries and wages for ANUSA employees have increased under the 2024 budget, overall Clubs expenditure has been reduced. This discourse has been quick to overlook the fact that affiliated clubs have actually applied for less funding this year than in years past, suggesting that funding is not a budget issue but a demand issue. 

Additionally, ANUSA’s wages and salaries not only go to the student staffers running the BKSS and ANUSA reception, but also to maintaining the Student Assistance Team and the ANUSA Lawyer. These positions often provide vital support to students. In 2023, The ANUSA Lawyer helped reveal that the ANU were seeking criminal convictions against students for parking fines.

This is all to say, it is easy for the majority of ANU students to overlook a significant portion of what services ANUSA does (or could) provide because they simply do not need them. Time and time again, complaints made on Facebook lack understanding of the whole picture of ANUSA services – and the broader purpose of a student union – because it is very easy for us to only latch onto the parts we engage with. Come this year’s election, it will be interesting to see the main platforms each party campaign on as this outspoken demographic continues to proliferate.

The National Union of Students

The National Union of Students (NUS) Delegate position is by far the most confusing to the general student population. For the uninitiated, the NUS is the union of university student unions, who meet annually in November at the NUS National Conference (NatCon) which then decides the general direction for nationwide student campaigns in the coming year. Whilst fantastically convenient in theory, the NUS has faced significant controversy particularly in the wake of NatCon 2023.

Whilst the NUS have a heavy presence on other university campuses, particularly in Sydney and Melbourne, there is almost no NUS involvement in ANUSA and very little ACT student activism sees NUS participation. 

You may ask, why then is ANUSA the only student union in the country paying the full affiliation fees? Great question. The NUS is dominated by Student Unity (Labor Right) and National Labor Students (Labor Left), and in 2023 members of Labor Right and Labor Left were successful in passing a motion at an ANUSA SGM to raise the fees ANUSA pays from $20,000 to the full affiliation cost of ~$34,000. In the context of the NUS being increasingly distant from the general life of ANU students, and NatCon’s factionalism a sign of its continued ineffectiveness, one has to wonder (and voters ought to) what ANUSA has to gain from this.

Students have the opportunity to vote for six NUS delegates, who will go onto join the bloc of their respective political party. However when the tickets don’t advertise their political affiliation, it’s hard for the average student to know just what they’re voting for – regardless of any campaign promise, a successful candidate will toe their party line. This is likely why most NUS delegates also happen to be successfully elected executive candidates. In the absence of any true candor by the candidates to disclose their political affiliation, voters are left to vote for a name they recognise. 

Whilst I personally encourage you to delve a little deeper into the promises made by the NUS candidates this year – the real trick would be to go to the heart of the problem, and question why ANUSA is fully affiliated, particularly if you’ve barely heard of the NUS.

I Give Up

At the end of the day, if a student is not already too privileged or too unaware to be involved in ANUSA’s day to day functioning, they are still left disillusioned. How am I supposed to feel like my vote makes a difference when there is no accountability for candidates to stick to their election promises?  After all, it took the independents four years and $7000 in consultancy fees to admit defeat on the Night Café. 

ANUSA feels like a bubble of those in the know. Three ANUSA executive members this year occupied positions of the 2023 executive, with four in 2023 and three in 2022 also having occupied positions from the previous year. Current President Phoenix O’Neill has been on the ANUSA executive for three consecutive years. Whilst the incumbents use this to defend their ‘activist experience’ it’s easy to understand why the average student may feel like ANUSA is too clique-y to break into. If you don’t have an ‘in’ into the realm of StuPol, you really have no reason to want one. 

Candidates are also often sheepish in acknowledging their alignment with a political party, and annually each ticket feels comfortable pretending as if their proposed policies are not largely inconsistent with what they have been pursuing the year prior (e.g. Treasurer Will Burfoot running on the Stand Up! ticket in support of free education is caught proclaiming the benefits of the HECS system at NatCon 2023). 

The ANUSA election often makes it harder, not easier, to understand the function of the Union. 

With a cost of living crisis and an increasingly commercialised tertiary education sector, having a student union that accurately represents all students’ needs has never been more important. Every service explained above is unstable and subject to change, as long as you vote (and know what you’re voting for). No matter your personal involvement in ANUSA, at the end of the day it is still your union – the successful candidates will go on to represent you regardless of whether you know their name. 

So, despite the bleak picture painted above, it doesn’t have to be all doom and gloom. If you’re part of a club, have taken a free tote bag from Market Day, or simply have made it this far in the article, the very least you can do is understand the source of the services you use. Maybe you could start by following Woroni’s election coverage. But more on that later.