The day focused largely on the autonomous chapters of the policy book: policies for women, ethnocultural minorities, and an attempt to discuss the union’s queer policy. The brainrot video of choice was rug-cleaning, keeping us all entertained for the half hour before things actually started.

The rowdy behaviour and quorum pulling that characterised the debate on these chapters in last year’s conference was, thankfully, largely avoided. What indecorum did occur was usually kept to disagreements over the specific wording of motions and their references to the Australian Labor Party (ALP), similar to the previous days. The factions submitted many overlapping motions for each chapter, resulting in large procedural motions to move these motions en bloc (all at once). 

Ethnocultural 

The chapter was focused primarily on the NUS’ response to the conflict in Palestine, the free speech implications on restriction of pro-Palestinian protest, and Australia’s policy of mandatory immigration detention towards refugees and asylum seekers.

Although almost all the motions had unanimous support across the factions, this wide agreement did not prevent the room frequently collapsing into interfactional shouting and heckling. At one point during the chapter, during a debate on the federal Labor government’s refugee policies, a member of Student Unity offered attendees ear plugs. 

          NUS supports Palestine

The first bloc of motions consisted of policies pertaining to Israel’s war on Palestine. The union adopted motions in support of the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions movement, governments imposing sanctions on Israel and its government, and opposing the Israeli policies in occupied Palestinian territories that have been described by human rights organisations as a form of apartheid. 

However, motions to break the US–Australia alliance and reject “Trumpian rhetoric” were more controversial. Dylan from Unity (ANU), praised the alliance — “God bless America, patriots!” — in line with the faction’s more pro-military stance on AUKUS. A heckler replied: “Say that to the Palestinians who are facing…US-made bombs.”

The second bloc consisted of policies to condemn antisemitism, anti-Palestinian racism, and casteism on university campuses. Speakers to each gave personal accounts of their experiences with each over the past year.

Further motions also acknowledged that “Support for Palestine is not anti-semitic”, where the NUS affirmed that “support for Palestine and criticism of actions taken by the state of Israel are not inherently antisemitic.”

          Racism on campus

All factions acknowledged the persistent problem of racism on Australian campuses. To this end, motions were passed that committed the NUS to creating a program that would allow universities to survey students’ experiences of racism on campus, giving them a more specific, detailed understanding of the issue and therefore the information to combat it. The University of Melbourne’s 2023 Racism at Unimelb Reports were cited as an effective example of this model. 

          Mandatory detention condemned in debate over strategies

Several motions criticised the federal government’s immigration policy of mandatory detention. In particular, motions condemned measures — including ankle monitors —  imposed by the government in response to the High Court’s landmark decision in the NZYQ case, which held indefinite detention of refugees with no foreseeable prospect of resettlement to be unlawful.

Motions also condemned the government and the Labor party for refusing to give asylum seekers who are present in the community permanent visas, citing the recent self-immolation of 23-year-old Tamil refugee Mano Yogalingam who had been on a temporary bridging visa for twelve years.

The discussion of these motions largely ignored the specificities of the motions themselves and was instead focused on the strategies that the NUS and its factions should take to respond to mandatory detention.

SAlt criticised the Labor factions’ support of motions condemning mandatory detention, arguing that this was hypocritical for members of the governing party implementing these policies. As they had for much of the past day and a half, SAlt spent much of their speaking time asking NLS to condemn the Labor Party, repeatedly expressing their desire to “hear from NLS” about their strategy.

In response, Angus Fisher — the incoming USyd SRC president — came up and gave a speech about NLS’ “two-pronged” strategy (explained previously) exclaiming that it “isn’t rocket science”. Fisher pointed to the Universities Accord as an example where “lobbying actually [got] you union wins”.

SAlt speakers preferred strategy is an “oppositional” strategy consisting of a broad student protest movement without engagement with the “bosses”, “VCs” or “governments” which oppose their policies.

Women’s

This was the least contentious chapter so far. Perhaps the amount of speakers sharing personal experiences with violence, sexism and assault on campus would have made heckling cruel and unproductive, even by Natcon standards. Or maybe it was just harder to argue about the ALP under this chapter.

          Colleges and sexism on campus

Sexual assault and violence against women on campus were condemned without debate, with the NUS pledging to call on Australian universities to improve reporting procedures, implement robust disciplinary action against perpetrators, and introduce mandatory consent training and consistent resources for individuals affected by sexual assault and harrassment on campus.

The colleges at the University of Sydney came under particular scrutiny, after an incident at a student council meeting where two students ripped up copies of The Red Zone Report into sexual violence and hazing at colleges, and a bullying incident at St Pauls College which resulted in six expulsions.

While Kiera Rosenberg from Student Unity (ANU) argued that abolishing private colleges would only worsen the problem — pointing out that public colleges like those at ANU were also named in the report — NLS and SAlt speakers continued to emphasise that they are toxic and unable to be reformed. Motion 6.25, “Abolish the USYD Colleges”, was passed, with the NUS demanding “the immediate abolition of all privately owned residential colleges at the University of Sydney”.

          Healthcare and abortion

Much of the chapter focused on access to women’s health services — including abortion and menstrual products — and against medical misogyny. Delegates adopted motions in favour of reproductive and menstrual leave, and opposed efforts by privately run hospitals to opt-out of providing abortions,.

One motion titled “No more conscience votes on bodily autonomy” condemned the practice of “conscience voting” on abortion in political spaces. A conscience vote is the opposite of a “bind” (see our preview for more info): it is an instruction that you can vote however you like. 

The Labor party itself, and most right faction-aligned organisations which derive from it, have rules which allow a conscience vote on all abortion decisions. The rule was adopted in 1984 to allow the party’s pro-choice MPs to vote for abortion rights without being bound to the position of the then-resurgent SDA-aligned Catholic right.

In South Australia, the upper house of parliament narrowly rejected an anti-abortion bill by a single vote — a Liberal MLC — as many Labor MLCs supported it. 

Unity previous allowed for conscience voting on abortion, but Unity’s Mia Campbell (UTS) claimed that the faction now binds on abortion and so the motion should have been withdrawn. It was amended to remove references to Student Unity with the support of independents, over NLS and SAlt’s objections.

          Superannuation

Labor, especially Labor Right, views the expansion of super to all workers as one of the Hawke-Keating government’s greatest achievements, though it has been the target of criticism from both the left and the right ever since its creation.

Naturally, given this context, motions moved by SAlt calling for its abolition, in favour of a greatly increased aged pension funded by higher taxation on the wealthy, were fiercely opposed by Unity and the WA Independents.

For women, super has its own “gap” on top of the gender pay gap as contributions are only made upon payment of wages. For women, and especially mothers who take parental leave, this means their super balances can be significantly lower than men. This, according to SAlt’s Yerin Park (ANU), “reinstitutionalises the gender pay gap into retirement”.

Unity sought to emphasise recent government reforms designed to mitigate this gap, including super payments on the government parental leave payment, saying that “the solution is not abolition, it’s reform”.

Having failed to achieve support from factions other than SAlt and the NLS, the bloc failed.

LGBTQIA+ chapter “pulled”

The night ended just as the conference was moving on to the LGBTQIA+ chapter. There was a dispute between the NUS executive and the factions as to who should chair debate during the chapter. Unity preferred incoming Queer officer and ANU student Brandon Lee. SAlt wanted outgoing officer Eddie Stephenson to chair.

It was getting quite late and delegates from SAlt began leaving the room, pulling quorum and closing the night session. The chapter was moved to the start of the next day’s business with Stephenson chairing.

Disclosure: Joseph Mann is a member of the Australian Labor Party. He is not a member of Student Unity or National Labor Students. Mann is set to appear in a social advertisement for the ALP’s student debt policy.

Edit: An earlier version of this article incorrectly implied that Student Unity voted against the motion, “No more conscience votes on bodily autonomy”. Unity voted in support of the motion.

It also did not specify that the NLS voted for the motion to abolish superannuation.