On 30 August, Progress for ANUSA officially launched its campaign for the 2024 ANUSA election, presenting itself as a “proudly Liberal-aligned ticket.” Broadly, Progress’s proposed initiatives seek to maximise ANUSA’s efficiency in delivering “quantifiable outcomes”. Though the ticket falls short of directly naming its competitors and ideological rivals, Progress’s policies do present it as an opposition group.

As for the candidates running for Executive positions, none currently hold any position in the Union. Only Anton Vassallo, Undergraduate Coursework Officer candidate, has been previously involved with ANUSA as a General Representative. The list of candidates is as follows:

General Secretary: William Roche

Treasurer: Max Tobin

Clubs Officer: Jeremy Fox

Undergraduate Coursework Officer: Anton Vassallo

Postgraduate Coursework Officer: Luxue Wang

HDR Officer: Ruibiao Zhu

Progress’s platform has five core policies.

First, a push to tackle sexual misconduct on campus. In light of the 2023 ANU Sexual Misconducts and Disclosures report, Progress promises to “[implement] the recommendations of the ANU Women’s Department 2022 Follow Through Report”. The ticket also pledges to lobby for more UniSafe and security funding, and initiate a review of consent education “to address its existing shortcomings”.

Second, Progress pledges to improve international student experiences by addressing their “report[ed] dissatisfaction with integration into social life at ANU”. Recognising that internationals are often treated as “second-class students”, the ticket hopes to elevate the positions of international students as “stakeholders” in decision-making processes. For the latter promise, at this stage, it remains to be seen how the ticket will lobby the University council to consider international students in the absence of both Undergraduate and Postgraduate Members of ANU Council candidates on the ticket. 

Its major policy proposal will be to encourage the International Students Department (ISD) to “expand associate membership to all non-international students” to increase interaction between the two groups. However, this goes against the point of autonomous collectives. 

Third, the ticket promises to help students navigate the ANU’s contentious parking policies. This would be done by pushing for “better parking signage”, providing “parking fine support for students receiving a ticket for the first time”, and extending ANUSA legal aid “to those wishing to contest the fines”.

Fourth, Progress promises to reform SSAF spending. The ticket accuses ANUSA leadership for “continually prov[ing] their inability to manage a budget and use the Union’s resources responsibly”. 

To correct this, Progress would cut Executive salaries by 50 percent. Currently,  the ANUSA President, who is the highest paid executive, receives approximately $51,000, with the expectation that they put in 35 hours of work per week. A 50 percent reduction in this salary would result in the President getting paid around $25,000, which would mean a rate of $14 per hour. 

For lower salaries such as the General Secretary, Treasurer,  Welfare Officer, Education Officer and Clubs officer, all of whom receive around $20,000 for their term with the expectation of 14 hours of work per week, a 50 percent reduction would also mean a rate of $14 per hour. 

As of 1 July this year, the national minimum wage is $24.10 per hour. 

The significant pay cut would make the executive positions inaccessible to working students, lower-socioeconomic (low-SES) students, who often cannot afford to be involved in employment positions without an adequate pay. 

At this stage, the ticket outlines no further plan to create different incentives for executives to perform satisfactorily under this pay, nor does it stipulate a reduction in the number of expected work hours to better reflect the new salary. However, under this policy, the budget could get approximately an additional $76,000 for other expenditures. 

The ticket also pledges to sell the ANUSA ute, which accrued maintenance costs of over $7,000 in Semester One alone.  

Perhaps the most stark difference from the major tickets and Progress is its plans to ban ANUSA from funding “protests of any kind”. It would also “launch a review into employees currently on the ANUSA payroll to assess their utility to the organisation”. The impact of this review on services such as ANUSA legal services  and student assistance is unclear.

Progress notes that there do not exist any protections in ANUSA policy for religious students expressing their beliefs and identities. Its goal is to afford religion the same protections “as exist for gender, sex, race, etc.” 

At this year’s ANUSA Annual General Meeting, multiple accusations of anti-Semitism surfaced during the discussions.   

Progress for ANUSA’s ticket stands in clear opposition to its main rivals, prioritising what it sees as fiscal responsibility and an emphasis on material causes over social ones. However, how the ticket will make such sweeping changes with such little pay remains to be seen.