Student unionism in Australia
All major Australian universities have one or more student organisations, known variously as student associations, student guilds, student unions, or student representative councils. These student-run bodies provide many services, typically including refectories and bookshops, student media and publications, academic rights advocacy, support for a variety of social, arts, political, recreational, special interest and sporting clubs and societies, and political advocacy for issues concerning students. Most also operate specialised support services for female, queer, international, and indigenous students.
At some universities these functions are divided among different organisations. By way of example, the University of Sydney has four affiliated university-wide students organisations: the University of Sydney Union is primarily a service provider; the Students' Representative Council is primarily concerned with advocacy for undergraduates; the Sydney University Postgraduate Representative Association, the equivalent of the SRC for postgraduate students; and Sydney University Sport oversees sports, gyms and other physical recreation.
Membership of students' unions is usually automatic, but not mandatory, as students may choose to "opt-out". However, at most universities, students are required to pay a student services fee, even if they choose not to be "members" of those organisations. The federal government under John Howard introduced legislation for voluntary student unionism, which prohibits universities from compulsorily collecting fees on behalf of the student organisations, and abolishes default membership of Student Unions. The legislation passed the Senate on 9 December 2005, and it came into force on 1 July 2006.
The National Union of Students is a federation of most Australian student representative organisations.
History
The history of student associations in Australian universities broadly reflects the changing nature of the student body in the Australian tertiary system. The earliest student body was a largely wealthy group, comprised of the Australian bourgeoisie, professionals, petit-bourgeois and squatocracy. Entry into the University system was only available to the privileged and wealthy. The associations formed by this body reflected the social associations formed by this class of Australians: they were largely voluntary and focused on extending the social opportunities of their members. In the late 19th and early 20th century, at each University these organisations developed closer links with one another, and eventually transformed into unified student associations.
However, by the 1930s the Australian Labor Party and Communist Party of Australia (ALP and CPA, respectively) were both proving to be politically attractive to small groups of University students. These students formed Labour Clubs, dedicated to the ideas of the labour movement, and began to contest for leadership of student associations. By the 1950s a series of ritualised relationships had developed between openly Laborite, openly Communist, and nominally non-aligned leftist students. The Labour Clubs were often opposed by independent conservative students, but often conservative students lacked the vast activist apparatus built up under the Labour Clubs.
In the 1950s the composition of the student body changed radically. The Menzies Government founded new technically-oriented universities, like the University of New South Wales, and expanded the role of the technical tertiary colleges. This was in response to a perceived lack of graduate labour in the Australian economy. Increasingly, working class students were able to access University through teacher-training schemes, veterinary preference schemes, and other avenues. Bonded in labour to a government authority, these students could exert some level of pressure against their future "employer" by refusing to graduate. A similar wave of increased tertiary funding in the 1970s under the Whitlam Government saw the foundation of most regional tertiary campuses. The opening up of higher education to a broader social group without inherited privilege, but the beneficiary of generous public funding, resulted in a period of student militancy in the 1960s, '70s and '80s.
The 1960s and 1970s radically changed the nature of the Australian left. The Communist Party found itself under attack by a variety of Trotskyist, Maoist and anarchist student tendencies. These groups eventually secured control of a number of influential student associations, and in the end dominated the student association federation: the Australian Union of Students or AUS. At the peak of activity the less militant tertiary college student associations began engaging in activism. In the 1980s AUS collapsed due to internal left-wing factional brawling.
The 1980s also saw large scale protest against the Federal Labor Governments' introduction of HECS. Out of the collapse of AUS, the ALP student faction and the CPA-led student faction welded together a new federation of student unions known as the National Union of Students.