By Orietta Fitzsimmons
CW: contains mention of transphobia
The 6th SRC meeting was held on the 21st of September.
Executive Reports
The opening item was ANUSA President Christian Flynn’s report. Flynn highlighted ANUSA’s recent announcement that it would make constitutional amendments to incorporate post-graduate students into the ANUSA membership, following the decision to defund PARSA from 2023 onwards. Flynn said the feedback from ongoing consultations with post-graduate students has so far been “entirely positive”.
A member of the ticket ‘Climate Action for ANUSA and NUS’, also called on Flynn to leak the minutes of the Board meeting overseeing the privatisation of the ANU Medical Centre’s services. Flynn declined citing potential legal obligations. Flynn claimed he is using his position to advocate against outsourcing.
In his speech, ANUSA secretary Ben Yates claimed that he had presented a proposal for word-limit standardisation to the university at the last Academic Quality and Assurance Meeting. Yates claimed that the proposal was met with interest and called for students to share their “strange experiences” with word limits, expressing his desire to “build the narrative that … students are getting penalised for doing the right thing”. When asked, Yates concurred with ‘Climate Action’ that Flynn should leak the Board’s minutes.
The Clubs, ISD, Queer, Treasurer, Womens and Disabilities Department Officers, all gave their reports as read.
In their report, ANUSA Education Officer Beatrice Tucker used their speech in part to highlight ANUSA’s recent statement condemning transphobia, made in response to the appearance of transphobic bathroom stickers in ANU bathrooms. They accused the ANU of covering up the issue. A university spokesperson refuted these claims, referring to the Vice-Chancellor blog denouncing the “spike in transphobic behaviours” and referring any students distressed by these incidents to ANU’s wellbeing services.
Tucker also stated that they were “pretty sceptical of ANU thrive”, describing it as a “non-democratic SSAF fund organisation that [they] fear is attempting to duplicate ANUSA”. In response to this, a university spokesperson stated that “ANU Thrive is a service that complements existing services at ANU. It was established to meet current student demand and has been well received by students”.
Discussion items
All motions passed. Opening the discussion items, Flynn moved Motion 5.1 for ANUSA to accredit the National Union of Students (NUS) for an amount of $10,000.
‘Climate Action’ moved an amendment to increase the accreditation amount to $40,000. Many of the arguments made regarding NUS accreditation at SRC 5 were reiterated in the ensuing debate.
‘Climate Action’ members argued that this increase would support the NUS to effectively advocate for the broad structural changes. In contrast, various ANUSA Department Officers criticised the NUS’s efficacy and transparency, particularly in the wake of embezzlement accusations.
Motion 5.2, was for the SRC to acknowledge the interim report on the Financial Review Committee. The Committee has projected that ANUSA will end the year with a $400,000 deficit. Head of the Financial Review Committee Riley Curtain repeatedly noted that Student Assistance Grants allocation and staff wages are ANUSA’s two largest expenses. Treasurer Jaya Ryan spoke to second the motion. Ryan argued that ANUSA cannot continue to use its reserves to pay for such grants, as these reserves are needed to secure ANUSA’s future.
In response Flynn reassured the SRC that “ANUSA has a plan”. He partially attributed the deficit to the expansion of some ANUSA services to post-graduate students, and also expressed the hope that ANUSA’s application for additional SSAF funding to cover the deficit will be approved.
Motion 5.3 was moved by BIPOC Department Officer Chanel Nguyen, who called for ANUSA to support the BIPOC Department’s 2021 Racism Report and the points of action within it. The motion passed without debate.
Motion 5.4 called for ANUSA to oppose the outsourcing of the ANU Medical Centre. The motion was moved by Carter Chryse, the ‘Climate Action’ nominee for ANUSA Education Officer.
The Motion refers to the University’s decision to procure a new, external provider of primary health services for the ANU Medical Centre, which is scheduled to conclude in April 2023. The University has explained the decision to outsource the Centre’s services came with their expectation that “an external provider will alleviate the current wait times our patients are facing, improve patient care and efficiency, and most importantly, be able to meet the needs of our diverse student community”. The University has also clarified it will continue to allocate its current amount of funding to the Centre in the future.
O’Neill expressed their support for the motion, but wished to see improvements to the Centre noting there are currently no female doctors. A University spokesperson confirmed this, but noted that “the University is in the market to source new doctors including those that identify as female”. Treasurer of the ISD Katrina Ha, also noted that there are no multilingual doctors advertised on the Centre’s website. However the website does state that the Centre will organise interpreter services upon request.
The ‘Climate Action’ nominee for Environment Officer and NUS delegate Wren Somerville, moved motion 5.5 that was originally entitled “The queen was a dumb dog”. Katchmirr Russell, Indigenous Department Officer, proposed to amend the title to “The queen was a coloniser”, saying “dumb dog” was appropriating Aboriginal English and disrepectful to the recent ordeal of Caitlin Moran.
However, Russell expressed their support for the motion more broadly. They also described the University lowering the Aboriginal and Torres Strait flags to half-mast, in mourning to the Queen as “deeply disrespectful – the queen is not a queen of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island peoples”. In response, a university spokesperson noted that ANU is a Commonwealth authority under the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act. Flags at the University were flown at half-mast in accordance with Australian protocol.
The amended motion was passed. Accordingly on 21 September, ANUSA released a statement on their Facebook which characterises the Queen as a “a royal parasite who contributed nothing positive to the Commonwealth in her 96 years of leeching off the British public”.
The NUS did not respond to requests for comment.
Graphics by Will Novak
Know something we don’t know? Email [email protected], or hang onto it until our interim website gets an anonymous tipline again!
If you have an issue with this article, or a correction to make, or you would like to send your condolences for our loss, you can again contact us at [email protected]. You can also submit a formal dispute to [email protected].
Want to get involved? You can write articles, photograph, livestream or help us bring our web home back to life. Email [email protected] for that. However, do NOT visit anuobserver.org the website!
