HOBART — Office-bearer positions in the September 10-13 elections for the Tasmania University Union (TUU) were predominantly won by a ticket called SHAG. A referendum to declare the campus a refugee safe haven won two thirds of the vote but won't be implemented because the overall voter turn-out was very low.

SHAG stands for Students Having A Go. Candidates for the group included members of the Greens, the ALP and the Liberals, according to Rei Cowell, successful SHAG candidate for union secretary. Despite including members of several political parties, the publicity for the group gave practically no indication about the policies they would be implementing if elected.

Many SHAG posters included simply the name and photo of the candidate and the SHAG logo. Where slogans were used by the group, these were generally catchy gimmicks rather than actual policies. Examples included “SHAG — Are you getting enough?” and “Rei — a drop of golden sun”.

In other results, Green-aligned Felicity Harris won the environment officer position with a large majority and Resistance member Anthea Stutter polled strongly for women's officer. Stutter won approximately 150 votes compared with around 250 votes for the SHAG candidate who won the position and 100 votes for the Liberal candidate.

Only 647 students voted in the elections. Liberal Party students were resoundingly defeated for all the office-bearer positions they contested.

The two-to-one success in the refugee referendum was encouraging for refugee activists, despite the fact that it did not reach the 10% participation threshold to make it binding on the union.

“This result ought to make the union more accepting of approaches by activists on this issue”, Resistance member Shua Garfield told Green Left Weekly. Garfield is a member of the Students for Refugees group that campaigned to get the referendum put on the ballot.

“Earlier in the year, TUU officials were making all sorts of excuses to avoid supporting refugees in the name of the union. Union president Ted Alexander opposed the TUU adopting a position, saying instead that the union should be apolitical. He is a member of the ALP”, Garfield told GLW.

“Mat Gijselman of the Liberals wrote in the campus newspaper that `the TUU shouldn't involve itself in issues that aren't affecting students… The TUU's place in [the refugee issue] is non-existent'.

“When students had a chance to say for themselves what the TUU policy should be, they came up with a very different response. Perhaps these student politicians care more about their future political careers than about representing the real concerns of students.”

From Green Left Weekly, September 18, 2002.
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