Resistance contests ANU elections

BY STUART MUNCKTON

CANBERRA — The socialist youth group Resistance will be contesting the Australian National University Student Association (SA) elections during the first week of September. Resistance is running for the positions of president, education officer, women's officer and general secretary as well as National Union of Students delegate positions. Its campaign slogan will be "for a democratic, activist union".

Resistance intends to convince students that the SA should organise students to be at the forefront of the growing anti-corporate struggle. Resistance is also proposing that the SA should commit to assist any refugees who have escaped from Australia's "concentration camps".

According to presidential candidate Leigh Hughes, "At a time when so much of society — including higher education — is under attack the SA must be run democratically with the aim of involving students in struggle. If we don't fight, we will lose, and if students can't control our own organisations, we won't have the unity necessary to fight."

Explaining that Resistance was originally part of the Broad Left ticket, Hughes argues that the Left Labor club destroyed any possibility of a united left ticket. "Left Labor stacked the Broad Left meeting to make sure its members were preselected for almost all the positions and had control of the campaign material. Left Labor is as careerist and bureaucratic as right-wing Labor students."

The International Socialist Organisation, although protesting Left Labor's actions, has decided to stay with that ticket. "We are disappointed with this decision", Hughes says, "because it doesn't help put a non-bureaucratic, left alternative to the student population."

From GLW issue 462