By Jo Brown
SYDNEY — The election of right-wing candidate Adair Durie as the new president of the University of Sydney Student Representative Council two weeks ago ended 10 years of left-wing presidents. Adair "the Bear" Durie ran on a ticket called Students First, which claimed to be "non-political" but was supported and managed by well-known Liberal students.
The ticket was primarily "anti-left", mobilising the Economics Society, college students and other faculty societies. It campaigned on accusations of mismanagement and irresponsibility against the current, left-controlled SRC.
The campaign also involved students dressing in bear suits and giving away free beer.
The left maintained a majority of one on the SRC and won control of the student newspaper, Honi Soit.
The non-Labor left, organised through Left Caucus, ran on a range of tickets including Greens, Smash Racism, Indigenous Australians and an anarchist ticket called Bullets not Ballots. Left Caucus won three National Union of Students delegate positions. One was won by the Labor left, two by Students First and one by the Liberals.
While Left Caucus received slightly fewer votes than in previous years, the decision of Labor left students not to give preferences was a key factor in Durie's election. Left Caucus candidate Vanessa Bosnjak missed out by only a few hundred votes, while around 600 Labor votes flowed to neither left nor right.
In the University of New South Wales student council elections, the incumbents were re-elected. The Everybody ticket, which ran on the basis of taking the politics out of student organisations, has refused to participate in campaigns against fees this year.
Everybody won 1500 votes. The international students' ticket, Interlink, won 400 votes, and swapped preferences with Everybody. Real Students got roughly 250 votes, 50 more than the broad left Student Action ticket, which was organised only two weeks before the elections. The Socialist Worker Student Club and Labor left also ran tickets and received between 70 and 100 votes. Talk has already begun about the need for a stronger broad left ticket next year.
In assessing the reasons for the right-wing victories, Resistance and Left Caucus member Keara Courtney told Green Left Weekly, "It showed that the left has failed to reach out broadly enough, to involve enough students in our campaigns and to convince them of the need to fight attacks like up-front fees.
"Cynical 'apolitical' tickets won because the left didn't manage to convince students that a political and campaigning SRC is necessary to defend their interests.
"The task for the left now is to work together to challenge the right and, most importantly, to involve more students in campaigning around issues that affect them."