A Student Organisation is an operation either offering services or a political voice for university students on campus. It is run and owned by students and nearly every campus if not all have student organisations.

Student organisations primarily are split into two categories.
The first is the student unions which offer services. These services can vary from Legal advice, sports associations, child care, on campus bars, food outlets to name a few.

The second category is the student associations. These are the organisations that are generally the political arm. They are the voice for student rights.

There is a third category which encompasses both a union and an association, it is called a student guild.

The National Union of Students (NUS) is the peak body for higher education students in Australia.

NUS is the national voice on all student related issues. It is made up of almost all campus student organisations in Australia, and representations over 600,000 students.

NUS makes sure that students need and interests are known by governments, the media and the wider community. Through the year NUS organises campaigns around the issues that matter to students.

VSU is the stripping of union fees that students pay at the start of their academic year. Often it is argued that VSU is about giving students the choice to join their union or students association. VSU is not about choice, VSU aims to limit students choice by robbing the student organisations of the funding they need to survive.

Student organisations are not just representative bodies. Student unions are the heart of campus life, providing important student support services like counselling, childcare, employment and legal services. They are also cultural centres where students come together to form clubs, get involved in sport, theatre or music and run campaigns. In states where VSU has been introduced like Western Australia, it has decimated student representation, cultural life and student services.

Even a limited form of VSU, where universities are still able to collect money to go towards funding some student services, has a huge impact on our student organisations because it gets rid of student control of student affairs.

Under VSU legislation, it's the universities and the government that control funding for student services and decide how they will be administered. So students lose their say in how these services will be run if they are still run, and ultimately the profit margin decides. There will be no voice to lobby the government on HECs increases, Class sizes etc.

Student unions are traditionally the most vocal advocates for student rights.

The National Union of Students holds a conference in December of each year. At this conference the delegates submit amendments to the NUS Policy volume and vote on these.

Who are the delegates?
The delgates attending the conferecence come from every member campus. The member organisation's office bearers on campus vote for who they want as NUS delgates. In turn the office bearers were voted by university students on campus that chose to vote in campus student elections.

NUS is owned and run by students, and its activities and direction are determined by students through annual campus elections. Any student may run in these elections to be a delegate to the NUS National Conference, held every December, and all students are welcome to participate in the decision making of NUS.

The National Conference sets the policy for NUS, determines its structure, and elects the National Office-Bearers and the National Executive. There are also annual State Conferences in all states, as well as the ACT, that set the direction for the NUS State Branches and electing the State Office Bearers.

The management of NUS is conducted through the National Executive, which is comprised of 12 students as well of all of the State Branch Presidents. The National President chairs the National Executive.

A Brief Outline of the Impact of National Student Unionism in Australia

For most of the last eighty years there has been a national student organisation of some sort or another. Students have consistently tried to find ways to overcome the parochialism of life on a particular campus and to work on joint projects with students on other campuses. Today's National Union of Students, is the latest incarnation of the long tradition where national student unions have been a key vehicle for students to have an active role in shaping their higher education system and the society around them.

From 1926-29 there was a short lived body called the Australian Universities Student Union which petered out as student politics on campus faded away after its first flicker of life. Student politics came to life again in the 1930s as students campaigned against book censorship in campus libraries and around also rising menace of fascism. In 1937 the National Union of Australian University Students (NUAUS) was established at Adelaide University. Student saw that with the Commonwealth Government taking on a greater in funding for universities that they needed a national voice. NUAUS also organised bulk buying arrangements so that students could get imported textbooks much more cheaply.

NUAUS was pretty quiet during world war two but was active in strike by medicine students in 1942, which forced the government to introduce an equity scholarship scheme for medicine students; the first Commonwealth program to help financially disadvantaged students. After the war the union was active in organising national debating events, arts festivals and opposing the White Australia politics of the political mainstream. In 1950 NUAUS played a central role in developing the Colombo Plan which created ten of thousands international aid scholarships for students in developing countries in South East Asia to study in Australia.

In the 1960s NUAUS took up the campaign against conscription for the Vietnam War. Despite this political stance both Rupert Murdoch and BHP provided funding to NUAUS for the establishment of a national student paper which was called National U. Also at the time there were no government programs to help indigenous students study at universities. NUAUS established its own ABSCHOL scholarships with the revenue coming from fundraising activities organised on campuses around the country. The first indigenous students at Australian universities were on ABSCHOL scholarships. It was not until 1969 that the government was shamed into setting up its own program, which we now know as ABSTUDY. NUAUS also had a thriving student travel charter arrangement, which gave students access to cheap international flights.

In 1971 the union changed its name to the Australian University of Students (AUS) after it allowed the old teachers' colleges and Institutes of Technology to become members. In its early days AUS played a central role in co-ordinating opposition to the tour by the Springbok rugby side at a time when the apartheid regime was still in power. The student-led protests across Australia led the Liberal government to order a ban on all sporting links with South Africa until apartheid ended. This ban was upheld until the ANC sanctioned the entry of a South African team at the 1992 cricket world cup.

AUS also played a central role in the development of second wave feminism (known then as the women's' liberation movement). The movement started on the campuses and AUS provided many of the first national forums where women's' liberationists could get together and develop their politics. The first AUS national women's officer position was created in 1975. Queers students at that time suffered officially sanctioned discrimination at universities. Students could be expelled from their teaching degrees for being seen kissing a member for the same sex on campus. AUS played a key role in cohering the early gay and lesbian liberation movement (as it was known then) to fight this official repression of sexuality choices. AUS also widely distributed some of the first positive portrayals of Queer lifestyles.

The union also continued to influence student culture. It held national campus band tours, which launched the careers of many of the Australian rock bands of the era. AUS held arts festivals that attracted huge crowds to the best works of Australia's young avant-garde and counter-cultural artists. Most famously there was the 1973 art and music festival at Nimbin which led to the establishment of the alternative community there.
On the education and welfare side of things AUS was very influential with Whitlam Government which in 1974 introduced some of AUS's key proposals such as free education and a needs-based student financial assistance scheme (a forerunner of Austudy and Youth Allowance). The decision of the Whitlam Government that the Commonwealth would take over the direct funding of universities and student financial assistance mean that there more of a need for a national student body than ever before. The end of post-war economic boom and the election of the Fraser Government ended the close relationship between AUS and the government. The new Government announced its intention to scrap free education for students doing postgraduate or second degrees. Despite the government controlling both houses of parliament it backed down following the 1976 national student strike organised by AUS.

It was exactly because of AUS's social influence that the union became the target of a concerted effort by government supporters to bring it down, Laws were passed to prevent member campuses in the territories and some states from paying their affiliation fees to AUS. The travel minister intervened to disrupt AUS cheap student travel operations. A section of students on the hard right of the Liberal Party received extensive financial resources to discredit AUS and then to get campuses to hold referendums to disaffiliate (a strategy widely opposed by party moderates). The crisis led to a series of bitter factional fights over how to respond and some campuses disaffiliated. The student travel operation collapsed and was sold to Students Travel Australia. The union had enough clout to stop the Fraser Government re-introducing tuition fees in 1981-2. However, another wave of campus disaffiliations saw the union leadership decide to wind the union down in 1984. A national student summit was held at end of that year but no agreement could be reached on how a new national body could be structured.

During the time when there was no national student union the ALP government of the day, acting under pressure from Treasury, decided to phase out the aid scholarships for international students and start charging them full fees. Then the government abolished free education and re-introduced fees for domestic students, and later HECS. Although students set up networks to oppose the changes there was a widespread recognition that students needed a more coherent framework to fight back using all the political tools: campus mobilisations, lobbying, media, research, etc. The defeats suffered by students in the mid 1980s created the impetus for a new national student union.

A provisional National Union of Students was established in May 1987 as a federation of the state branches that had been set up in some states. A national conference was held at Adelaide University in October 1987 to bring in other campuses that were not part of the provisional structure. A broad agreement on the structure was reached and the first full conference of NUS was held at Melbourne University in December 1987. It also agreed to recognise the already existing National Liaison Committee for International Students as its international student department.

While NUS was created too late to stop the dismantling of free education it did win official recognition from the government and was placed on the government's highest advisory body at the time, the Higher Education Council. NUS had some victories in the early 1990s such as stopping Treasury-driven moves to replace student financial assistance with a HECS-style loans scheme. NUS was also instrumental in convincing the government to lower the age for independent qualification for student financial assistance from 25 down to 22. NUS, however, experienced some tough financial times in 1990s as its membership fees were less than half what they had been in real terms for much of AUS's history, and also because anti-student organisation legislation in WA and Victoria prevented many campuses from paying their fees.

The election of the Howard Government, committed to silencing the student voice through national anti-student organisation legislation, meant that NUS was on the outer when it came to influencing government policy. Nevertheless the NUS does continue to meet the Minister. Despite, considerable disagreements, Brendan Nelson praised NUS several times in parliament for its high level of participation in last year's Nelson review forums around the country. NUS has built a high profile both in the media and with the Opposition parties. NUS regularly briefs the media and Opposition parties on higher education matters and our briefing materials are widely used in newspaper articles and parliamentary debates.

The union played a central co-ordinating role in stopping the 1999 attempt by the government to introduce anti-student organisation legislation on a national level. NUS also employed professional project officers and consultants to assist WA student representatives in the successful repeal the anti-student organisation legislation in that state. NUS also provided the key arguments in 2002 that led to the Australian Consumer and Competition Commission's decision to rescind its draft ruling not to allow the existing universal membership of student organisation provisions to continue.

The current changes to higher education in Backing Australia's Future, including more anti-student organisation legislation, and also the welfare reforms expected to be announced 2004, means that there are massive challenges facing student organisation in fighting for matters of great importance to our members and future members. The past shows that a well resourced and coherent national student union can make an important difference.

Contact Details

Graham Hastings
Ph: 03 9650 8908
Fax: 03 9650 890

NUS stands for the National Union of Students.

NUS is the peak representative body of all tertiary students in Australia.

We work to protect the rights of all students, organising campaigns across the country involving all the states, and all their respective campuses.

Our National office is located in the Victorian Trades Hall in Melbourne. All of our national office-bearers are based here, along with our staff and researchers. (Our state office bearers are logically located in their respective states).

Suite 64, Trades Hall
54 Victoria St Carlton Sth VIC 3053
    03 9650 8908
    03 9650 8906
    This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it


NUS Staff & Researchers:

National Research Co-ordinator
Graham Hastings
0421 635 828

Research Officer, International Students Dept
Sharon Smith

National Offices:
Click on the Office link above to view the current officers.

National Executive:

This is the senior governing body of the National Union of Students, second only to the annual National Conference.