UniSA Students Association Elections 2005...

Finally, it came time for my campus elections! Let me recap on the previous elections 1 year ago:

Last year we ran in the elections as a new faction and called ourselves ONE. There are 2 other factions in my uni; the Labor Left aka Vision (National Organisation of Labor Students - NOLS) and Labor Right aka Drive (Student Unity). NOLS have dominated the Students Association since it was created and Unity were always second best. I put my name up as President for negotiation purposes and didn't campaign for it. Despite that, I managed to win the Presidency by about 54 votes and most of my colleagues won as well. However, a problem with the election process was revealed and a lot of candidates (including myself) were disqualified through no fault of our own (I still stick to my belief that it was all planned by the NOLS). Anyways, a deal between all our factions ensured that everyone retained the position they were supposed to have won for the year. That being so, I was re-elected President and we controlled 3 out of the 4 metropolitan campuses. We held in total 5 out of a possible 14 voting positions on Council. We also managed to obtain 2 out of a possible 6 NUS delegates. It was a historic victory as I was probably one of the first NLC candidates to win the Presidency without signing a deal for it.

Well, that's more or less a summary of what occured last year. It has been a rather smooth sailing year with few obstacles. The only problems I had were pushing across reforms to restructure the student representation aspect of the Students Association and a "fake" NUS disaffiliation motion (I recommended it in my report because I was ticked off at a previous NUS National Executive meeting I attended). NOLS had about 3 candidates on Council this year but most of the rest of the Council members were "independent" *cough* students who usually voted alongside NOLS. NOLS were severely weakened after the last elections and Unity was virtually non-existant - being locked out of Council for 2 years.

Elections this year were being held from Monday, 17th October until Friday, 21st October. This year, both NOLS and Unity approached me for negotiations before nominations closed but I was unwilling to get any deals signed until then because it would be silly to sign a deal when you don't know the candidates for the position. To cut a long story short, NOLS and Unity signed a deal to give NOLS the Presidency and Unity both the Vice-President positions. Both factions then proceeded to lock us out of negotiations (similar to last year when NOLS locked us out after 1 deal). As a result, we fielded candidates for ALL positions on Council (except the Queer Rep who was supported by all of us). I ran for President again, this time for real. Our Students Association is divided into 2 levels: Branch and Central. Branch is basically each campus and the positions available are almost a reflection of what is available at Central level although the importance of these positions (in terms of responsibility and power) is pretty low in political terms. Central is the level where all the important things happen. Anyways, after the nominations list was released we discovered that we won almost all the Branch positions (except the Branch Directors of 3 campuses) uncontested indicating that the other factions either didn't bother about Branch positions or just didn't have the numbers. Initially I predicted that NOLS and Unity would run as seperate factions but work together in that their voting cards would be supporting more or less the same candidates. It didn't surprise me though that come election week, both factions actually merged to form a Labor "Coalition" calling themselves Unite.

We stuck to the same logo and name as last year (ONE) but I improved our campaign material. We got our posters up the week before elections and had maximum uncontested exposure (just like last year). Election week was a massacre. On the first day we turned up with almost everyone on the ground in each of our campuses while Unite only had about 2 on each campus (there are 4 metropolitan campuses as I said earlier). In addition, they didn't get their stuff in order allowing us to hit hard and fast by bringing heaps of students into the polling booths. In City East, we managed to get lines of students in to vote without contest. The opposing candidate for Women's Rep was at City West and she started the day in tears when she saw their campaign in shambles even before the start of the real campaign. In Mawson Lakes, our candidates just bullied their opponents into submission. Magill was quiet (it is our weakest campus) but our candidates managed to get a good number of votes in. The next 2 days were a battle with City West struggling due to some miscommunication and lack of responsibility on the part of some of our candidates. I gave them a half-time lashing on Wednesday night to get their act together when I got a call informing me that negative posters about me were put up in the City East campus. Upon reaching the campus, I found posters of my photo beside Brendan Nelson's photo surrounded by hearts with the words "Brendan Nelson & Justin Lee are ONE on VSU... Save Student Services, don't vote for ONE". It was undersigned with the website of the Socialist Alliance. I must say that I was absolutely furious but it turned out to be a blessing in disguise since it motivated my team to fight tougher on the ground. We managed to get all the posters removed before it caused any real damage. I personally think it was done by Unite though it is not easy to prove it as such. The masking tape used to put those posters up were the same as used by Unite even down to the method of applying the tape!

Anyways, The City West guys came out with all guns blazing on Thursday and Friday and campaigned with extreme aggression up to the point of almost making their opponents cry (again?! They're adults for crying out loud! No pun intended =P). City East and Magill were pretty civil throughout the week save a point where I had to be aggressive to the opposition candidate for Women's Rep due to her rudeness. Our candidates in City West and Mawson Lakes were like wild beasts released from a cage and completely tore our opponents apart. I was even told that my opponent for the Presidency was quoted as saying "we got annihilated" after the elections. It seemed a sure victory for us come the end of Friday but we kept the pressure on them. It was also fun to see the union between NOLS and Unity sour as the campaign progressed. The fight was so imbalanced that at certain points we had 9 campaigners on the ground at City East against only 1 from their team.

It didn't take long for the votes to be counted and on the Friday night, news got through that the count (though still ongoing) revealed that I had won the Presidency and our candidates won in City East, West, Mawson Lakes and Magill (our weakest campus won for the first time!) along with the first Vice-President position. It was obvious then that we would win the rest of the positions but I wasn't going to celebrate fully just yet. By the next week all the positions had been counted. I won the Presidency by a whopping 692 votes (I polled 992 votes while my opponent only got a measly 300 votes) which was almost 13 times more than what I got last year! The rest of our candidates won by between 200 and 400 votes. Looks like I was the most popular candidate in the elections! Get this, the Queer Rep candidate was the only candidate supported on both the tickets. She only won by 400 something votes. Imagine then how it was that I won by a bigger margin even though I was only on one ticket! Following the results, we won control of Council (If I'm not wrong we now hold 12 of the possible 14 voting positions on Council - the other 2 positions were our rural campus position which did not have a candidate & the aboriginal position which was won by an unaligned candidate)! In addition, we managed to win 4 out of the 6 available NUS Delegate positions (the top 3 and the last one)! A historical win by our team. This time, we made history in that no other NLC caucus in Australia has won virtually everything there was to win in an elections. In fact, we ran the largest ticket with more than 45 people in our team (we had a lot of help from certain individuals who weren't running for positions as well!). For the first time in history, both NOLS AND Unity are locked out of Council! I'm sure the name ONE now strikes fear into the heart of local student politicians. I guess I've also made history by being the first international student to be re-elected as President for 2 consecutive years. I'm looking forward to a great year with our control of Council.

Our opponents have been really silent since then. I wonder if they're plotting something or are just completely demotivated by their utter and total loss? Regardless, the real challenge is actually taking advantage of our control of Council to get the job done and implement our policies. Unlike the other factions, we actually care about implementing policies and doing work! I must say, this victory is going to echo through the minds of student politicians for generations to come.

Well, there's only one more political event before the end of the year. Next target: NUS. Time to have fun!

ONE for all & all for ONE