Dirty Politics...

We had our NUS SA State Conference last Friday. The sensitive and confidential nature of any deals brokered between factions prevents me from going into too much detail with regards to the nitty-gritty of stuff that happened. Officially, we as the NLC are the biggest faction in South Australia. This was due to our overwhelming victory in my uni elections yielding 4 delegates holding a total of 51 votes. Our uni gets more votes that any other uni in South Australia due to our large student population. What an achievement! We always used to be one of the smallest and weakest factions. Now we're the strongest. I am pretty sure we had the most delegates as well this year. It feels good walking into the room knowing that you are the ones holding the power. Not that we abused it though. This year's conference was much better than last year's. There wasn't any shouting and there were far fewer arguments. Things went along very smoothly although we had to resume the meeting late after a late start due to one of our delegates being late thus preventing quorum from being reached (NOLS didn't want to come in). Eventually things got underway.

Negotiations this year worked in our favour. We finally managed to get PK back into politics in a major way! He is now our NUS SA State President! Congratulations PK! Keith got in as Education Officer and Melissa as Welfare Officer. Not too bad obtaining the top job and two other positions! The rest of the positions went to Unity. We only had to conduct a ballot for Environment Officer because NOLS messed up all their other nominations causing them to be invalidated. NOLS were locked out of NUS SA for the 4th year in a row.

It's been tough trying to get PK back into action after the NLC Annual Conference. He had a hard time after losing faith in something he believed in with all his heart. It must be excruciating. Imagine putting all your sweat and effort while sacrificing so much just to make a difference in what you believe in. Then somebody comes along and just destroys all your hard work making what you believe in exactly the opposite of how it should be. It's such a shame. Why can't people let others who are more enthusiastic, capable and hardworking take a job at the expense of their own ambitions? It's not so much the matter of not winning the position. More of the manner in which the position was not obtained. Someone who worked so hard was completely shut out of the very organisation he was fixing up and made to look like the bad guy. Injustice is something I cannot tolerate. Especially if the people who inflict the injustice can enjoy themselves and strut their pride following their vile deed. It's not my job to be the judge, jury and executioner. At the same time, I can't stand to see injustice left unpunished. Such a terrible human weakness. Impatience. Why can't I just leave it be and let them get what is coming to them? Well, I just have to control myself and make sure that I don't go too far. Yet, the lure of exacting vengeance is so strong... Funny how I want to take revenge even though I am not the victim. This happens a lot in my life.

Anyways, it's difficult to concentrate on the holidays when there is so much work left to do. I've been in office for quite a bit in the past few days. I finally managed to get the microphone on my handphone changed since a lot of people were complaining that they can't hear me on the phone. Took only 5 minutes. Talk about good service! I'll be leaving for Melbourne this Saturday. Can't crash over at my friends' places when I'm there since most of them have either gone home or are going to be busy preparing for graduations. I just began to realise how long it's been already. 3 years. Only one left to complete my degree. Yet, it seems like it's so far away. It also doesn't feel that long. Time flies when you're having fun, huh? It's funny how for some people, the student who goes overseas can't wait to get back. Yet for others, the only reason for going back is to meet the family. I've grown attached to this place. Too attached perhaps. I've made a life for myself here. History. I don't want to leave it all behind. Yet, I don't know if I can leave what I have at home behind as well. A dilemma no? I have one year left to decide what I want to do; and I'm nowhere near at making the decision as I was 3 years ago. Only time will tell I guess...

Exams Fly By...

Well, I finished my exams on Monday. I must say that the exams were all packed together. We finished all 4 of our papers in exactly 1 week! I always promise myself that I will blog once I have nothing better to do but it always turns out that I occupy my time with other things except blogging. That's why I never keep a diary I guess. It's too troublesome to write every day and eventually the gap between one post and another is so long it defeats the purpose of keeping a diary in the first place.

Exams are always a trying period. I always have to cram stuff into my head but always get distracted and have never been able to study for more than 2 hours straight. Even after 1 hour I get so fidgety I can't continue. My routine is usually study an hour, stop and go online/play a game, study another hour, repeat. I also have certain "rituals" I have to conduct before an exam. First is that I usually have to cut my hair the week prior to exams. This goes back to my school days when it used to be very hot back home so I needed short hair to concentrate more. This time however, I decided not to cut my hair because it didn't seem long enough. The night before a paper, I have to set aside a period of time to relax, sip some Chamomile tea and listen to soft Christian music. Then there's the slew of prayers that come at various periods. It's difficult to do something different especially since my results have been pretty acceptable. Why change a winning formula huh? I'm not the superstitious kind of person. In fact, I don't believe in that rubbish. However, it's difficult for me to move away from these habits for fear that something may go wrong. Looks like there is that touch of superstition within me after all... Either that or I have a mild case of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD).

It always amuses me how people try to just memorise as much as they can to be successful in their exams. Only the very good students attempt to understand the topic. This is why people exclaim in horror about the difficulty of a paper if it is full of thinking questions which require a good grasp of the topic. Sadly (or fortunately), some still manage to get through if they have a superb memory with little understanding of how it actually works. I guess that's one of the failures of the education system. Exams nowadays tend to examine knowledge content rather than knowledge application. I must admit that I myself at times fall to the simplicity of just memorising something I can't get myself to understand. However, it shows my weakness when the answer that I put is wrong and after reviewing the reasons, realising how little I know about the topic in the first place. There must be a way of making people actually understanding something. Oh well, you can't have everything perfect!

I'm not a fan of exams. At the same time, I do acknowledge that it is one of the best ways of testing how much you learnt throughout the semester. A lack of tests would just leave students complacent since assignments serve no purpose other than to force student to look up references they don't even read to just regurgitate something someone figured out a long time ago. There's a lot to do in the education system to actually promote "quality" education. You tend to wonder what the Education Minister is doing when he is not trying to crush student unions...

Anyways, the end of exams marks a time of partying and parting. Almost everyone goes back home for the holidays right after the exams. I sometimes wonder what the point is of coming to Australia to study if all a person wants to do is run home at the first available opportunity. They might as well have studied in their home country. Yes, I have to admit universities overseas probably have a better reputation. Despite that, coming overseas is a priviledge. Not many people get this opportunity. We should be staying back at least once to really take in the culture and travel around seeing things not available in one's own country. I remember when I stayed back at the end of last year and the beginning of this year. Christmas here was quite interesting. Skyshow was also a very worthwile experience. Not to mention the various trips we made around to see sights. There's not much I have to go home to aside from my family. After all, life goes on and eventually you have to learn to live by yourself. I do miss some things from home. Yet, I don't see an absolute necessity to go home aside from the family. I do get a chance to go home though in the middle of December. It will be almost two years since I've been home. It's hard to leave here as well what with my job and all. I can't help but feel anxious about leaving the Students Association in one of my Vice-President's hands with VSU on the horizon. I just hope nothing happens until I get back (or not at all if possible). At least I get to make one more trip to Melbourne before I head home for the NUS Conference where I can enjoy my Max Brenner's!

I'll be home soon. But before that I'll just spend my last few days here sorting out the thing that has been driving my life recently. Politics. Once all this is done, I can go home and take a long break before heading back head first into the realm of "busy"ness...

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

Canberra & the NSLF...

18th September 2005

A couple of months before this date, I received an e-mail from the Pro Vice-Chancellor: Access & Learning Support that was sent to the PVCs of each division and the Students Association. The e-mail was calling for nominations of students to attend the National Student Leadership Forum (NSLF) that was to be held in Canberra. The NSLF is an annual conference (though it was not held last year due to the Federal Elections) that brings together students from all across Australia (and some from Fiji, New Zealand and surrounding islands) who are nominated by either their university or a prominent member of the community (which happens to be politicians most of the time). Anyways, the cost of the conference was rather high and the uni was only going to pay for registration. To avoid bearing costs to my Association, I decided to ask the PVC of my division (Health Sciences) if she would be willing to sponsor my travel as a representative of the division. Fortunately she agreed with the provision that I provide a report upon conclusion of the event.

I had to leave for the conference on a Thursday before the mid-semester holidays and due to some unforseen difficulties, I missed my flight! Thankfully I managed to get on a later one and still reach on time. My first stop in Canberra was Parliament and I had to drag along my bag full of clothes with me since I came straight from the airport. I must say, the Parliament of Australia is a truly magnificent building. Security is tight as well. Our first order of business was to sit through the House of Representatives Question Time. This involved alternate turns whereby an MP from the Federal Government would ask a question of a Minister followed by a question from an MP from the Federal Opposition. It was rather fun watching the clearly biased questions coming from both sides. Peter Costello also managed to smash Kim Beazley with a tirade about Mark Latham's diaries. Anyways, we spent the whole day being addressed by politicians and attending meetings and a dinner with them.

It's a waste of my time running through the whole conference proceedings so I'll just touch on the interesting bits. The best part of the conference was that we were given accommodation in the Hyatt Canberra. From what I understand it is the only 5-star hotel in Canberra. We shared 3 persons to a room but the rooms were so magnificent with a marble bathroom floor that it didn't bother us that we had to share. All our meals throughout the conference in Parliament and at the hotel were just mouth-watering. I didn't get to see much of Canberra save old and new Parliament house since our schedule was tight and my return flight was not long after the end of the conference. At the conference, I only knew one other person who happened to be a girl from Adelaide. Despite that I managed to make a number of friends and the group I was put in was very friendly.

The whole conference was very right-wing in my opinion. A little too right-wing for my liking. I wonder how some of the Labor Left students who attended the conference felt? Anyways, the attempt was to show everyone that politicians lead normal lives outside of their jobs. I certainly felt that it was made to convince everyone that the Government is really good and without flaw. There happened to be a Young Liberal in my group and his views were so pro-Government that there was no way of talking sense into him or even revealing some faults of the current Government. I mean, come on! No matter how good leaders are there are always weaknesses and faults. No one person or faction is perfect. Even I in my current position have made leadership errors. I guess that's what makes them politicians. Holding firm to a stace/position even if there are obvious faults just to stick to the party line.

I enjoyed the trip though I wished I had a chance to see more of Canberra. I certainly do hope that I get another chance to come back here in the near future so that I can explore the capital of Australia in much more detail.