The Culture of ANUSA

• Governance review implementation with consultation. 

As General Secretary, I will continue the implementation of the governance review to ensure that ANUSA continues to fulfill its goals of representing, supporting, and advocating for students. However, this can not be a top-down approach, and it must be done with co-design with the students the union represents. Students want a union focused on the people that pay for it, and the governance review highlights ways we can do this. 

Key commitment to full implementation of the governance review:

1. Looking at improving all of the ways that ANUSA is currently struggling to engage and support students: for example, ensuring its strategy, goals, and general culture are working for all students.

2. Ensuring that ANUSA is representing the ideals of students, for students, and that all students are able to get involved, make their voice heard, and access all facets of ANUSA’s meetings, services, and spaces.

3. Ensuring that all implementation of part of the Governance Review, and particularly the parts that affect autonomous departments, should be co-designed with affected stakeholders in order to protect the absolute autonomy of departments, department officers and executives, and students; maintaining departments’ autonomy and collaborating with them to reach the best outcome is a key priority.

• Meeting culture

Fundamental to the success of the organisaiton is having an ANUSA that is run for and by students, which means we must ensure that all students are able and comfortable to attend meetings. This means having meetings that are finished before extremely late hours so that students don’t have to sacrifice sleep if they need to get up for work/class the next day, have to stay while tired, or have to travel home after public transport options finish running for the day.

To this extent, I propose supporting changes that meetings should end at 10pm, a time that can be extended by a majority of the meeting. In order to ensure that meetings are still efficient, effective, and productive, other changes to standing orders that allow for political debate on contentious issues, but ensure that all content in meetings gets coverage. For example, this looks like:

• moving directly to a vote if there are two speakers in a row either for or against a motion and no other speakers wishing to speak for the other side;

• limiting the number of questions to be asked to each report; or

• looking into reducing the length of certain speaking times.

Other changes to increase accessibility will mean standardising formatting, fonts, and colours on agendas; posting (and re-posting) agendas and meeting minutes publicly and sharing with the SRC members; expand explanations about how SRC operates during Department and Representative inductions.

Finally, as meeting Chair, I will enforce standing orders to ensure that everyone feels comfortable at meetings. That those using personal attacks or being derisive towards others should be called to order to ensure that students are comfortable to contribute without facing personal attacks. While this change is cultural, and to some extent cannot be tangibly implemented by a Gen Sec alone, this is something committed to by the Change ticket and something that I take responsibility for monitoring as Chair.

• Open and Accountable Union

As part of an ANUSA that works for all students, I will continue with the initiatives of publishing agendas, minutes, and motions that are passed by an SRC. An accessible bank of passed motions and policy will help to allow students to know what ANUSA stands for, believes, and is working towards. Efficient sharing of minutia for each meeting and the organisation as a whole (across many meetings) allows those students who wish to engage with ANUSA to engage. A post-meeting ‘TL;DR’ to be shared by the ANUSA Facebook page and to ANU Schmidtposting after each meeting can keep students up-to-date on the overall picture on what ANUSA is working on.

I will also make public succinct and accessible role descriptions for Executive members, as well as all other representatives of ANUSA, to show what different reps can do, and so that students know which is best to support them if they want to reach out. These descriptions can also include details such as publicly-available details of executive pay, required meeting attendance, and the areas of which they are best able to support students. Further, descriptions of other ANUSA services that can be accessed - for example, those that operate independently to the elected reps - can be included as part of these descriptions to show students the range of options that are available in reaching out such as the autonomous departments (including what departments do, how they operate, and how one can get involved). This also means that students who wish to run are more knowledgeable about what they are expected to do if elected, and that the student body can accurately and effectively hold them to account. This will help ensure that all aspects of ANUSA are open and visible to students, and that the workings of ANUSA are less opaque than they have been previously.

• Academic Advocacy

Empowering the Education Officer as part of continuing their leading role over the Education Committee and of College Reps. This allows them to focus on specific and detailed considerations of ideas that come from each academic college, both undergrad and postgrad, and centre advocacy and campaigns on things that come from College Reps collectively. The Education Officer can also help to empower - through their leadership of the EDC - each College Rep to work with ANUSA on their college-specific policies and ideas.

The part of the governance review that takes the need of College Reps to also sit on SRC means they are able to return the focus of their advocacy towards their individual college - with support and empowerment from the EDC collectively and the Education Officer. This change helps to ensure College Reps are most capable to advocate for their college, ensuring they are able to be most effective with what they work on.

• ANUSA fighting with you, for you

The core purpose of ANUSA is to fight for your rights, advocate for you, and empower students to reach out for support when they need it. A positive ANUSA culture will empower students to reach out when they need services or support from ANUSA. This means creating a culture for individuals to feel comfortable to reach out ANUSA reps for support or activism. For example, if they need support in the form of advocacy or support in communicating with the university, they should feel comfortable to speak with the President, or any rep, to help them navigate this. Further, this will include support for individuals’ activism, ensuring that ANUSA helps empower those who would like to advocate on issues they’re passionate about or run activism campaigns, to do so most effectively and safely. This can include providing ANUSA support and advice for those who would like to run campaigns or protests, by providing marshalls, advice on protest accessibility, and suggestions to assist/advise on the best paths for success.

As part of this, and building off work that I have done as a Gen Rep and an SR, I will further empower SRs (now RMs, SRMs, etc) to stand up for their rights, and demand more. I will continue working with Residential Experience along with empowering all leaders to get involved and make their voice heard. To this end, I will create a campus-wide RM and SRM groupchat, to facilitate communication between all leaders and allow more easily the sharing of common and universal concerns. This will help create nuanced positions that accurately reflect the needs of leaders, and use ANUSA to empower advocacy by student leaders for student leaders. RMs and SRMs always need more; more support, more pay, and more respect, and as Gen Sec, I will ensure all leaders are empowered and supported to stand up and fight for this.

Accessing the services we provide

• Accessibility of Services

Students’ interactions and engagement with ANUSA are often limited to things that are published or promoted by the representatives, but the services it provides are separate and independent to these reps. Often, students are turned away from accessing these important services will choose not to engage due to the perception of reps focusing on political issues bigger than the student body. We will ensure that ANUSA services are publicised as the independent and accessible ones that they are, so that students know that regardless of their political perspectives, they feel comfortable knowing they will be able to access the services without judgement or fear of judgement. This is a crucial part of Change’s platform, and as General Secretary, it is important to me that these services are publicised widely to encourage more students to engage with them.

Noting the recent incorporation of postgraduate students into ANUSA, the publication of services will specifically engage postgraduate students to ensure that they are aware and able to access ANUSA services. This means increasing the advertising of services, and tweaking services so that they better cater to postgraduates. Increased consultation with postgrads - from a variety of faculties, colleges, and degree types - will assist to ensure that the most needed services are being provided, and that postgrades are indeed accessing those services which are accessible to them. Consultation will be engaged through postgraduate representatives and direct outreach, as well as surveying of those accessing the existing services. ANUSA services that work for and are accessible for all students is of paramount importance.

• Voting at Meetings

I will investigate options to improve the process of voting at ANUSA meetings. While a show of hands is usually sufficient for most votes, a professional system of counting votes will be of benefit to the formality and trust in votes at ANUSA meetings. With a reduced SRC size under the new governance review, a rep-by-rep roll call that is done aloud to count votes could be plausible. Otherwise, online voting systems that allow each rep/proxy to cast their vote and have it effectively and efficiently counted will help to bring formality to this procedure. The efficacy of such solutions for larger, more-attended general meetings will be investigated also, to ensure that any solution maintains meeting efficiency while ensuring that votes are counted accurately.

• Attendance system

Often, elected ANUSA representatives fail to come to meetings and don’t meet their responsibilities. When this happens, it is students’ voices who don’t get heard. To this effect, I will institute an effective attendance system that allows people to track their elected reps’ attendance at meetings. It will incentivise people to continue attending meetings, allow more targeted support from the executive to those who may be struggling to continue attending, and create policy and debate from a wider variety of perspectives and opinions. This change, alongside my policy point that will create a guide to the roles and responsibilities of all positions, will help to ensure that all reps who get elected fulfill their obligations and ensure the voices of those who elect them are heard at all meetings.