How we saved the ANU environment collective

Students at the Australian National University in Canberra have defeated an attempt by campus Labor clubs to abolish the environment collective.

Almost 300 students attended a mass meeting on 26 March, at which the new ANU Students’ Association executive, representing both factions of the ALP student clubs, tried to amend the constitution to create a committee in place of the collective, strip 80 percent of its budget, place the new committee under strict executive oversight and strip students of the right to vote at meetings.

The pretext for such a brazen assault on environmental activism came from an audit conducted by a consultancy firm last year. The firm, NFP Success, specialises in advising not-for-profit organisations on how to “reach new levels of excellence”.

Yet student unions are not like other NGOs. Nor should they be. Student unions are activist bodies steeped in a democratic culture and shaped by leading fights for justice. The environment collective has a 50-year history of supporting campaigns such as the anti-war movement when the US and Australia invaded Iraq, the Woomera Detention Centre refugee breakout, the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, the climate strikes and the Palestine solidarity movement.

Auditors like NFP Success have no sympathy for this history, as its recommendations show. While the Gaza Solidarity Encampment was still active last year, its governance review claimed that there had been “too much focus on pro-Palestine campaigning” and argued: “[I]t is crucial the president avoids becoming too involved in divisive political campaigns”.

The new ANUSA executive has its own reasons for opposing the environment collective. The ALP student clubs are stacked with careerist apparatchiks loyally promoting party policy, such as support for fossil fuel expansion and Israel’s war on Gaza. The consultant’s report provided a pretext for them to go on the offensive. They froze the collective’s funds earlier this year and drafted constitutional changes to abolish it. This semester, they have publicly argued that students can’t be trusted to run the collective.

Our victory was not guaranteed. The traditions of activist student unionism are not as strong as they used to be. And anti-activist arguments cloaked in legalism can always find an audience on university campuses. The ANUSA executive had the resources of the student union behind it, sending out several official all-student emails. It also had sizeable social networks through which to call in favours. Supporters of the ANUSA executive were even found to be bribing students with offers of free beers in exchange for their votes.

The fightback coalition included Socialist Alternative members, students from the Gaza Solidarity Encampment, the No Cuts at ANU campaign and, of course, members of the environment collective.

We handed out leaflets around the campus, put up posters, made announcements in lectures, called around stay-in-touch lists and built networks through WhatsApp group chats.

We only needed 25 percent of the vote to defeat the attack, but we won 42 percent. Importantly, our vote represented students who were won to a vision of left-wing, democratic, activist student unionism.

Those traditions are more important now than ever as we stare down historic staff cuts, the threat of a rising far right inspired by Donald Trump, and the rolling catastrophes of climate disaster and war.