Every year, the candidates for President meet to answer some questions in front of a live audience.
In addition to their schedule of campaigning, it’s a chance for candidates to stand side-by-side and sell themselves to the student body.
This years debate was on the 9th, and can be found in full here. Luckily, Pelican is here to recap the key points, and give you an overview of how it went down;
This years debate was luckily quite well behaved – the audience come out to show support for their candidates so enthusiasm is high, and the uproarious applause is quite rousing to listen to as each candidate starts and finishes speaking. That passion was mostly contained to supporting their own candidates, and heckling was minimal, with only a few outbursts, mostly directed at Social Justice or Lift, and by each other’s supporters.
In the opening statements, Rama Sugiartha from Revive led off, talking about Aboriginal language and culture programs. He addressed Palestine, Sudan, the Congo, as areas to be freed, and extolled the virtues of Revive as an experienced ticket, mentioning their candidates roles in areas like Guild, clubs, and community service.
Spark’s Oliver Barrett followed, starting on campus culture, listing improvements under previous spark governance, and its importance going forward. Later tangents focused on Spark’s experience and diverse membership, with 9 club presidents, and how that allows it to respond to the pressures on freedom of speech, cost of living, academics, and resultingly mental health.
Kavanaugh Wild from Lift was next to stand up, and focused in on student’s academic and professional needs, expressing an opposition to the current level of guild activism. Lift would be looking to prioritise this support, creating a simpler student life, and focus on four key points; ‘memories, education, studies, career’.
Social Justice’s Emily Lassam took a familiarly birds-eye approach, focusing on Palestine and the ongoing genocide, as well as the cost-of-living crisis. Both of these were approached with a view to organising the guild and student body to influence national action or at the least University investments.
GaG’s (Gooning and Gambling) Lachie Jones opened with an odd monologue about Spark’s candidate, but picked up a comedic speed later in the speech that carried through the rest of the debate. Memorable remarks include that Revive didn’t have policies just a colour palette, that Lift was a ‘pisstake’, that Social Justice wanted redistribution so GaG would redistribute SSAF fees into the roulette wheel.
The first question concerns the cost of living, parking, as concerns for students and how candidates would address those issues if elected;
Social justice spoke to a broader national strategy, focusing on criticising the government and pushing for them to do better. To this end, their platform optimistically includes rent caps, doubling of welfare, and a staunch Guild that doesn’t ‘roll over’ as a political bloc.
Lift spoke on a parking policy to use blended bays as an attempt to alleviate some traffic pressure, and steered the question of cost of living towards free professional headshots as a means to get students employed.
Revive spoke to the inadequacy of previous policies, promising daily $5 meals, expanding and advertising grant and loan schemes, a career closet for interviews, and cost of living/financial literacy workshops to assist people in best managing their resources. Despite not being the comedic candidate, Rama got a good laugh from the crowd when he joked he was an ‘avid parker’, following that with advocating expansions to the free-transit zone, and bike/scooter schemes.
Spark came to it with an incumbent perspective, mentioning the ongoing discussions with university, and expressing disappointment with the incorrigible ‘commercialisation’ of parking and the student experience more broadly. On the cost of living, bursary schemes, smartrider credits were discussed, a financial councillor in the guild, and advocating for paid WIL (Work integrated learning) units; Oliver also took the opportunity to extol the previous disbursement of essential product packs and exam meals, numbering in their thousands.
GaG approached it from a less sensical angle; to fix cost of living SSAF would be halved, and the remaining half gambled to make up the shortfall. On parking, a Valet service of conscripted students to park cars off campus.
Candidates could next address an under-represented issue; something beyond parking and payments:
Rama Sugiartha chose to address the academic side of the guild’s role, expressing a desire to encourage an environment of learning, and to work with the NUS to deliver this. Lobbying for practice papers, model answers, as well as preserving both in-person and face-to-face lectures, were key issues for them.
Kavanaugh Wild spoke on student culture and safety, namely the lighting around Reid and the Business school late at night, which he argued needed improving, as well as the volume of events held on the oak lawn.
Oliver Barrett focused in on Freedom of speech, and the suppression of it by the university, claiming small wins for the current Spark-led council in exempting some clubs from leafletting/lecture bashing bans, but bemoaned the stance of the University. He then shifted gears onto academics, supporting mandatory practice papers as well, but diverging off into fixing CAS Timetabling, and pushing for the university to finally create a comprehensive AI policy for staff and students.
Emily Lassam focused on Gaza again, and spoke about the broader organisation behind Social Justice as having organised protests and campus activism. She also had a crack at Nikhita Talluri, current Guild president, for passing on the effects of University regulations and warning that disaffiliation may occur if they continued to violate the new rules.
Lachie Jones felt that student attention spans were the most in need of attention; easily remediable by putting subway surfers on the second lecture hall screen. Lectures should also start after 2pm, water fountains should be protein shake dispensers, LMS should feature a subscription service called LMS+ that guarantees you a 65+ mark. Additionally, a shoutout to the livestream chat didn’t go astray
The final question was on how each candidate would approach working with the university;
Spark’s Oliver Barrett led with his experience sitting on the student experience committee, and talked about advocating against the commercialisation of the student experience. He also took a turn to highlight the diversity of Sparks candidates origins and disciplines once again.
Rama Sugiartha delivered Revive’s strategy, which he described as ‘anticipating’ the university, then similarly took a lengthy turn into candidate diversity.
Kavanaugh Wild at Lift cursorily looked into the question, but veered towards accountability to the students rather than working with uni, promising reports, and a consultation booth.
Emily Lassam for Social Justice didn’t address the question head on, but by the re-iteration of their desire to mobilise the guild against the government and university suggested a combative approach.
G.a.G’s Lachy Jones interrupted Emily from the sidelines and got his biggest laugh of the afternoon, and promptly set about murkily casting aspersions, implying embezzlement.
All together, it’s an interesting debate; look forward to the fact check article to see which policies are viable and to what extent.