Voluntary Student Membership (VSM)
Contact:
Rawa Karetai
ASA President
president@asa.ac.nz
Mobile: 027 4051833
DDI: 09 443 9742
P: 09 414 0800 Ext. 9742
More more informaton or to follow the President’s Blog on this and other topics, please feel free to contact Rawa directly.
Get Informed!
Read the Education (Freedom of Association) Bill here
Read about the Myths of VSM here.
Read the ASA Submission here (65Kb PDF).
Read the ASA Oral Submission here (410Kb PDF).
Read the original 1997 Chen & Palmer VSM legal opinion here (4.6Mb PDF).
Read the new 2010 Kensington Swan VSM legal opinion here (49 Kb PDF).
Read the Human Rights Commission submission here (108 Kb PDF).
Read about the mess VSM has made of Australian Student’s Associations here (197 Kb PDF)
And here (100 Kb PDF)
You can find the ASA Constitution and Regulations here
The 2010 ASA Budget is here
The ASA Fee Exemption Policy is here
The 2010 ASA Confirmation of Enrolment Pamphlet can be viewed here (736 Kb PDF)
What Can I Do?
Write a submission before 31 March.
Download our printable Anti-VSM Submission Here.
(After then it will all be down to politicians voting on Party lines.)
Or write an online submission here.
Send a postcard to the Prime Minister, John Key - click here.
Take part in our organised protests - for more information - click here.
Become part of the greater community - this is happening to hundreds of thousands of students and dozens of associations - learn more about it at:
What’s Happening?
The ACT Party has proposed an amendment to the Education Act that will remove the requirement for University’s to require students to pay levies to students associations, effectively removing funding from them.
The argument is based around the flawed idea that students’ rights have somehow been taken away from them (ironically due to a previous National Party amendment in 2000) because they should be able to choose whether or not to pay (which they can do already) and that it is too difficult for students to object and withdraw (which it isn’t).
We are obviously biased in our perspective and think that the ACT Party are being more than a little disengenuous with their claims, but we believe that students should have a right to choose how they operate their students' associations and regardless of whether or not you agree with the Bill, this choice has been taken away from students and we have been left with very little time to even put submissions to the Education and Science Select Committee (by 31 March 2010).
However, in order to have an informed opinion, we recommend you read our submission here - we are arguing for the status quo as we believe any change will detrimentally affect our students here at Albany.
We anticipate that ACT will spend its efforts on ad hominem attacks seeking to suggest that students’ associations are all left-wing liberal hot-beds of mismanagement and have little or no accountability. We completely reject such suggestions and draw attention to the actions of the ACT Party starting with its leader Rodney Hide - glass houses, stones, need we say more?
