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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 4 Hansard (21 April) . . Page.. 1121 ..

MR CORBELL (continuing):

Mr Humphries, in his opposition to this motion, said that you should have compulsion only where it is impossible to enforce who uses a service and who does not, and his example was a road. Mr Speaker, it is equally impossible to enforce who uses particular services on a university campus. University campuses, in many respects, are isolated from a wider range of services. If you want to be able to eat, to get some counselling services, to purchase some books or other items at a cheap price, you would prefer to do it on campus in between lectures, tutorials and so on.

Those services are provided on campus in the first place because there is a demand for them. But, Mr Speaker, you cannot enforce who uses them and who does not. Take, for instance, the students who after a year are having enormous difficulty coping with the requirements that the university is putting on them in terms of study. Their personal life is difficult and they have difficulty in managing their studies. At all of our universities, they have the option now of going to see a counselling service which is provided by the funding through the universal service charge. At the beginning of their university term, they had no idea that they would need that service but they paid their student charge and, in a year's time, it is available to them. If they did not pay their charge and they suddenly realised that they needed this service and went to the counselling service, should the counselling service say to them, "Well, we're going to turn you away because you didn't pay your money."? That is the sort of heartless approach that Mr Humphries and his colleagues opposite are arguing. It is an absurd approach. It is an absolutely absurd approach.

Let me highlight another one. The University of Canberra students association recently paid $55,000 to the Kirinari creche, a child-minding service on the University of Canberra campus. Without that payment, that child-minding service would have closed down, not because there was not demand but because they were not able to raise the funds in other ways to provide the service. There certainly is a demand for this service. The students association recognised the demand and provided the funding. Mr Speaker, I think that is a very strong argument for these services being universally provided.

Mr Humphries and Mr Stefaniak criticised the political activities of student associations and unions and the fact that they have contributed money to anti-coalition causes. Mr Speaker, when I was a student, I can recall a number of student organisations, students unions and, indeed, the National Union of Students urging against voting for the Federal Labor Government. I can remember that and I have no doubt that it will happen again when we have a Federal Labor government. Student unions, by their very nature, are opposed to the actions of more conservative elements of our society, including governments. It is just a fact of life; throughout history it has been a fact of life. The fact that the Liberal Party cannot cope with that says a lot about them.

The point to remember about the political activities of student associations and unions is that, as long as they are democratically mandated to undertake such activities, they have a right to do so. As long as their membership is given the opportunity to participate in the decision-making processes, to approve or disapprove of a certain action that a student association or union takes, they are entitled to undertake such activities. I have not heard any argument tonight that that option should be denied to people.

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