ALS: thoughts on freedom

Interview with Rick Kuhn

Here’s another interview about VSU, this time with Rick Kuhn who is an academic working at the Australian National University.

It was reported in the Green Left Weekly that, “…ANU academic Rick Kuhn and Resistance activist Leigh Hughes were enthusiastically received by the crowd when they condemned the VSU legislation as a political attack on the basic right of students to organise a fight-back against regressive Coalition policies.”

Could you elaborate on your views in this regard?

Student unions, SRCs and Students Associations, exist to represent the collective interests of students. They mean that students democratically decide how to respond together to government policies of different kinds, actions by university administrations as well as a range of political and social issues.

Over the past 40 to 50 years they have tended to be critical of the Coalition (although there have been periods at some campuses when the right has dominated student unions). That is why the Howard government has introduced VSU. It wants to silence critical voices.

The idea of “voluntary student unionism” is like that of “voluntary taxation”. Student unions provide services, especially that of democratically representing students to government, uni[versity] administrations and the wider society, from which all students benefit. Governments also provide services for the whole community. Making student union membership and fees voluntary is as much of a nonsense as making membership of the Australian political system and the payment of taxes voluntary.

August 6, 2006 Posted by Sukrit Sabhlok | General | 7 Comments

An aristocracy of effort

From time-to-time, work travel finds me in Qantas’ rather exclusive Chairman’s Lounge. I’m not a member, but several work colleagues are. If we’re travelling together, the less senior staff get added to the mix. The Chairman’s Lounge is an invitation only exercise in exclusivity. It’s free, but only a select few ever get past the gate. In that sense, it’s different from the Qantas Club, which anyone may join after stumping up the required fee.

On Friday – for whatever reason – the Chairman’s Lounge was closed. This meant the good members of the Chairman’s Lounge were instructed to proceed to the Qantas Club. The latter is much larger, has less plushy chairs, and noxious coloured carpet. ‘Oh dear,’ one senior colleague commented. ‘This is all a bit slummy, isn’t it?’

I didn’t agree. In fact, I didn’t say anything. My aspirational, liberarian antennae were tingling. The Qantas club was full of people. Busy people. My sort of people. Thrusting businessmen cutting deals on mobile phones. People in jeans talking up property developments. Two tradies with pocket levels and tape measures hanging from their belts haggling over a set of plans. Many women. Many young people. All races, even a fairly obvious Aborigine (one of the tradies). Yes, there was bling. Yes, the combination of free alcohol and Friday afternoon meant voices were loud, hand gestures expansive. But this place was clearly full of the people who power Australia’s economic engine room.

In the Chairman’s lounge, old white men sit and read high falutin’ newspapers and talk in hushed tones. Obsequeious staff attend to their every whim. Its members are an aristocracy of the invited. The vulgar hoi polloi of the Qantas club, by contrast, are an aristocracy of effort, of aspiration, of risk.

My colleague repeated the ‘slummy’ comment as we left. Emboldened by the free booze I’d consumed, I replied.

‘It must be awfully difficult to share with people who have to pay their way, the aspirational hoi polloi’.

He looked at me, shocked. ‘I think I’d have rather stayed out here, with the non-Qantus Club people.’

I didn’t say anything, but this is what I thought: ‘The poor and the invited aristocrats are all right, then. But not the achieving bourgeoisie’.

August 6, 2006 Posted by skepticlawyer | General | 5 Comments