A new movement is passing through the union. Reform has finally begun to come to the body with arguably the most latent potential in the entire building. I’ll break the suspense now, its not the still somewhat rubbish burger bar in Solus, although that should be next on the agenda. It’s student council, soon to be student parliament, a an idea this column covered in an early edition last semester
For once, this isn’t just a half baked re-branding exercise by the union either. This is a serious overhaul involving an extensive bit of strenuous constitutional re-writing. My advice would be to drop a few jokes in there, but I doubt that’ll be well received.
The new parliament will consist of a group of students taken largely from the council, and a representative from every AU club and society at the university along with academic representatives from every course. This would lead to a parliament of over 200 students meeting once a month 8 months of the year.
Obviously there have been worries expressed at this plan. People worried that there will not be as much or as easy a chance to speak, worries that there will be block voting, worries about plenty of legitimate concerns.
A lot of these concerns will, I think, prove to be unfounded. Lets be honest, the idea of the societies bloc voting is pretty unlikely; if we manage to get the Israeli and Palestinian societies working together I think we will have achieved something that transcends the lowly world of student politics. Anyway, there should be numbers so that no one of the four principle groups in parliament can pass any legislation without at least some support from another group. It’s not foolproof, but it is pretty damned solid.
Moreover, the benefits it will bring to the student population will be great in terms of representation, and equally positive in terms of the legitimacy and therefore power to act in helping the student body for the executive.
Representatives in parliament would cover every form of student life, and for those worried about talking in front of greater numbers of people there would be working groups and committees in place as well, including the current standing councils, although they would only be called when they were required.
Having examined the student parliament proposals it seems like potentially the biggest step in representation the union has taken for years. Its time now for the rest of the student body to decide the future at the Annual General Meeting on 1 March. It will be interesting to see how the results go.
