Rob Vusak
Hi, I’m Rob. I’m a history student and socialist. And I’m running for activities VP with Left Action.
To me, the worst thing a Guild electoral candidate can do is underestimate students. The worst thing we can do is declare: ‘students can’t change the world’.
Students are incredibly talented and insightful. I believe that we can see that there is something fundamentally wrong with the world – talking to hundreds of students as a campus activist has confirmed this. Students are not children who can’t understand how the world works; their Guild should not treat them as such.
Left Action is a student power organisation. We believe the Guild should be an organ for students to use to enact their visions upon society.
Not a talk shop or simply a social function organiser, but an instrument of real power. And there have been plenty of times throughout history when they have looked like that. In 2014, guilds across the country led a successful protest campaign against the Liberal government’s plans to massively increase the cost of degrees. Left Action members were at the head of this movement of thousands of students. In 2017 students and guilds played a big role in the successful campaign for marriage equality. Again, Left Action members led them.
And there is no shortage of issues that students are mad about and can organise around today. Some big ones are climate change, which now threatens the lives of billions, the threat of nuclear war, and the cost-of-living crisis which now means most of us can hardly afford to get by.
Students care about these issues. We understand that they are very real and extremely important – and we too are affected by them. Students, overwhelmingly living in poor quality rentals with little in the way of climate control, will have to face climate change. And we are already struggling with the cost-of-living. Guilds should fight for around these issues.
Guilds should fight for a better world for students. Significant change is desperately needed – in the midst of historic crisis, centring anything else is insulting.
The age of inoffensive status-quo politics, therefore, desperately needs to die. Waiting for positive change from either Labor or Liberal (or anyone who supports them) will get you nowhere, we need something much more serious, something much more radical. Left Action is that.
Students have proven that they want a better world. They can see the old one collapsing around them. At this moment of world crisis, let’s stand up for ourselves and fight.
Vote [1] Left Action