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Your Student Services and Amenities Fee (SSAF) is currently being used to fund the National Union of Students (NUS)! You’re in it, even if you don’t know it!
Throughout this article, I will answer why you should care about the NUS.
Who are they?
The NUS is the representative body for tertiary education students in Australia, representing over a million students, and if you’re a UQ student, you’re in it! If you are familiar with the UQ Union here on campus, the NUS is the natural extension to campus student unionism. Instead of just one student union advocating for the federal government to allocate a higher amount of funding towards tertiary education, students have a collective of student unions working together to lobby the federal government, which is, in theory, far more effective.
Not all university unions in Australia are affiliated with the NUS, and the process to join can be lengthy and complicated. Within the Brisbane area, both the UQ Union and QUT Student Guild are affiliated with the NUS. However, the Griffith Student Representative Council is not.
What do they do?
One of the most recent wins for the NUS was in 2024 when the federal government announced that it would be legislating that student unions generally would receive 40% of SSAF. The year prior the NUS National Conference had committed to campaign for a 50% minimum share of SSAF.
The NUS is run by the executive committee (with such roles as President, Education, Women’s, Queer, Disabilities, International, Ethnocultural, Small and Regional and TAFE Officers), which are elected by the delegates that are elected by the students at all the affiliated universities.
The NUS hold an annual conference where all delegates convene and vote on the policies that they would like to see the executive implement. The policies that pass are compiled into the policy platform for the NUS.
The executive members of the NUS should, after the conference, decide on which policies have merit and spend the next year lobbying and campaigning university administrations and governments across the country to meet the demands of the students.
How do I get a say?
It was only a few years ago, in 2023, when the UQ Union council voted to re-accredit with the NUS. That meant that in the following student union election, students were presented with an additional ballot paper to elect seven delegates to represent UQ students at the NUS.
Every year, UQ students can run for one of the seven delegate positions. The positions are typically filled by the more popular student political groups.
So this year, if you’re looking at the student election chaos around the Union Complex and the Phizz, please do go up and ask the NUS candidates what their strategy is for the NUS.
I’m paying what for this?
Accreditation to the NUS additionally requires a financial contribution from UQ students. The accreditation fee is covered by your SSAF fee, which is charged at $30 per enrolled unit. Upon reviewing the information online for accreditation to the NUS, it states that a minimum of $2 per student per year must be paid to the NUS.
Regardless, every year, your money is used to fund the conferences, lobbying, and campaigns of the NUS. As such, it is in your best interest that the campaigns that the NUS runs are beneficial to you.
Does UQ get listened to by the rest of the NUS?
While each university typically elects seven delegates, the value of each delegate’s vote differs between university representatives. It is based on the number of enrolled full-time students at each campus. Meaning that smaller campuses, such as QUT, receive proportionally less power during conferences due to their relatively smaller student population size compared to UQ.
UQ has a significant number of students, with the university reporting a total of over 55,000 students in 2023.
This means that the delegates elected during yearly student elections can wield a significant amount of influence on the conference floor at the NUS.
In the NUS 2024 December National Conference, UQ delegates held the balance of power on the conference floor.
Written by Samuel Wong
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