A small victory for the left in the National Union of Students

Earlier this month, the National Union of Students’ annual national conference (or “NatCon” to initiates) took place at Federation University on the outskirts of Ballarat. Usually, NatCon comes and goes without much notice from the media or the broader public, but this year was different.

A couple weeks ago, Red Flag reported on a deal struck between several factions of the student wing of the Labor Party—from both right and “left”—to block members of Socialist Alternative and Students for Palestine from being elected to any key NUS positions at the conference.

We were told that this was because the union had been too hostile to the Labor government over the past year. The reason the NUS put up any opposition at all to the government this year was that Socialist Alternative members held three key positions in it, including the education office. We used those positions to organise students to fight for Palestine and call out our government’s complicity in the genocide, including by coordinating the historic National Student Referendum on Palestine.

But in trying to keep Palestine solidarity activists out of the union, the Labor students overplayed their hand. Over the last two years, we’ve seen the emergence of a genuine Palestine solidarity movement in this country—and widespread revulsion at Labor’s continued complicity in the genocide. The Palestine movement had something to say about the lockout deal.

Freedom Flotilla activist Robert Martin posted a video condemning the Labor students involved in the lockout. Dr Mohammad Mustafa (a.k.a. Dr Mo) called on them to scrap the deal. Before it had even started, this year’s NatCon had generated more public attention, and outrage, than any in recent memory.

Sixty-odd socialists arrived in Ballarat on 8 December determined to break the lockout. We were there to fight for a left-wing and pro-Palestine national student union. We put forward Socialist Alternative member and leading Sydney Palestine activist Yasmine Johnson for the education office position.

What is NatCon?

At the yearly national conference, delegates elected by students from university campuses across the country come together to debate what the NUS’ policies and positions should be for the coming year. The conference also elects the incoming national executive.

For some years, the dominant groups in the NUS have been the Labor right (Student Unity), Labor left (National Labor Students) and Socialist Alternative. With socialist clubs on a growing number of campuses across the country, Socialist Alternative has become a significant force in campus politics.

In fact, after a series of splits and realignments inside the Labor factions, Socialist Alternative emerged this year as the largest single faction in the union. Not bad for an organisation with a few hundred student members across the country going up against the party of government.

NatCon 2025

With a little under 30 percent of votes on the conference floor, we could stop NatCon from going ahead, which is exactly what we did. Without our delegates, and some disgruntled Labor right delegates who were also locked out, quorum couldn’t be met. On Monday afternoon, when things were meant to be getting started, the conference room stood empty. As long as the lockout continued, there would be no NatCon this year.

We did what we could to pile the pressure onto the Labor students about the disgraceful deal they had stitched up. We knew—and they knew—that people outside the world of student politics were paying attention. Footage Yasmine Johnson being shouted down by a crowd of Labor students when she tried to talk about the lockout of Palestine activists went semi-viral. Student newspaper Honi Soit overheard Labor left students discussing what they could do to stop the video from getting out.

The next day came and went without a single motion being heard on conference floor. Socialist Alternative members had come to NatCon to discuss pressing issues for our national student union to take up: the occupation of Gaza, Labor’s attacks on healthcare and the NDIS, and the massive cuts being pushed through on campuses across the country. But there was no point debating any of this if next year’s NUS was going to be little more than an ALP warm-up act.

Then, on Wednesday morning, Labor conceded defeat. The lockout was broken. Yasmine Johnson would be the NUS education officer in 2026. It was a win for pro-Palestine activists and a good thing for student unionism.

With the conference finally opening, the policy debate began. Five hundred pages of motions were crammed into less than a day and a half of discussion. Socialist Alternative successfully passed a motion endorsing a National Day of Action for Palestine at the start of the university semester next year.

Students from the Labor left put forward a motion to congratulate (sic) the Albanese government for recognising a Palestinian state. When a motion came up to condemn the Australian government’s barbaric treatment of refugees, the same Labor left amended it to remove a reference to the Labor Party.

When AUKUS came up for debate, the Labor right students broke out into a chant: “Let’s all build some union submarines”. Disabilities Officer Olivia Stronach, a member of Student Unity, defended her faction’s opposition to free education on the grounds that the world doesn’t have “infinite resources”. Never mind that, by one estimate, the amount being spent on the AUKUS submarine deal would be enough to fund free university education for 60 years.

This is the face of the modern Australian Labor Party. Any notion that its youth wing might be more idealistic than the adult party is delusional. Young Labor members are just as cynical as their grown-up counterparts. Whatever their personal opinions on Palestine or anything else, making it in the Australian Labor Party means trading principle for power.

Some Labor students like to tell us they want to “change the party from the inside”, but no-one believes that, least of all the Labor students themselves. It’s their euphemism for climbing up the party ranks. After all, if Labor’s bloody record on Gaza over the last two years isn’t a red line for them, what could possibly be?

So it’s a damn good thing that the NUS won’t be solely run by the likes of these people next year and that Socialist Alternative can continue our record of principled left-wing politics.

One takeaway from NatCon is that numbers matter in politics. The public pressure campaign against the lockout was important, but it was our size at the conference that meant we couldn’t be steamrolled by a coalition of Young Labor hacks.

That said, we shouldn’t have any illusions. Only a tiny fraction of the student population votes in campus elections. Thirty percent of a small student vote isn’t a whole lot. The NUS has all but lost its capacity to mobilise students to fight; most don’t even know what the NUS is. But this is a self-inflicted injury. It’s a result of the union’s decades-long domination by careerist student politicians, run like a “crèche for would-be parliamentarians” in the words of writer Gary Younge, who was talking about the similarly run NUS in the UK.

This means the situation could be turned around. The initiatives taken by members of Socialist Alternative in the NUS this year, like the National Student Referendum on Palestine, show that it’s possible. In Australia, there’s a long history of activist student unions taking on right-wing governments and imperialist wars. Socialists want to fight to revive that desperately needed militancy.

While we shouldn’t overstate it, this was a little victory for the Palestine solidarity movement and for left-wing politics. It’s one that socialists will continue to build on in the National Union of Students in 2026.