My dealings with Opus

The compulsorily-funded student's association at the University of Newcastle (NUSA) produce a newspaper called Opus. NUSA take delight in using student's money to promote their minority left-wing agenda.

One positive thing about this, however, is that the University of Newcastle Liberal Club always receives great publicity!

For example, the April 1999 edition of Opus contained the following

Lies, hypocrisy and student politicians

It was amazing to see the hypocrisy of some of our up and coming political stars at the University of Newcastle during the O-Week just past. Who else noticed those members of a certain political party pumping out bulls**t against the Student's Association while wanting to use NUSA's funds to set up their own political club? Surely there must be something in the NUSA constitution that prevents political clubs to campaign against and slander the student association. If these guys really have such an objection to the existence of NUSA, perhaps in future they should lead by example and use their own money rather than the student associations to sprout their ideological garbage.

In response, I made the following points on the 15th April, 1999

• Though NUSA may speak of 'NUSA funds', they neglect to make clear that these are student funds - and funds that are levied compulsory. It is our very own money that we would be appropriating, should we seek affiliation with NUSA.
• Our material was hardly anti-NUSA propaganda. We had a pro-VSU campaign. If NUSA identify that much with anti-VSU that they believe the issues are indistinguishable, then that is quite revealing. There was no NUSA slander taking place whatsoever. Indeed, we believe VSU will provide better quality of services and representation to students.
• I notice NUSA have no qualms about spending student money to promote their own anti-Liberal propaganda, which is not representative of all students, despite being funded by all students. Further, it is interesting to note that the Labor club have made it a goal to 'defeat VSU'. I think there is a clear conflict of interest here, and it is disgraceful that NUSA is misappropriating funds to financially support an issue that is particularly related to a specific club.
• Regarding our use of student funds however, NUSA are being highly deceitful, for we are not affiliated and we have not used a single farthing from them. Indeed, we have not even photocopied a single sheet of paper using NUSA facilities. There is not one shred of truth in any claim that we have used student association money in a single activity we have been involved in. All of our materials have been from our own money, or provided by the Australian Liberal Students Federation (ALSF). Hence, we are leading by example.
• Finally, I will note that NUSA have worked against our affiliation by providing misinformation, and by losing our letter of intent to affiliate, and several other petulant activities and events. Also, Michael Kachel promised he would run his anti-VSU flier by me before printing and distributing it, but he did not keep his word on this. This is in addition to two threats of legal action from NUSA against us, which were baseless on both accounts, and neither of which were acted on.

Opus failed to respond, or to publish any correction, so I sent a letter to the editor, on the 2nd July, 1999

Dear Opus,

I am impressed by the number of references the University of Newcastle Liberal Club received in the latest issue of Opus.

However, I feel I must write to correct some inaccuracies in your reporting.

Your report about Senator John Tierney's visit to the campus on 20th May, on page 7, is blatantly dishonest.

Anti-VSU armchair 'activists' did not debate Senator Tierney. He spoke about the Senate processes and the VSU legislation and invited questions. NUSA and their friends asked questions, as did supporters of VSU.

Jo Murray states that NUSA only learned of the meeting one hour before it occurred, but this is not true. I myself had told Michael Kachel on at least two occasions that we were going to have Senator Tierney visit.

Your article states that the meeting was dominated by opponents of VSU, but again this is untrue. The meeting was evenly balanced between VSU opponents and supporters. I can only conclude your writer discounted various staff members who were unknown to them, but who were indeed supporters of VSU who came at our invitation.

You suggest that the Vice-Chancellor came up 'turn the heat up'. Again, this is a false statement. The Vice-Chancellor came at my personal invitation. We certainly know his views about VSU, but we believed his presence would be beneficial and that it was our obligation to invite him. However, to suggest he 'turned up to turn the heat up' is simply not the case.

Ms. Murray also writes that Senator Tierney was unable to answer the majority of the questions put to him. This is an astounding and bold lie, because Ms. Murray is certainly well aware that the Senator answered every single question put before him in a most articulate and professional manner.

The above points all come from the one paragraph. I am disappointed that Ms. Murray chooses to put her personal biases above her integrity and litters her entire report with falsehoods.

The author concludes her section by expressing her disturbance that the Liberal Club did not make any attempt to inform the wider student body of the Senator's visit. Firstly, I would suggest Ms. Murray is unaware of precisely any attempts we may have made, but secondly, I feel her disturbance is bordering on arrogance because she makes the presumption every club has the obligation to report to her each activity they may be involved with. Just like many clubs have guest speakers or regular meetings, so too does the University of Liberal Club. We invited Senator Tierney to address a meeting of the Liberal Club. Ms. Murray is deceiving herself if she feels there was some sort of secret meeting or clandestine gathering underway.

From this, Ms. Murray concludes by drawing the flawed assumption that Senator Tierney is in some way afraid of consulting with students. Again, the Senator was present to be the guest speaker at a meeting of a student club. However, Ms. Murray will certainly recall that the Senator gladly followed Michael Kachel to view his presentation of student petitions, when invited.

There was no fear and no hiding, and I am very disappointed with Jo Murray's report of this meeting of the Liberal Club because her entire tirade is in error, and deceitful.

Next, we turn to Janice Peterson's report on page 11. She refers to the frivilous anti-VSU rally on May 12th, and tries to suggest that there are solely three VSU supporters on campus. I know, however, that Janice is aware that the three VSU supporters at the NUSA-organised and student fee subsided rally were merely interested observers. There was no pro-VSU rally in place; we did not speak, we did not march, we did not wave banners.

Ms. Peterson then makes the flawed assertion that three pro-VSU observers in some way 'proved that students aren't in favour of the proposed legislation', but this is clearly nonsensical. Indeed, given that anti-VSU proponents insist services will be cut, the fact that NUSA could barely scrape up 100 people out of 15,000 students and 3,000 staff really proves that NUSA are insignificant and unrepresentative and that the majority of people simply do not have enough interest in the services provided to feel they would be a significant loss, should that be a true sentiment.

So, once more, many thanks for the publicity you are giving the University of Newcastle Liberal Club, but I really must request that your writers have some basic honesty in future issues.

Regards,
David M. Williams

One thing I've always been able to rely on Opus for is some publicity - well, certainly not objective, unbiased reporting ... !