Friday, October 27, 2006

Implementation of Australian VSU

One of the quirks of the current Australian parliament is the power independents and small parties hold in the Senate. Although on paper, Howard has a majority, he's often got some work to do on some bills. Last year, he was forced to do a deal, mainly with the Nats but also with the Dems, to ensure the passage of the VSU legislation including providing funding for student services at regional institutions. How much, oh just a lazy $80M over three years. Sounds a lot but as the NUS point out, the VSU legislation probably costs Students' Associations around $160M per annum. More information on the priorities and process etc is here.

2 comments:

crasster said...

Wow, that is a lot.

backin15 said...

Which figure? The grant - sure but it's still only half of one year's income over three years. SAs in Australia are much larger than in NZ - perhaps unecessarily so - it'll be interesting to see which services go by the wayside over the next few years.