The importance of a free and truthful media cannot be understated, and in the digital age, one of the most valuable and accessible forms of objective reporting is the video. The written word can be manipulated or misremembered; audio can be cut and stitched back together, but video remains one of the hardest mediums to obfuscate. Despite this, the National Union of Students (NUS) voted almost unanimously to ban all filming on the conference floor—like they have every year before.
It’s a ritual, at this point. The conference started, and one of the first procedurals that was gleefully rushed through was to ban filming. It passed almost unanimously, accompanied by laughter and jeers from the student politicians; it’s one of many humiliations they revel in.
Unity delegate, Aidan O’Rourke, approached the media shortly after the procedural passed, gloating that “if any of you are caught with a phone, you will be removed from the conference floor.” It’s no secret that the NUS is an incubator for the Labor party, and with so many here holding furtive aspirations for parliament, you’d assume that they’d want their faces on camera as soon as possible.
We spoke to an independent delegate, Malakai King, one of the few who voted against the filming ban. “I think that the culture at NatCon is broken, and I think that one of the easiest ways to fix that culture would be for delegates to be held accountable by filming the conference,” he said. “Delegates have a responsibility to the students; they were elected to represent to ensure that conference is accountable and accessible.”
And he’s right—the culture at the NUS is broken. Delegates seemed less interested in discussing policy than they did screaming it at each other, or smugly congratulating themselves for their embarrassing factional in-jokes (there was a procedural to refer to BizCom as ‘big chungus’). There was a marked lack of willingness to compromise, co-operate, or in any way advocate for the students that they were elected by and sent to represent.
The common sentiment among the student media was how difficult reporting was—not because of any personal failings, but the obstructionist and antagonistic ethos of the student politicians. Not only was filming banned immediately, but we were denied access to the auto-transcript; delegates either mumbled their name and factional affiliation when speaking or forgot to say it at all, media were segregated to the back corner of the room where it was nigh impossible to hear any of the proceedings, and most delegates just flat-out refused to comment when asked simple, boilerplate questions.
If student politicians want to feel properly represented and accurately quoted; if they want transparent and unbiased reporting; if they want students to know about anything they do, then there must be a modicum of co-operation and accountability between the student media and the student politicians.
