SRC PRESIDENT’S REPORT

When the new SRC took office in late 2021, COVID was being let into the state and the Liberals were still in power.

Today, we’re living in a so-called “post pandemic” world, with a right-wing federal Labor government committed to rolling back health protections, torturing refugees, approving major fossil fuel projects and shifting the burden of inflation onto workers.

The class war against workers, students and the poor has accelerated. Wherever you look – from rental prices, wages, inflation, pandemic pay and even the fuel excise – our side is losing. On campus, management is planning renewed rounds of cuts in 2023 while our Uni Health Practice threatens to begin charging for visits in the future.

But with the world in crisis, there have been new chances to rebuild activism and protests in society and on campus.

In Adelaide, left wingers on the 2022 SRC carried through Adelaide Uni’s first Student General Meeting in over a decade to defend student democracy and challenge management’s neoliberal mergers.

We’ve fought to keep radical traditions and politics on campus alive, hosting the Roe v Wade abortion protests, agitating for divestment from fossil fuels, leading the charge against far-right antivaxxer demonstrators and standing with Palestine against Israeli apartheid. I’m proud of the legacy we’ll leave behind of uncompromising, agitational politics, willingness to challenge the political right, and tireless organising.

As we head into the next year, we need to keep organising for the opportunities and challenges ahead. Soon, there will be a protest against management’s delaying tactics on the student demand for immediate divestment from fossil fuels. Keep an eye out for activists leafleting, lecture bashing and hosting stalls to build the event and get involved!

ANA OBRADOVIC SRC PRESIDENT

Unfortunately, Young Labor students have united with rightwingers in Progress to form an electoral bloc that will run 2023’s SRC. This year Progress have used their control of YouX to target student activism, including defunding the entire SRC. Like the federal Labor party, Labor students are committed to making concessions to the right, fostering a spirit of “cooperation” with those who undermine progressive politics rather than challenging them head on.

It will take radicals and students willing to disrupt business as usual to win our demands on and off campus. This means leftwingers must throw themselves into activism and taking political arguments seriously.