I’m back
It’s been over a year. Towards the middle of 2007 I became unsure what image and content this blog was trying to put forward, so I put up a basic placeholder with this short bio:
Benjamin Hourigan is the editor at the Centre for Independent Studies, a libertarian think-tank based in Sydney. He has previously been an assistant editor and subeditor at Architecture Media, publisher of magazines including Artichoke, Landscape Architecture Australia, and Houses. His writing has been published in a range of venues, including The Age, News Weekly, Australasian Drama Studies, and the IPA Review. He has given lectures at RMIT and at the University of Melbourne, where he has also tutored. He has been interviewed on Melbourne radio station 3LO, and for articles syndicated in the Christian Science Monitor and USA Today.
He is currently enrolled in the MBA program at the University of Technology, Sydney.
Benjamin is available for freelance writing and editing work. He has specialized experience in architectural publishing, editing for business, pharmaceuticals, videogaming, policy analysis, cultural studies, English literature, and Asian studies.
Now I have a better idea of what I want this to be, expect a few changes, including a header redesign. Postings will now be on matters I have a professional or journalistic interest in. The personal will take a back seat.
More soon.
My grounds for supporting VSU
Today, the last in a series of emails I exchanged with Michelle Smith, Publications Officer of the University of Melbourne Postgraduate Association, about the relationship between identity politics and VSU (Voluntary Student Unionism). In today’s installment, I explain that one of the reasons I support VSU is because I believe it’s immoral to force people to pay for services rendered to others. This wasn’t intended to be the last word on the subject, but there wasn’t anything else to say after this. Next: Something on another topic…
My final email to Michelle Smith
Thanks again for your reply, Michelle. It’s a pleasure to read such thoughtful responses.
I have just one short thing to say, and it’s possibly where the source of our disagreements lies. I believe that it is immoral to coerce people into helping provide services or advocacy for others, and that to do so is destructive to the liberty of all. The only things I believe people are entitled to expect are the freedom to behave as they see fit (provided they coerce no other), and to have their own bodies as their property. People have no entitlement to assistance of any kind, whatever their circumstances, if that assistance must be extracted involuntarily. It is admirable that UMPA does provide products, services, and assistance that can’t be made to turn a profit or even to break even. However, under VSU, UMPA will not be able to force students to co-operate, and will have to rely on their generosity instead. This is as it should be. Start preparing convincing appeals to students’ sense of charity if you wish things to continue as they are at UMPA, but don’t try to trick them into believing that their own freedom of choice is a bad thing.
By the way, I consider the ban on UMPA mass-emailing postgraduates denies all its staff their entitlement to behave as they see fit. It also disadvantages students by preventing them from receiving direct email communications from UMPA even though they may (as I would) prefer that money, paper, and labour not be wasted on mail-outs.
I hope to hear that your colleagues approve of my reproducing your responses. If not, I invite you to post a comment to the entries appearing on my blog from Sunday, so that your point of view can be represented.
Sincerely,
Ben Hourigan
Student unionism should be voluntary
With legislation to ban compulsory student unionism currently before parliament, student groups are protesting on the streets, on posters stuck around campus, and to the press to keep union membership compulsory. Even Vice Chancellors are expressing concerns.
I find it staggering that people would protest against their own freedom of association. Okay, if you appreciate the services and representation the union offers you, join it and pay the fee. But give yourself an out if you decide it’s not for you, and let other people decide for themselves whether they join and pay or not.
Admittedly, students can already choose not to join (for the record, I chose to be a member of what remains of Melbourne’s student union, and of UMPA. But they have to pay the fee whether they join or not. I would skip out on membership of the union if I wasn’t paying already.
The main arguments against voluntary student unionism (VSU) seem to be these:
- it is an example of the Howard government’s union-busting mentality
- it will rob students of a body that represents them
- it will result in less services being provided to students
I’m not going to argue with the first one. I think that the Howard government’s antagonism towards unions is appalling. Workers and their employers (or universities and their customers) should be entitled to fight their battles, in whatever groupings they choose, without goverment interference.
Whether or not student unions really represent their students is debatable. There will always be those who dissent from the opinion of their representatives, whether they voted for them or not, and those dissenting people are not represented. Voter turnouts at student elections are, to the best of my knowledge, typically poor. That’s fine: those who want to have a say can have it. Student representation is a good thing, but…
…there’s no way to justify forcing people to join an association in order to secure that representation. For me this is an absolutely clear-cut issue. If student unionists do not wish to let students choose whether or not to join their association and pay the associated fees, then they are against freedom and therefore in the wrong. (Note that as far as I am aware it is voluntary to join the association, but you have to pay the fee even if you don’t join). If student unionists wish to remain a voice in student politics after this reform (and it will go through), they will have to convince students that it is in their interests not only to join the union, student association or guild, but also to voluntarily pay the portion of their amentities and services fee (the whole amount of which is currently around $400 a year at Melbourne, some of which goes to the University itself). I have to say it: I don’t think they’ll have many takers. They might be able to claw some of their membership back if they lower the fee. Price competitiveness is one of the great things that can come from forcing organisations to respond to market pressures.
So, too, I expect both union services, and the private businesses that will appear on campuses to fill the space created by shrinking unions, will have to compete on price and quality of service to secure the patronage of students. Students will be likely end up being better serviced as a result.
I think the Howard government has been appallingly repressive throughout its time in office. Its treatment of refugees is especially atrocious, as is its attempt to mislead people into thinking there were WMD in Iraq (especially when there was a good reason for war: removing Saddam Hussein, a tyrant, from power). But it seems about to strike a blow against the forces of coercion. And that goes to show how sometimes people you think are awful can do good things nonetheless.
What I might have learned at Melbourne Uni
More like a leaking reactor than a liberal arts faculty – Miranda Devine – www.smh.com.au
Readers of Miranda Devine’s piece likening Sydney University’s Faculty of Arts to a “leaking nuclear reactor” may wonder whether its indoctrination of students with leftist propaganda and postmodernist nonsense is an isolated phenomenon. The answer is no.
For the curious, here’s a list of things I would have learned from the Cultural Studies program at the University of Melbourne, had I not read more widely than my studies required:
- Knowledge does not describe the world: it is only a trick the powerful play on those they oppress. This being the case, it is more important that research expresses the appropriate politics and sentiment (determined not by yourself, but by your peers and superiors) than that it is carefully reasoned and backed by evidence.
- Human action is not determined by the individual will, but by external forces. This means that no-one is responsible for their failures, all of which are attributed to some kind of system, like patriarchy, colonialism, or, most likely, capitalism. (Asserting that people do bear responsibility for their own actions is condemned as “voluntarism.”)
- The less sense a piece of writing makes, the more likely it is to be a work of genius that is worthy of your reverence, and from which you should draw quotations to substitute for your own opinions in writing and in conversation.
- To be “subversive” and to reject, out of hand, any element of our present society, is always virtuous, independent of whether your criticism is reasonable and whether or not you propose any viable alternatives.
- If you don’t believe all of the above, you are probably some kind of right wing lunatic.
Devine is right to quote David Stove describing a faculty that harbours such beliefs as being actively dangerous. Teaching students that knowledge cannot be objective and that they are not responsible for their actions is liable to diminish their ability to understand the world and to use that understanding to shape their world and achieve their goals. It is that ability which created our civilisation, its culture, and its technology. Without it we are no better than animals.
Taxnami
My best friend, Annette, a recent graduate of Monash University, today forwarded me an email sent out on behalf of her Vice-chancellor on Tuesday. Here’s some of it:
The university has established an appeal to help the Monash community donate money to those affected by the tsunami. Professor Richard Larkins has started the appeal with a $10,000 donation from the Vice-Chancellor’s Fund.
Under the Monash University Tsunami Disaster Appeal donors can elect one
of the following four charities as recipients of their donation:
- Australian Red Cross Asian Quake and Tsunamis Appeal
- World Vision
- Plan Australia
- UNICEF
“At least at Monash you get given a choice as to whether or not you want to
donate!” she wrote. Well, there wasn’t any choice about the $10,000 donated from the Vice-chancellor’s fund, but at least it wasn’t the $250,000 given by the University of Melbourne.
Here’s an email I wrote to the Vice-chancellor’s office on 12 January 2005:
I wish to express my disapproval of the $250,000 aid package offered by the University to victims of the South-East Asian tsunami, as described in the recent email from the Vice-Chancellor. This is a substantial sum of money and it is, in my view, the university’s duty to use this money for the benefit of its staff and students, and not for other causes, however worthy.
On the other hand, I approve of the offers of non-monetary assistance. I also welcome the opportunity for staff to donate to the relief effort through salary deductions, especially if this reduces their taxable income. This is, however, a voluntary donation, unlike the $250,000 pledged by the university itself. I view this large donation as a form of taxation on the university community, much like the $1bn offered by the Australian Government.
Both the University and the Australian Government have exceeded their legitimate roles by donating money to the tsunami relief effort, money that should instead have been used for the benefit of their stakeholders. The success of private institutions in raising money for tsunami relief shows that survivors can rely for assistance on voluntary donations from charitable individuals. It is with such individuals that the provision of monetary aid should begin and end.
Enough said.