Page last updated 7/7/2022.
My understanding is that these constitutional amendments are in effect, applying from the 2022 Executive election and the 2022-2023 term of the Executive.
The Victorian Student Representative Council Student Executive Advisory Committee (“the Executive”) proposed a number of amendments to our SRC’s Constitution, concerning the composition of the Executive for future terms but yet again no simplification of the Executive’s outrageous full name.
An amendment requires at least 75% of votes cast being in favour to be adopted into the Constitution.
These changes were voted on by the constitutional Student Members of our SRC at a Special General Meeting in May 2022. All changes were passed unanimously by those Student Members who were present, with all Members voting in favour.
As a Student Member of our Victorian SRC, I attended the Special General Meeting and voted in favour of all amendments. Coming into the meeting, I was initially supportive of the changes to the gender quotas and school cap. However, given some of the concerns previously raised to me, I will outline why I also voted in favour of the year 11/12 cap (recommendation 3) and the extended-term proposal (recommendation 4).
Whilst this is less than would be proportionate in a constitutionally maximum-size Executive of 18 Representatives, it was clarified that the current practice is for only 15 Representatives to be elected to the Executive each year and an Executive of 18 would occur only if the total number of nominations is less than 18. The Constitution does offer some flexibility with the cap if necessary. A potential consequence of this change is that the 3 year 11/12 students in a term might then have a higher proportion of the load to represent VCE students which would be counter to part of the intention of the recommendation, however I voted in favour of this proposal as it would improve the representation of younger year levels. My hope is that our SRC will continue to engage with and represent VCE students to advance sensible and achievable proposals for the senior years of school.
A similar proposal was considered in SGMs in 2021, prior to the election of the current Executive, but was rejected as it never reached the 75% of votes necessary to pass despite being supported by a clear majority of Student Members voting. The voters at the May 2022 SGM were almost all Representatives elected for the current term of the Executive, and most of them are first-term Representatives.
The justification proposed for the necessity of this recommendation, that running for an Executive election is so strenuous, in comparison to the duties of the office, that it would be a significant factor for Representatives considering renominating, is interesting.
I voted in favour of this amendment only on the assurance that the intention of a candidate to continue on for a second term would be known to the voters at the time of election. That is, a candidate would indicate at the time of initial nomination for the election whether they are nominating for a 1-year or 2-year term, and voters would be able to make their decision based on this knowledge. Of course, there are specific implementation details that will need to be considered, such as when over 10 candidates are elected for 2-year terms in the same election.
The ambiguous wording of this amendment means that the process in the future may be very different and potentially undemocratic. However, our SRC and its Executive has always acted in good faith and broadly in the interests of the democratic rights of students, so I do not believe that this amendment is currently in any real danger of being manipulated. I also note that generally, Representatives on the Executive are competent and have the confidence of Victorian students, and are often reelected when they have run again anyway. This amendment is perhaps easier to stomach if we see our SRC as a corporate advocacy organisation rather than a purely representative structure.