News

The results of the OUSA referendum were announced last Thursday, with only 2 of the 13 motions meeting the required quorum of 1049 votes.

The 2011 Budget passed by a narrow margin, with 50.27 percent of students voting in favour of it. The Budget, which was the first motion on the website, gained the most overall votes with 1096 votes. OUSA was understandably relieved that the Budget passed, as they won’t be landed with the 2010 Budget. The proposed increase to levies also passed, with 58 percent voting in favour.
   The OUSA Constitutional amendments failed to meet quorum by only eight votes, meaning the Constitution will remain a mess. Although 55 percent of students who voted on that motion were for the changes, there is some suggestion that 2/3 of the vote would have been needed to pass the changes anyway.
   The Constitutional changes proposed reinstating SGMs to determine internal policy, and sending external motions to online vote. However, following the referendum results, these will not be put in place. Instead, OUSA will be forced to continue with online voting, which requires five percent of the student body to pass motions, whether internal or external. SGMs remain an impossibility, as the Constitution requires a quorum of ten percent of members.
   OUSA President Harriet Geoghegan is concerned that the Constitutional changes didn’t pass, although she noted that SGMs are not really part of OUSA’s weekly operations, so the Constitution won’t have any serious impact until next year.
   The other external motions, including motions regarding NZUSA, neurosurgery, GST, and the Code of Conduct, failed to reach quorum. The question regarding NZUSA membership missed out on quorum by a mere 48 votes, and was fairly evenly split, with 42 percent voting for withdrawing, and 40 percent voting for OUSA to remain a member. 
   Another motion, “that matters of nationwide representation are best decided by the student body,” missed out on quorum by 31 votes. The results of this motion were overwhelmingly in favour of students having the last say, with 66 percent voting for, 16 percent against, and 16 percent abstaining.
   As the motions didn’t meet quorum, the results are non-binding. However, the results may be used as an indication of student opinion to inform OUSA decisions.
   Geoghegan was disappointed not to have made quorum. “I would have liked to see more people voting,” she says. She thought that the lack of interest was due to a number of things, including the confusing nature of the topics, which required voters to have followed Critic closely. “The motions on NZUSA came from members outside of the Exec. If we had planned to put those motions forward, we would have planned ahead and educated the members.”
   The issue of membership of NZUSA has been highly divisive. One group even took it upon themselves to launch a “withdrawal is not a safe option” campaign featuring a smiling condom, which unsurprisingly had little impact. 
    The most exciting aspect of the referendum was OUSA’s struggle to get enough votes to reach quorum. With around three and a half hours to go, OUSA was still scrambling to get the remaining 100 votes to meet quorum. Once again, voting began strongly on the first day and peaked after an email from OUSA was sent around reminding members to vote. 
   Although quorum was barely met, the Budget was passed by an unprecedented number of students. In the past, Budgets have been set at SGMs with only a few hundred members, and if proposed constitutional amendments had passed, a Budget would have required a mere 100 members for it to pass.