I hate to say "I told you so."

Wait, no I don't.
I FRICKEN TOLD YOU SO!!

Oh, surprise surprise, sports and club services are down, and student support is sadly lacking. Oh Em Gee, what ever are we to do?!

Hold the phone, I've got a great idea -

Let's introduce a fee system for students to fund the non-academic aspects of student life. What? No, of course this isn't a reintroduction of compulsory union fees. No one mention the 'U' word! *face palm*


http://news.smh.com.au/national/govt-says-no-to-compulsory-fees-plan-20080821-3z0o.html

The Rudd government has rejected reports it is considering reintroducing compulsory fees for university students.
... But reintroducing compulsory union fees was not being considered, [Julia Gillard] said.

So they're not going to simply reverse the decision of the previous govt. Of course not, cos we don't mention the 'U' word these days.
So let's see how it is worded:

Reports suggested the government was set to reintroduce compulsory fees for university students to reverse a decline in sporting and social services on campuses.

That's what the Union did, wasn't it?

An announcement was due next month with an "opt-out" system to replace voluntary student unionism with students able to choose which services their fees were spent on and whether they wanted to belong to the student union, Fairfax reported.

Oh!! So totally different, then.
Wow, what a notion! You can avoid being in the union by choosing to allocate your fees to Clubs and Socs instead. Or something... Hm.


Someone please tell me that this is an actual improvement on the simple "Pay us money, we'll give you services and representation" idea of student unions and not just a complicated system to avoid the bad press of compulsory unionism because, quite frankly, i don't believe a word of it.