Even if they cared not a jot either way, there’d still have been a more equal split than 90%:10% (and I’m being extremely generous in that estimate).

No, it merely shows that students don’t like spending money. Not a real surprise when student income support is lower than even the dole, but, with greater costs accruing.

Pre-VSU was actually the better test. Under those regs, students could pay their money to the student union or conscientiously object and pay the same amount to the University for their services. A few did, but, only a tiny minority. You can chalk some of that up to some students not knowing about the option, but, if student unions were really on the nose, the numbers would have at least been in the double figures.

The fact is, people recognise the excesses that unchecked unions can get up to, but, the excesses of the unchecked powers unions were set up to resist are a fair bit more scary. Incidentally, that’s why WorkChoices fell in a screaming heap too.

I supported VSU when I was at university. But the appropriate way to support VSU is to lobby your own university. Not lobby the government into micro-managing the universities.

Do it anyway. If you want to live in a country with 100% tax on everything where nothing at all works and we all go broke, then do everything the broader population wants.

1) it is charged by the state or on the authority of the state (eg local councils, creations of state statutes. Universities are ambiguous because they are created by statute, though they are actually corporate entities.)

2) it is not a fee for service.

Obviously these criteria leave borderline cases. I think the old HECS system was a borderline case. The HECS charge was set by the government and went to the government, and collected through the tax system in most cases, but a third party (a university) gave students a service as a result. On balance, I think it is closer to a tax than a fee, but it’s not a pure tax like income tax which does not create any rights to receive services.

When you get a bad deal - because the university has bundled services you do want with services you don’t - it may *feel* like a tax, or at least how taxes feel for the 25% or so of Australians who pay significantly more in tax than they receive in benefits. But that doesn’t mean it is a tax.

No Commonwealth legislation has required a levy for non-academic services. In WA for a while I think there was a requirement. I will have to check my files to see exactly how it was done.

If universities were given a choice, then people can ignore my comments about the amenities charge being more like a ‘tax’ than a ‘fee’. i take it back.

If the universities were forced to charge students under legislation however, then I still think it’s more like a tax than a fee.

Here’s how I see it. The Government has a policy of ensuring students have access to a minimum level of on-campus services. Yet universities are already strapped for cash, and can’t spare the HECS contributions for extracurricular activities. And the government doesn’t want to allow greater flexibility in the fee structure because that would be unpopular among the broader population.

So what do they do? They impose a regressive ‘tax’ on students. This ensures that: (a) the government only has to deal with opposition in relation to a distinct sub-issue, rather than the broader higher education equity debate; (b) the government doesn’t have to face the opportunity cost of diverting spending from other areas (e.g. health, defence) into higher education.

Just like we have the corporate tax, the income tax, the GST, tariffs and excise taxes, it seems to me that unions were authorised to collect a “student tax”, to be used to fund a specific policy objective.

I think a fee is best used to describe a voluntary transaction, e.g. I paid my library membership fee, and got specified services (whether bundled or unbundled) in return. With a tax, all the money goes into a general pool and you don’t get anything you specifically wanted in return.

Furthermore, if someone had university age kids who couldn’t pay the fee themselves, the amenities fee could be an additional compulsory exaction (i.e. parental income tax + amenities fee). I know it’s under contract, but we only have 2 private universities in Australia.

Conclusion: the student charge is a politically feasible way of implementing government policy in relation to university services. The other alternative you have suggested is to include it in HECS, but that isn’t feasible. So they force students to pay the student tax instead, and in return, they get free BBQs or stuff they might not have wanted in the first place.

Just my two cents…

The amenities fee may be a dud deal from your perspective, but it did give you a range of specific entitlements, ie it is closer to a contract. In the Australian Tape Manufacturers case people paying the levy received no entitlements at all in exhange for their money, with the cash going to a separate ‘public purpose’ as determined by the government. In the Air Caledonie case there was something in exchange (ie being let into Australia) but for citizens at least that is an entitlement.

If the government decided to itself impose a $100 levy on students which it then paid to student unions it would I think be a tax, but a variable fee set by universities and collected by universities in exchange for a bundle of services is a fee.