A ticket with connections to the ANU Liberal Club and the Men’s Network will launch on Monday night running on an anti-National Union of Students platform. It will field general representative candidates and NUS delegates for the upcoming ANUSA elections.
Ashish Nagesh, the ticket convener and candidate, who is also treasurer of the ANU Liberal Club, told Woroni on Sunday the Stand Apart ticket would encompass a ‘broad range of ideologies’ in putting 12 candidates forward to ‘hold the ANUSA executive to account’.
The ticket will seek to lobby the ANUSA departments to give voice to people who feel they have been left out by the collective system.
Nagesh said that the ticket’s core policy was to disaffiliate from the NUS.
‘The end goal is to disaffiliate from the NUS, that’s the only way that reform and changes can be made,’ he said, also criticising the union for becoming increasingly bureaucratic and censored.
The ticket is working with the president of the Men’s Network, Sebastian Rossi.
Rossi said that the Men’s Network was apolitical and Rossi’s actions did not reflect the view of the network.
In contrast to the view of the Men’s Network, Nagesh said Stand Apart felt the formation of a Men’s Department was a ‘viable’ option, which would allow for ‘free speech’.
‘The formation of a Men’s Department, I think, is a completely viable option,’ Nagesh said, noting the controversy which surrounded the Men’s Network when it was formed.
‘I think it only makes sense to have a Men’s Department alongside a Women’s Department,’ he told Woroni.
Nagesh said Stand Apart would seek to reallocate SSAF funding for mental health and sexual assault services, and would seek to better engage with the international student body with a platform of ‘holistic representation’.
‘We are trying to advocate for SSAF funding to be allocated to the counselling centre,’ Nagesh said.
Stand Apart would also seek to implement quotas for international students in the Clubs and Societies Council.
‘We have a very broad range of candidates, and I want our voter base, to not only tap into those people who feel they have been left behind,’
Nagesh told Woroni on Sunday that the ticket would field Labor and Greens candidates alongside independents, but ANU Labor Left said on Monday no past or present Labor members were standing on the ticket.
Nagesh said on Monday that he had assumed candidates were ‘formerly active’ Labor members, but on reflection this was an ‘overstatement’.
This comes after Stand Apart tried to field a candidate women’s officer, who was later found to be ineligible to run for the position.
‘We are running a women’s officer who will advocate for people who feel they have been left behind in the Women’s Department,’ Nagesh said.
‘Our women’s officer [candidate] has not been endorsed by the Women’s Department, but is very active in the department,’ he said on Sunday.
Most department officers are currently elected by the autonomous collective, rather than through general election, as proposed by Stand Apart.
But the ticket’s initial candidate for women’s officer, Thea Linnet, was not eligible for election having not attended enough Department meetings.
Linnet would run as a candidate for general representative and advocate for women, Nagesh said on Monday.
The ticket launched on Monday afternoon.
This article was updated at 9.09pm, Monday, 31 July to reflect new statements about party membership of Stand Apart ticket candidates.
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