The Non-Free Market Case for VSU: Why Worse is Better

As an undergraduate back in 1987, I was one of several contributors to a book published by John Hyde’s Australian Institute for Public Policy, Compulsory Students Unions: Australia’s Forgotten Closed Shop.  Other contributors were Michael Danby, now a federal Labor member of the House of Representatives and Mark Trowell, now better known for his role in the Shapelle Corby case.  The introduction was written by a young barrister by the name of Peter Costello.  My chapter argued for the use of federal financial powers by a future Liberal government to coerce universities into adopting voluntary student unionism, on the grounds that the right of individuals not to be coerced into membership of student associations trumped the rights of state governments and university autonomy.  The book and some of its authors were instrumental in having these policy prescriptions written into federal Liberal Party policy (and now, to a lesser extent, Labor Party policy), so I feel some responsibility for the policy the federal government is now following to make student unionism voluntary.

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posted on 01 September 2005 by skirchner in Economics

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