Salient

“Student Politics: Serious Business.”

The A-Team is not an advocate of VSM. While we aim to improve the degree of
choice available to students in the services provided by VUWSA, we aim to do
so within existing frameworks.

It’s sad you have to bribe students. What a crock of shit that you haters will probably get voted in.

Even there website is full of shit. Interesting that there are only two girls running on the ticket.

I wonder how much the website cost to set up? Better make sure you include that in your campaign expenses!

If they went through Hostica it’d have cost them only US$1 per month for a .com but since they have a .org.nz then they have probably been charged the earth by morons like Xtra…

Alternatively they could have used a blogspot or wordpress account and that is free, I don’t think you have to declare your IP account! Problem with election spending is that it can get trivial and tedious. But that only happens when losing candidates challenge a result.

The A-Team website is slick however. Makes for an interesting election…

.org.nz is about $3/month.

I also forgot hosting costs. that’ll be about another $2-$5/month.

Thanks Joel, that does clarify things well.

Though to be honest, those rates sound quite expensive to me. *shurg*

“Interesting that there are only two girls running on the ticket.”
Interesting to see you choose to attack the people based on their gender, and not the policies. If you can’t find anything bad about the policies, they must be pretty good.

“According to Duggan, the ‘A’ in A-Team stands for advocacy and accountability – which the group believe the 2007 exec has lacked.”

The ‘A’ really stands for ACT (Party), Anti-democracy and Amputation (of VUWSA services). Nicholas O’Kane should join them.

“The A-Team is not an advocate of VSM. While we aim to improve the degree of
choice available to students in the services provided by VUWSA, we aim to do
so within existing frameworks.”

Yeah Right!

“The ‘A’ really stands for ACT (Party), Anti-democracy and Amputation (of VUWSA services). Nicholas O’Kane should join them.”

“Anti-democracy ” I don’t see anything anti-democracy in their platform. As for me joining them, while I agree with a lot of what they say (though not everything, they make the spending cuts in the wrong places, and it should be administration, not services that should be the main focus) and find their policies poorly thought out,

” can’t see any policies that won’t breach the companies act or the VUWSA constitution, Nick”
OK, I can’t see anything unconstitutional (or illegal) about consolidating expenditure on stationary, photocopying, printing, staff training, staff welfare, taxis, telecommunications into a single fund. I’d love to see whats unconstitutional in that.

As for me joining them, I’ve only just heared of them, but I am considering it, but they wiull need to make a few policy changes.

Despite my reputation as a strong right winger, I’m actually not quite as right wing as many people believe, and no-where near as right wing as ACT.

“Student Politics: Serious Business.” This is great and this would be funny if student politicians weren’t so dishonest, wasteful, self-serving and immature.

Given that we ‘The A-team’ are setting the agenda why not check out our website : http://www.a-team.org.nz

We are open about our political affiliations, we are open about our policy and we are concerned with the disgraceful state of our student association.

What’s everybody going to spend their $25 on?

The true comes out– ‘Maybe they’re going to change the constitution’.. what the fuck.. ‘they’ can’t… only students can at AMG’s and IGM’s. The A-Team are telling lies to win votes, they haven’t got a clue, they are just a joke, obsessive losers.

As for stationary, they should do another spell check on their website, there are still some typos, not end of the world but they should fix them when they have time…

The chalking in the quad is pretty in your face, effective but risk is whether it will turn some off. Plus their posters about the $250,000 VUWSA artwork is full of factual inaccuracies…

Cijawa, maybe you can list policies that involve breeches of the constitution. They will need to change the constitution to give the $25 refund, but not to cut any spending. So the spending cuts are OK, the refund is not.

O’Kane - I said that you can’t change the constitution via an online referenda - it would, ironically, require a constitutional change. Just as lowering the VUWSA levy would, and abolishing the clubs council.

I love watching people run on things they can’t deliver.

“abolishing the clubs council. ” Sure, you might need a constitutional amendment to abolish the Clubs council, but you can make it effectively useless by not giving it any money without a constitutional amendment

Online referendumns will cost money! and if they are done every week (if O’Kane has another motion…) it will cost $$$ Internet companies that would conduct such elections would charge a unit cost of around 50 cents per vote even if they cap the overall cost it would rack up a big I.T. Bill for VUWSA if there are too many online referenda throughout the year…

Its the ‘official’ launch of the A team’s campaign today. Too bad their website is down… not getting a tick for competency just yet…

“Yes… bribing students… with there own money.”

See also: A dictionary

I hope you were not one making fun of typos on the A-Team website!

My apologies cijawa, I think you misunderstand me. My assumption (I may be wrong) is that they will pass their Constitutional changes (which would include the ability to have online referenda) at an SGM.

No CJ… I am not ironic.. I am the A Team

You say you’ll change the constitution,
Well, you know,
We all want to change your head,
You tell me it’s the institution,
Well, you know,
You better free your mind instead.

And why should others be forced to pay for your socialising?

Surely people are capable of making their own spending choices?

Very few students will actually see their illegal $25 dollar refund as it will just come of their student loan. What a sight! Lukas and his followers advocating handing over tens of thousands of dollars to the State? HAHAHAHAH.

Personally I’d rather pay that $25 and know that VUWSA can actually still serve the students from welfare to clubs to activities to campaigns instead of providing a platform for Right wing munters to masturbate over themselves in VUWSA offices and Exec meetings.

Believe it or not, students will have to eventually pay back their loans. This means if $25 is returned, via refund (which is not unconstitutional or illegal) you WILL be saving $25. The money may go back to the “State” for now, but at least you wont be paying it back out of your Salary/Wages when you are 40.

Presumably if the university collects the money and records the details, all VUWSA has to do is give 20% of it back to the university, who will be then legally obligated to return it to the students - easy peasy. If they fail to return any of the money they can and probably will be charged with fraud or embezzlement.

PS Oh, and don’t forget, not everyone has a student loan.

PPS I am not a member of A-Team, I don’t vote for student politics and think compulsory membership is bulls**t - but I just had to point this out, because, as previously stated, there are a lot of idiots about and it was annoying me.

Mr F** the A-Team,

The $25 will not effect the welfare that can be provided to students. For starters there are still a number of agencies in town that are provided by the Government that can be used to assist students, this helps promote a healthy relationship between students, VUWSA and the Wellington community. There are also community groups that provide food banks, and cheaper clothing. Should I be elected I would make immediate contact with such groups and help students to deal with these agencies.

My past employments as the Electorate Secretary to the Local MP means that I know all about these avenues which can be taken, as students used to come in to get assistance from me in that role as the VUWSA welfare VP was not helping them out. By having this knowledge and established contacts I am able to ensure that students at Vic get the most out of the different options available to them ensuring that they are getting all the things they need to be able to survive as a student.

So by giving students back $25, there will be no cuts to welfare funding - essentially if their refund goes back onto their student loan this is giving the state more money to be able to provide students with more efficient and accesible welfare agencies.

“From reading the a team material, it seems they are open to giving the $25 refund to the club of your choice, which surely means the problem you suggest (the clubs you like- the Young Nationals etc, falling apart) won’t happen provided students support them.”

I think, once again, you need to go read the constitution - all clubs funding has to go through the clubs councils. Basically, the ACT-Team have worked out that their campaign pledge is illegal, and have backtracked.

Oh, and Anna, the $25 going back to the government to spend on welfare services - that is - bar-none - the funniest thing I have ever heard. How the hell did you get into university being that fucking stupid?

What I can’t work out is why the ACT-Team is not out-and-out advocating VSM - when the vast majority of their candidates and supporters quite obviously believe in it. Instead, they’re campaigning on this watered down tax-cut-like policy. Pathetic.

Waw waw waw Justin - can’t handle the heat, don’t play in the kitchen.

Anna - everyone knows that the sole reason you shifted to the Right is because no one in Labour liked you and you realised that they would never select you to be an MP.

Furthermore, I hope you pay copyright to the Muppet Show producers for misusing their images on your website.

cijawa - the reason the A-Team don’t come out in support of VSM is the same reason National doesn’t come out and support scrapping the nuclear-free legislation. They both want it so bad, but they know that it is unpopular and stupid.

Anna & Justin,

“their refund goes back onto their student loan this is giving the state more money to be able to provide students with more efficient and accesible welfare agencies.”

So are you telling us Anna that National Party members and Act members support higher taxation? Because higher taxation would also achieve what you say some $450,000 being given back to StudyLink would achieve.

And the fact that you want to channel students all over town to get food and cheap clothes is just ridiculous! Are you going to give them bus passes? Will you create more hours in the day for the busy student to fit more in? Or should we keep services on campus - and increase them? Hmmm…

Good to see flip flops happen all over the show in the right, who cannot make up their minds where they stand on anything. Are you VSM, or VSM in drag?

Candidates, if you have video manifestos/campaing videos up to 2 minutes in length then let Salient know and we will put them on the Salient website as part of SalientTV.

There are several ways you can do this

1. Produce your own video and bring it to us (on a disc/flash drive) and we will upload it YouTube and send the URL link to our web designer and they will post a window on SalientTV like usual. OR Produce it and upload it to YouTube yourselves and send us the URL to us and we will forward it to our web designer…

OR

2. Come up to the Salient office and we will shoot up to 2 minutes of video and post it to YouTube, send URL link to web designer etc…

We are trying to keep it straight forward and simple as possible for you to do this. If you have any further questions about this then feel free to contact Salient and or the returning officer - she as usual will be able to inform you the campaign deadlines, videos should be posted on SalientTV until voting begins and hopefully unblocked and archived when voting has ended.

Videos should preferably be under two minutes, any that go over two minutes we cannot guarantee the quality posted as we will compress them down so they don’t take too much bandwidth uploading them to YouTube (if you come up to Salient and get us to video you).

cheers
Nick Archer
New Media Columnist
Salient

Looks like the A-team hasn’t given up on the queer rights officer position, as Sam Archer a part of the A-team, just contacted UniQ and asked to become a member. They must have just realised that to be the queer rights officer you have to be a member of UniQ.
I highly doubt that they actually care or know anything about queer rights, seeing as the likely candidate, has never been to a UniQ meeting/event, been on the mailing list or involved within the queer community in a support and/or volunteer role.
It is highly disturbing that the A-team want to push forward someone for this role so they can have more control by taking as many positions as possible, as opposed to actually doing some good for the queer students at Vic and the wider community as a whole. This is underlined by the fact that yesterday another A- teamer confessed they didn’t know what UniQ was.

Lucas - nice of you to join us. Maybe you’d like to answer my question:

Why is the ACT team not running on a VSM platform when it is quite obvious that you all support VSM?

hahahaha the ACT-team website is still down… bummer….. Lukas, just cos your mates at Pipetea will vote for you, the rest of the students can see past your lies and posters… can’t wait to see you guys lose big time.

There seem to be three types of comment against the A-Team on this site:
1) It’s not practical to return people’s money to them.
2) The candidates running have affiliations to other political causes.
3) Personal insults toward A-Team candidates.

Try going through this list and consider how many of them are credible and how many voters are likely to actually care about.

Personally I think these attacks smack of desperation and if the commenters could only look past their pig headed idiosyncrasies (ie be normal students) they would probably be voting A-Team too.

O’Kane, the website is still down (or at least it is again!)…

CJ - The list will be in Salient on Monday (was only confirmed at 4:30pm but people can yet pull out).

Nick O’Kane - much agreed, good comment.

Dear Readers,

It appears that certain people are making fictitious comments using A-Team aliases.

If you would like to know what the A-Team really stands for, please visit us at http://www.a-team.org.nz.

Kind regards,

Lukas Schroeter
A-Team Presidential Candidate
on behalf of the A-Team

The website hasn’t been working most of the time I’ve been trying it. For some reason it doesn’t work at Salient when it works on student computers (VUWSA conspiracy? Who knows). FYI Lukas - if you keep posting the same comment we might mistake it for spam and ban you..

Now that i’ve posted the list of candidates, I’ll now look at one contentious area, that is the refund, and its legality. Some opponents of the refund, including Paul Brown and Joel Cosgrove have aserted that the refund policy is illegal, because it violates the incorporated societies Act 1908. I have read the Act, and I beleive they are refering to Article 20 of the Act, which is about pecuniary gain. It makes clear that an incorporated society can’t simply divide its money amongst its members. VUWSA is an incorperated society. The penalties are $200 fine for the assosciation (VUWSA) and $40 for the individual. There is no clear definiton of pecuniary gain, but it involves making money and dividing it up amongst the members of the organisation. http://www.legislation.govt.nz has the text of the Incorported societites Act, and http://www.keepingitlegal.net.nz/learn-more/incorporated-societies is also usefull.

One thing to note is that there is no definition of “pecuniarary gain” in the incorporated societies Act. However, all the information I have obtained indidcates it is making a profit and dividing the profit up amongst its members. Refunding people money they have paid in membership fees may not count as making a profit. However, if VUWSA was to invest in shares and divide the profit made by selling share amongst its members would be a black and white example of pecuniary gain. Section 5 of the Incorporated Societies Act lists things not counted as pecuniary gain, and unfortunately for the A-Team, refunding membership fees isn’t one of them. However , fortunately for the A-Team, there are clauses that the A-Team can exploit, such as clause (e) which states that “any member of the Society derives from the Society any pecuniary gain to which he would be equally entitled if he were not a member of the society”. Under this clause, VUWSA could give evey student enrolled at the university $25 as a gift, regardless of wether they are or are not VUWSA members. As membership of VUWSA is compulsory, the only students who aren’t members are those who are conscience objectors, which is only a tiny number, but the $25 will be given to all VUWSA members (except life members). So it is possible to legally give the $25 refund. I will post more tommorow. I got to go now as I have a train to catch.

You know what is real funny, in the real world, all the A-Team would have is their pathetic blogs, complaining about how wrong the world is, and writing about their ridiculous notions of how it should be. The closest they will come to any power is running for a student association. Even O’Kane knows that they will fail in winning seats. What a joke they are. I hear that they are writing to all clubs, asking for support, and then telling then that they will cut club funding (although they have candidate running for clubs officer, ?????!!!!!??!?!?!?!??! So, will he quit, if LAME-Team win, or will he just pocket student money, solely for being a vote on the exec). The clubs think its an insult, and the LAME-team just don’t get it… thats how deluded they are

I just went to the A-team launch party at MVP.
I had a really lovely chat with their campaigns manager. I know know why they shouldn’t submit someone as queer rights officer..
…”bisexual? that means they haven’t had the operation yet eh?” is my current favourite quote of the night, closely followed by “so are you all dykes?”
Boy, what a charmer…

Down at Law School I raised my objection to illiterate people being protected under the contacts act

i’m a bad widdle boy!

Will the real Lukas Schroeter please stand up please stand up!

Fuck! They’re trying to pretend they’re me, pretending they’re me! Don’t believe the pretend, pretend me! Please!

Lukas, just make sure you keep having your email address entered in the field so we know it is you, you know your name in orange that actually links to the A Team website instead of those grey ones where every knows it’s not the real McCoy…

Is Sam Archer standing for the A Team?

Stop it stop it stop it stop it!! Really this has gone to far. Salient shouldn’t be a place to slander people.

So stop pretending to be me or i’ll get my friends Roger Douglas, Ruth Richardson, and Rodney Hide to come and get all Fiscally Responsible on yo’ arse.

No, I am saying that racism and the environmental have nothing in common. I don’t condoning his racist views.

“I just went to the A-team launch party at MVP.
I had a really lovely chat with their campaigns manager. I know know why they shouldn’t submit someone as queer rights officer..
…”bisexual? that means they haven’t had the operation yet eh?” is my current favourite quote of the night, closely followed by “so are you all dykes?”
Boy, what a charmer…”

Lucky he isn’t standing then I guess…

I am happy to answer all questions asked of the A-Team. His views will not get in the way of going his job of enviornmental officier, after all, like I said, race has not to do with the environment. He will have nothing to with NT either, as they will have little to do with VUWSA next year.

Now it’s me being Laura.

I don’t know Laura’s email address, but that’s ok because it will still show this comment until the Salient guys see this comment and go and check the email address that was posted with it and realise that it isn’t Laura’s real email address.

Of course, if I really was trying to impersonate Laura, then I wouldn’t be mentioning any of this in the comment which would make it much less likely for Salient to even bother checking the email address attached to this comment.

Now I’m Nick.

Have I made my point yet?

Salient can of course check the IP addresses of comments, but it would be difficult to distinguish between the real person and the imposter.

This is even further complicated by people simply using different computers, or commenting from the university network.

Probably because it’s not the ACT team, its a group of students who’ve got together to run for VUWSA on an a-political platform.

I’m an ACT supporter and I’d be much happier if it was an ACT-Team running on VSM. Then I wouldn’t have to keep giving my money to VUWSA for them to hand it out to idiots like you.

It is a sad problem, and a breech of trust, that people should post under a different persons name. I have had on two occasions people post comments on blogs under my name (other than Peters example above), but none were serious. this can be considered more serious because of Lucas is running for VUWSA President, and the comments may be part of a bigger electoral strategy to cost the A-Team votes. In the article above, the A-Team is compared to the Exclusive Brethren, and accused of overspending. I have discovered posters labbeling the A-Team “Rich White Elitism”, talking about “Lucas A-Hole” and other A-Team candidates, full of personal attacks against the A-Team. The posters did not include the identity of who was behind them. What is clear is that there are a very large number of such posters, and were in almost all cases placed deliberately over the A-Team posters, and must have been done last night. It must involve either one person working long hours, or a large number of people. In any case this is a big time smear operation, carefully organised. Students should have a right to know who is behind it, and it should count into that candidates $100 campaign budget.

I think it just shows how desperate they are Nick.
The don’t have a clue what to do now that someone sensible is running for exec and they won’t be in control of VUWSA’s $2,500,000 budget anymore.

You’re right O’Kane - people should know who is behind the smear campaign. Just like people should know that Senior ACT campaign strategists like Brian Nichole and Rick Marshall are behind the ACT team.

I think it’s important that people recognise that VUWSA spends a lot of money in unjustified areas. As an example, in the 70s VUWSA bought and donated a tank to the Viet Cong. That’s right, while our NZ soldiers were fighting in Vietnam, our students’ association was backing the other side. I am not saying the current exec have gone to these extremes but student politics should be about representing students and from the sounds of things (particularly the infamous Copiegate saga) I believe the VUWSA exec have been working for themselves.

I think the student population will be responsive to people who maintain high standards of conduct and who are really dedicated to working for students. I don’t think people can criticise them for thinking they can do better than the current executive - they probably can. I think it’s great that more students are getting involved in student politics because the former apathy of students astounded me. That apathy was probably the reason we always had some rather ‘interesting’ representatives.

In regards to them being “right-wing”, does it matter? In the past VUWSA has had members from all political parties: ACT, Young Nats, Young Labour, the Anti-Capitalist Alliance, the Greens, etc, etc. Everyone is entitled to their political view and no one should be berated just because they have a different view on life. All students are allowed to run for VUWSA and national politics shouldn’t come into it. This is an election of student representatives, so what matters is their policies not their party affiliations, if they even have any.

The A-team will most definately get my vote.

sammie is gay!!
A-Team? more like gAy-Team!!!!

Not there are typo’s in my message above. It should read:

Our family officially DOES NOT SUPPORT the gAy-Team. Not only can would-be president not make up his mind but, THEY ARE GOING TO CUT FUNDING TO THE CLUBS - they very soul of VUWSA.

I like the posters that have been stuck up over the previous ones. At least they arent telling s**t.

Legally VUWSA is an incorporated society and as such bound by certain rules. The A TEAM (if they should win) are not legally able to return money to its members even if they wish to.

I suspect the VUWSA fee is also a sliding scale rate for part-time and full-time students. For example a 0.2 student would only be charged that percentage. Determining the appropriate amount for each student would be a administrative nightmare particularly because Victoria University (not VUWSA) houses this resource and information. Whilst the institution is obligated under the education act to collect the fee they are not required to action any tasks relating to reimbursements (even if it were legal).

This would mean the A-Team would have to individually determine the amounts owed to each student and issue an individual payments using VUWSA resources. Effectively it would take their accounts staff years to do and cost much more than the flagged amount of $25/EFT

The only way they could legally implement their policy, not withstanding the logistical problems, would be to issue a voucher of sorts. This happened in the 90’s when the Melbourne student association issued a book voucher and promptly collapsed the association.

This a side VUWSA is a poor performing association with, at times, some deplorable behavior. It is not difficult to see why such arguments are on the rise. They are currently the only association without a professional management structure in New Zealand and suffer as a result of that lack of expertise. I suspect the A-Team could implement some efficiencies but would only be able to effect the fee for the 2009 year. Hopefully, by then they will be more familiar with the incorporated societies Act.

I’m aware of the huge logistical problems with the refund, as well as possibly legal ones, although I’m unconvinced it can’t be done legally. The A-Team shoiuld put forward some explanation of how they will give the refund, which will be interesting to see. Also, i’m unconvinced about the A-Teams ability to give the refund. In their budget, most of the refund won’t come through services cuts, but out of the building levy. Problem for A-Team is that the building fund portion of the levy goes striaght to the VUWSA Trust, without the exec ever getting its hands on it. It may be possible for the exec to get their hands on the building fund money, but would be difficult, and may require constitutional amendments.

Serious question to the A-team.

If I pay my $125 through a student loan at present, if you give me my $25 back as a refund won’t I have to give that to Studylink in much the same way as if I withdrew from a course that money will go back to Studylink.

Cheers

Again I can’t speak for the A-Team but course costs are different to student association membership fees.

I will point someone from the A-Team to this thread so they can comment.

Thanks peteremcc. Because while i acknowledge that course costs and student association membership fees are different things - to Studylink it is still money being loaned from them to a student for a specific purpose.

Should the money be refunded it would seem that Studylink would be entitled to the return of that money, hence meaning that students won’t really be $25 better off atleast in the short term.

Thanks for your response Lukas.

My concern is that most of your campaign material says it doesn’t matter that we’re cutting the funding to clubs and rep groups because people can use that $25 and give it to their clubs.

If they have to give it back to studylink then i don’t see how they can also give it to their clubs.

Peter, if you pay your fees via student loan (which 8/10 students do) the $25 refund is going to go back to studylink. It’s how the system works - as Lucas’ impersonator says, only the rich kids are going to get the ACT Team’s cheque for $25…

” like the posters that have been stuck up over the previous ones. At least they arent telling s**t.” They are. The ones for Luca A-Hole and mike A-Hole allege that they will get rid of Salient, Student job Search and orientation. nowhere has the a-Team said this, and Lucas has just personally asured me they won’t cut these things. Clubs and rep groups e.t.c is a fair point, as they will actually cut clubs funding down to zero, but they don’t plan to touch student job search, or salient, and while they will remove the re-orientation, the one at the begining of the year remain the same. These points are lies.

One realises just how desperate the left is to win when they have to put up offensive posters all over university calling Anna Duggan a whore, making up lies about the A-Team’s policies, and generally being rude and nasty about people.

So if I read you correctly Nick that means the ‘A team’ are you going to give us our money by INCREASING our student loans!?!?! That’s just plain crazy and CORRUPT!!

Haha, I heard that only like 5 people showed up to their launch last night. If that’s indicative of their support, I don’t think we have too much to worry about! :)

The thing is, the anit-A Team don’t have to tell how much it is spending on their campiagn. There is nothing in the rules that say that people cannot campiagn against the A -Team. The rules apply to people who are running. I am not part of the poster campiagn, but hey.. its funny.. and the A Team are idiots… and people who know what they are up to, figure it out.

They only breech defamation laws if they’re untrue Nick. I haven’t seen any of the ACT Team jump to prove that they are wrong…

By the way, in the FAQ on their website, the A-Team have explictly stated they will not touch the Salient budget or independence. Any more claims about this are lies. I haven’t seen any poster mentioning a cheque specifically, and al their posters are up on their website. I can’t see any logic in the idea that giving people $25 cheques, to refund them for the VUWSA membership fees, increases peoples student loans.

Also, we probably have a new record for greatest number of comments on a Salient website comment thread.

I went along to the A Team launch last night (although I should point out I am not involved with them in ANY way) and can say that when I was there it was more like about 40 people. Didn’t stay for long though (not my scene) so I can’t say if those people stayed the whole night.

I might add that many students, who aren’t beltway, won’t know who is and who isn’t a incumbent VUWSA exec memebr, so telling them apart will be difficult. Also, the effect of advertising in bringing out votes is very limited (I’ve seen general meetings struggle to get quorom, and few people turn up to meetings, despite large advertising). this election wil be very decisive in VUWSA history if the A-Team get in.

As for the campaigning skills, joels pamphlets are excellent. Students are unlikely to read are long wordy pamphlet, and the few sentences, which clearly state the policies, and give a website for those few students who want to know more (even though the website isn’t great), with a picture of him (always a plus), couldn’t have been designed better. Obviosly his campaign is smaler than the A-Team one (as he only has a $100 spending cap, and running for one psoition, vs 14 candidates and $1400 for the A-Team), but is getting noticed.

The A-Team have run a negative campaign at the current exec, and the impact is likely to be positive so far. The pamphlet last week “a year in your rear” I intially thought would be a failure, being a chore to read it, but I’ve seen a few students look at it, and if the lectures boring gives you something elese to do. The only probelm is that pamphlet would have been expensive, and eat into their (admitedly large) budget and spending cap. The muppet theme, is done well, and labbeling exec mebers muppets is not new. The video I haven’t seen, but putting one up isn’t a bad idea. The website is done well, the only problem being the policies are statements of principle, not policies, which can be better found at the FAQ, and they should put an explanation of how they will give the refund. Putting posts on their blog could also be a help. The pamphlets, are OK, a few are wordy. promoting the campaign launch wasn’t a bright idea, but the pledge to you on the other side is good.

The other noticible campaign, is Paul Brown, with the “arse” slogan, something that will get sdeen, a little wordy, but good. mark newton has gone after the enviromentalist vote,, and his campaign will resonate in beltway, and he will get many anti-A-Team vote, but I doubt too many new voters (if there are large numbers of new voters, it is likely they will be for the A-Team). More candidates will probably run campaigns in future, and its still early days. If Geoff doesn’t campaign hard, which he doesn’t appear to be doing (to be fair to Geoff its tough when you have a 40 hour job) he will struggle. Split votes will help the A-Team.

The other big influence on campaigns, is the peices they write for salient. This will have less of an impact this time, because the’d be much more to read. These are just my thoughts, but I’ve proven accurate in VUWSA elections in the past.

Nick, the A-Team video is on the homepage of their website if you’d like to see it.

I dont necessarily agree with A-team spreading all the “evict the muppets” pamphlets, but personally i was horrified when i saw the posters around about Mike, Lukas and Anna. Absolute nastiness and totally unnecessary. A-team is just a bunch of ordinary and quite nice people really, who see (like all us non-political students who read salient and look at stuff.co.nz) that this years exec could have done a better job then they did, and so are taking steps to fill in the shoes. I would sooner run around university naked then take on a act or National political view (thats not political its blimmen common sense) - and yet i see nothing of right wing extremitism coming from A-team. By the way Lukas or Mike i’ll get in contact with my uncle to see if you can borrow his water-blaster. It would be a shame to be illiminated for being slightly too enthisiastic with a piece of chalk! I know that was you Mike…too fond of the pretty colours. “Pretty, pretty colours”. Ahhhh….that would be why you put your money on prancing-dancing pony….i cant remember the rest.

Dear Lukas,
You’re a twat, I’m not saying this as a desperate attempt to sabotage your campaign but because I think you are a twat.
- I’m pretty sure it says in the “Muppets video” that a $25 cheque will be given to students, I hope you are not lying to your potential voters.
-Also, I assume you have included the cost of the Muppet royalties in your $1400 budget along with Family Guy and Seinfeld otherwise your image of Integrity will fly out the window like your Clubs Officer’s job once you cut his funding.
-Are you sure you aren’t just getting in at the “University Level” to prime the Union to be dissolved and make it easier for National and Act to take control of our glorious establishment if [and yes I am concerned here] they get a majority in next years election?