Socialist Alternative/Students for Palestine (SAlt/SFP) and Labor have spent the past week locked in a bitter fight over the paid office-bearer positions at the National Union of Students (NUS) National Conference. Usually, SAlt and Labor delegates reach a cosy agreement to carve up these roles between themselves.
This year, that arrangement collapsed, and in the opening days it looked as though the Labor Right and Labor Left were combining to keep the paid positions entirely for themselves.
SAlt responded with outrage, flooding social media with claims that, for the sake of Palestine, they must be granted NUS positions. After several days of delays, walkouts and boycotts of the conference, SAlt and the Labor factions eventually reached a deal to divide the paid positions between them.
But the standoff was never about Palestine. Despite all the noise SAlt generated online, their real concern was losing bureaucratic control, not building the Palestine movement. Throughout the year, SAlt/SFP have repeatedly collaborated with Labor student hacks to derail Palestine organising they did not lead.
At Sydney University, SAlt joined Labor and Grassroots to lobby against a Students Against War-called Student General Meeting that sought to condemn the IHRA definition of antisemitism and support a one-state solution in Palestine, denouncing it as “too radical.” In the end the meeting was a success attended by over 200 students.
At Melbourne University, SAlt/SFP actively prevented motions supporting a single democratic state and defending Palestinians’ right to resist from being heard at a Student General Meeting. They blocked speakers supporting the motions and even seized students’ placards reading “Defend Palestinians’ right to resist”.
They willingly helped the Labor right General Secretary of the student union, who had already refused to acknowledge a petition from 750 students calling for these motions to be heard.
In April at UTS and Sydney Uni, SAlt/SFP boycotted a protest called by staff groups and Students Against War against the presence of the IDF on campus.
At ANU in September, Students and Staff Against War (SSAW) passed an informal motion at a Special General Meeting linking the fight against campus cuts to opposing genocide, after SAlt and Labor students walked out to avoid being associated with it.
The truth is that the major consideration for SAlt about when they will and will not support an initiative is not whether it advances the Palestinian movement, but whether they are running the show.
Their complaints about Labor refusing to sign a deal with them therefore ring hollow. SAlt is not opposed to working with Labor… far from it. They have repeatedly partnered with Labor students when it suited them.
At Melbourne University this year they ran on a joint ticket for NUS positions with Labor. At UTS they teamed up with Labor students on the “Social Justice for NUS” ticket. They constantly make unprincipled deals with Labor factions so they can secure positions for themselves, even if it means handing Labor factions positions and locking out other left-wing and pro-Palestine activists.
In the 2025 Sydney Uni SRC elections, they worked with PENTA (a conservative faction), Labor Left and Grassroots to carve up paid SRC positions and secure control of the bureaucracy. But the icing on the cake was the secret agreement that Socialist Alternative demanded be signed as part of the bureaucratic deal. The telling clause was “Under no circumstances may any of the parties to this agreement deal with or vote for members of Solidarity.” Solidarity is the socialist organisation most closely associated with Students Against War and the mobilisations SAlt repeatedly opposed.
To their credit, Queer Agenda at USYD refused to sign.
When SAlt does secure positions like NUS Education Officer, they often use them to undercut local organising. At Western Sydney University, they tried to use a nationally-run online referendum, promoted through their NUS positions, to pull attention away from a locally organised in-person SGM calling for cutting ties with Israel.
Rather than assisting WSU 4 Palestine to build the BDS campaign on campus, they redirected people toward their online referendum. This is how SAlt uses NUS; not to build movements but to smother initiatives they do not bureaucratically control.
Their refusal to participate in campaigns they do not control meant SAlt/SFP had little to no involvement in the campaigns that won BDS victories for Palestine on Australian campuses this year. These included the USYD campaign that forced the administration to cut ties with the Israeli university Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, and the UTS campaign that pushed the university not to renew its partnership with Technion. Instead of celebrating these wins, SAlt mocked them as “flukes.”
The outcome of the NUS bureaucratic squabble matters very little. NUS has increasingly become a hollow shell, irrelevant to serious activism. Students Against War, Solidarity and WSU 4 Palestine have already shown that real organising does not require control of student union offices. No one building the movement has relied on NUS to fight for Palestine; the strength of the movement has come from local organising, not national office-bearers.
SAlt has now secured the NUS Education and Queer Officer positions they demanded, but only by striking deals with the very factions they denounced.
Their sectarianism, opportunism and willingness to work with Labor factions to undermine activists on the ground show that their outrage was never principled. Their record of undermining Palestine activism they do not control exposes how hollow their outrage is. This was never about Palestine, it was always about paid positions.
If SAlt had put even a fraction of the energy they spent manufacturing outrage over NUS positions into building the Palestine movement, more universities might already have been forced to cut ties with Israel. That is the task ahead.
