Voting is now open – head to qutguild.com/elections to cast your vote for the 2025 Student Representative Council, Media Team, Student Guild Board members and NUS Delegates.
It’s finally here, the event you have all been waiting for…. drumroll please….. It’s voting week! That’s right, voting for the Guild Student Elections is open! It’s time to cast your vote for the students you want running your student union for the next 12 months. So, you’ve read their candidate statements in our Election Edition magazine and you have probably seen them campaigning across both campuses. But what are the candidates and parties actually promising?
The two major parties running in this election are Revive and Elevate, both of which have candidates running for the majority of the Officer positions, including President, Secretary and Treasurer. There are two students running on the Reform ticket, originally started by the 2023 Guild President Aamna Asif. Left Action Free Palestine!, also known as Socialist Alternative, are again running for mostly Councillor and NUS Delegate roles.
Revive is the largest ticket running in this election, with 17 candidates, and is made up of students who are all new to the Guild. The party is headed by Presidential candidate Karsten Duvel, who is relatively new to QUT having started his double degree in Business and Law in July this year. Duvel is a member of the Liberal National Party, as is Revive’s candidate for Secretary, Lily Cooke, who is currently listed on the Young LNP website as campaigns director.
However, Duvel has stated that Revive has no affiliation to any political party nor received funding from any political party.
“Revive is a group of students from all walks of life and political leanings. Our candidates are from a range of degree spaces and club involvements to reflect the diversity of students at QUT.”
Elevate is the ticket with the most experienced nominations, with half the team having previously served in the Student Guild. Presidential candidate Emme Muggleton served as Education Officer during the tumultuous 2023 term, which was epitomised by the Student Representative Council’s attempt to overthrow the Guild Board and ended with a sparsely attended Annual General Meeting, sans President, Treasurer or Education Officer.
Muggleton and her candidate for Secretary, Sebastian Page, are both members of the Labor party. However, at the Presidents Debate + Q&A Muggleton stated that Elevate does not have a political agenda and is made up of a range of students from all walks of life.
“I think there are three members of our ticket who are [Labor] party members. The rest of them are just students who actually care and want the best for QUT and the students within it.”
Both Revive and Elevate’s election promises are fairly similar; both teams are primarily focused on bringing back campus culture and easing costs of living pressures.
Revive are promising to “bring back” the toga party (an event the Guild already runs each year during Welcome Week), weekly markets on Kidney Lawn, advocating for 50% SSAF allocation from the university, expanding the food bank, and 50c parking.
Revive have also announced several sports related policies, including providing jerseys for all QUT Guild sports teams and introducing interfaculty social sports competitions. However, there are no Guild sports teams because the Guild doesn’t run social sport at QUT – social sport is managed by the university – so these promises might be a little difficult (if not impossible) to deliver on.
Elevate are promising to support students with specalised hampers to assist with moving house or attending placement, running a textbook car boot sale, providing free breakfasts, and hosting events on campus with “puppies and pancakes” (sounds familiar…).
Along with bringing back a vibrant campus culture and providing cost of living support, Elevate are also campaigning on a mandate to abolish auto fails on late submissions. This is a campaign promise that has been hanging around for a while and has mostly been solved by the automatic 48-hour extension, a policy previously advocated for by the SRC.
While not all assessments qualify for the automatic 48-hour extension, the majority do, which already provides students with the flexibility to manage their deadlines. In addition, many students are able to qualify for equity plans, which give them access to additional extensions and services.
When asked whether Elevate had any new and specific plans to actually achieve abolishing auto fails, Muggleton was fairly vague and said she has an experienced team who have connections with the university, and they are committed to fighting for this policy.
Left Action Free Palestine! are a group of self-proclaimed left-wing “socialists and pro-Palestine activists”. Several members of the ticket were part of the students who organised the Special General Meeting for Palestine held earlier this year, and the majority of the team have previously been active in the Student Guild.
Left Action are running on the tagline, “Get activists in the student union.” Their policies are focused around big picture issues: doubling youth allowance, free abortion on demand, shutting down fossil fuels, and of course, free Palestine. Looking at university related issues, Left Action are campaigning for ending paid placements, ending higher fees for international students, cutting QUT Vice-chancellor Margaret Sheil’s salary, increasing tutor pay, and free higher education.
These issues fall largely under federal jurisdiction, making them beyond the Guild’s control. However, they align with Left Action’s broader agenda, which focuses on protesting significant social and political challenges affecting young Australians.
Reform is made up of President candidate Louis Nguyen and Treasurer candidate Samuel Hulls. However, Nguyen has informed Glass he is no longer running in the election. Due to election regulations, Nguyen is still technically on the ballot, but he has pulled back from campaigning and did not attend the Presidents Debate + Q&A.
Reform does not have an active and current website or social media accounts. According to their election flyer, Reform is campaigning on a mandate to improve transparency with monthly town hall meetings (which the Guild have started doing this semester), expanding the food bank, organising more cultural events, and introducing sustainability programs on campus.
While there are around 23 independents running in this election, the only candidate Glass has so far seen campaigning on campus is candidate for Welfare Officer, Isaac Oliver. Oliver is passionate about student politics and is studying Science and Social Work.
See below for his campaign flyer.
In a stark difference to previous years, nominees and parties have not been posting their profiles or statements to Stalkerspace and have been primarily relying on either their own social media accounts or in person campaigning.
However, there is still three days of campaigning left and voting does not close until Thursday, so there might be more plans for online campaigning to come!
So, you’ve read the manifestos, seen the campaigns, and maybe even attended the debate/Q&A. Now, it’s up to you to decide who will lead QUT Guild into the next year. Don’t let someone else make that decision for you — head to qutguild.com/elections and cast your vote today!
