Кандидат в президенты студенческого совета Ава Кавалери обещает объединить левые силы и вернуть приоритет интересам студентов

Ava Cavalerie was interviewed by Honi Soit on 2nd September, 2026 by editors Anastasia Dale, Alastair Panzarino, and Victor Zhang. Read Cavalerie’s profile here. HS: What’s your name, degree, and faction? AC: My name is Ava Cavalerie. I’m in my second year, studying Politics, Philosophy, and Economics (PPE), and my faction is the Student Left.  HS: Why did you nominate for president? AC: I nominated for president because I fundamentally believe that the SRC can do much better for students. I think that currently the SRC neglects a majority of student voices in its representation to management, in its characterisation of services as unserious, and in its prioritisation of sectarianism over students.  I’m not scared of students, I’m not scared of broadening the political debate, and I’m not scared of making the SRC more accessible. I fundamentally believe that to make change, you need a broad student movement, and I believe that to do so, you need to actually engage and prioritise a majority of students. I think that when a student body is disengaged, then the SRC cannot do as much, and I think that engaging and supporting students is what makes a student body militant. You know, I think obviously students can’t fight management if they have to work all the time. Students can’t protest if they’re hungry, and students can’t engage with the SRC if they’re suffering. HS: What are your three most important policy commitments? AC: We’ve designed our policy platform to centralise students. So the first one is about student housing and cost of living. That involves lobbying the university to cap student accommodation at 30 per cent of the median student income, getting the university to buy back the scape that’s on its property. This also looks like student welfare initiatives, establishing a reproductive healthcare scheme, and also working to ensure that the National Higher Education Code to Prevent and Respond to Gender-based Violence is actually implemented properly and have a beneficial effect on university campuses, especially at USyd.  Then this also looks like protecting students’ ability to speak freely and speak against things that they don’t agree with. This means continuing to work to abolish the Campus Access Policy, and also ensuring that, especially with the rise of the far right, and after the inquiry into anti-Semitism, that students’ rights aren’t further cut back.  I think that has to come as well with caution over the rise of racist rhetoric and making sure that it’s very clear that when students voice their dissent to government policies or Israel, that that isn’t construed as harmful or racially motivated hate speech or anything like that.  HS: Are you a member of a political party? AC: I’m a member of the Labor Party. HS: Briefly, how would you describe your political beliefs? AC: I would describe my political beliefs as grounded in workers’ rights and the things that we are facing in our day-to-day lives. I think that I have a strong belief in the union movement and the importance of getting a lot of people involved to push politics to the left and having young voices heard in government. Overall, my beliefs are in a left wing agenda that is drawing focus to things like welfare, improving student conditions, and ensuring that we have the same freedoms as anyone else. HS: What is the most important issue facing young people in Australia right now? AC: I think there are a lot of issues, but I think that cost of living is probably the most important issue.  HS: The SRC typically is an activist body which also engages in service provision. Do you think these two things are equally important, and how would you prioritise these two aspects of the SRC? AC: I think that both aspects are equally important and that we play a very crucial role in activism and in galvanising the student body to fight for the things we want. I think that the way that we conduct our activism is essential to making sure our voices are heard and that the government policies that are being put through, that are going to affect us in 20 years, actually have our say in it. But I also think that pushing to have more services on campus is equally as important. I think that the students on this campus need to have the same rights as anybody else. I think that they need the supports there to ensure that they can also be involved in activism and campus life at the same level. I don’t think that either service provisions or activism has to come at the cost of the other. I think that they can work together. HS: SRC presidents generally underload or completely defer their studies during their terms. What would your study/work commitments be next year? AC: I would drop down to part-time uni. I would still be enrolled in at least one class so that I can maintain a connection to the broader student body, and would like to maintain a social life.  HS: You’re the current SRC general secretary. What have you learned in this role, and how will it inform your approach to president? AC: I’ve learned a lot in my role as general secretary. It’s given me a lot of information about the internal aspects of the SRC and the things that go on behind the scenes that students don’t normally see. It’s given me a good understanding of the caseworkers that we have and the workload that they are experiencing, as well as the type of students that use the SRC. It’s also demonstrated the way that you know you can cultivate a room to get involved in activism, and also where budgets and things like that need to be spent: what collectives are really strong, what collectives students feel represent them the most, or are doing the most crucial work for them, which I think is really important. It’s also demonstrated the lack of understanding a lot of students have about the SRC. Whether it exists, what services we provide, the fact that it’s free for all undergraduate students, and I think that increasing our outreach and getting more students involved is a very important step next year. HS: What work have you and your faction done to build for the staff strikes? What is your relationship with the NTEU, and how would you work with them as president? AC: For the staff strikes, my faction has had barbecues at the university to speak to students, tell them about the strikes. We have spoken in lectures and tutorials to get students involved. We’ve reached out to committees and societies to get them to post something endorsing the strikes or saying that they’re going to the strikes.  Though I’m not a member, I would like to continue working with the NTEU. I think that there are a lot of different issues that can be worked on next year, especially as universities continue to get more corporate. We’ve seen it in Wollongong with the ICAC investigations. I think that the NTEU plays a really important part in that. I also think that, in terms of housing initiatives, the NTEU will actually be a very good partner to the SRC, so that that can be extended to not only students but also staff. HS: Since 2017, all but two SRC presidents have belonged to Grassroots. One of which was Angus Fisher of NLS in 2025. Which faction do you think has been more effective when they’ve held the presidency, and why? AC: I think that Angus’s presidency was highly effective. I think that he was able to implement things that have improved student life, like the $5 meal canteen. I think that every faction involved in the SRC has a lot to offer, and I think that everyone has differing ideas about how things should operate.  I think that they all know it all works really well when you have one group very passionate about one thing, another group very passionate about another thing. It’s how you can increase your representation. I think that often there has been a prioritisation of sectarianism over students and a very poor attitude to the role that services play under Grassroots presidencies. I think that there is often this idea that student services are apolitical, without considering the fact that these services are actually also part of the activism that we do. If you demonstrate we care about students, we’re improving the conditions of our students. You get a bigger body, you can take it to the government, you know, and have a louder voice. And I think that it’s very important, particularly the cost of living. HS: The role of the SRC president involves participating in the university bureaucracy, being an ex-officio member of the academic board, and its various subcommittees and committees of the university executive. How will you approach university management and other student representatives on these offerings? AC: I think that these bodies kind of provide the president with an opportunity to understand a little bit about university decision making. I think that often the university is making decisions behind closed doors. It’s not consulting with students, and I think that the president has a very important role to make sure that there is some kind of representation. Obviously, I’m aware that university management is often not very receptive to the kind of things that students do bring to these committees. I do know it is often used as a box-ticking exercise rather than genuine interest for what students want. But I think that balancing those two things is an important role for the president and exhausting all of the options you can get from those academic boards and committees is beneficial to students. I think it also gives you a stepping stone to go, ‘You know, we’ve asked for this. You have ignored us. You’re not listening to the students, and now we are going to campaign against you.’ There’s no kind of defence at the university. I think engaging in those forums kind of takes away the university management’s legitimacy. HS: Can you elaborate on the formal agreement guaranteeing elected students a seat at the table that you mentioned in your candidate statement? In your policy statement, you say “I represented students before senior university executives and began pushing for a formal agreement guaranteeing students, elected students, a seat at the table.” AC: This is a continuation from the Students-as-Partners proposal, which wasn’t fully fleshed out to establish students as partners. It was kind of used to go: ‘We’re going to pick out a couple, and then they’re going to be our partners.’ So we’ve continued to work on that to establish a proper forum where students can be democratically elected as partners to the university. I think that increasing the amount of bodies that students have to sit on and to engage with university management is really important. Obviously a very small number of people who know about these committees and who know a lot of people get elected. They know the type of people who are going to vote in these kinds of things, and I think that there’s a very important role to expand these kinds of committees to ensure that students from all over the university have a say as well. HS: And as a follow-up, the university has been setting up the student voice program, which is more of a hand-picked selection of students. What do you actually see the role between the SRC and the student voice program or do you think these are oppositional bodies? [Cavalerie did not answer this question] HS: That’s okay, we’ll move on. How will you balance the competing demands from various OBs who will request more funding for their departments, and how will you balance that more broadly across the SRC as a whole? AC: Casework and the legal service has a set amount of funding that is given in the base funding. In terms of collectives wanting different amounts of funding, while a budget is set at the start of the year by the general secretaries, it is not like a definite funding pool. I think that what worked really well this year was having in-person conversations with all the collectives and discussing their ideas and plans for projects, there are a lot of projects that kind of overlap between collectives, so it enabled them to work together on those things and combine their budgets to have a bigger ability to actually complete those campaigns. I think that every year there are a lot of different voices saying we want this much and we want that much, but when you sit everyone down and actually just have a conversation with them, it becomes a lot easier. Also, just reminding everyone that there are budgets from other areas they can pull from, and what you find at the end of the year is that most collectives don’t end up actually using the totality of their budget. HS: Were you at the Fabian Society pub event attended by the NDIS Minister Jenny McAllister? AC: I was at the Fabian launch event that was attended by Jenny McAllister. She was invited as a USyd alumni and a member of the Fabian Society. I understand that there were a lot of criticisms following the NDIS cuts, but we had voted in support of a motion [at SRC] condemning those NDIS cuts, and that position is unchanged. I think that the Fabians launch event was more about the importance of cultivating spaces where you can have conversation. About left-wing political thought, especially in the context of you know one nation becoming so popular, but in no way was Jenny’s attendance there for us to show support for the cuts to the NDIS. HS: Did you talk to her about the cuts to the NDIS? AC: People did. HS: People did talk to her about the cuts to the NDIS, but you didn’t? Okay. So, maybe briefly, just sort of outline your stance on the NDIS cuts and why you didn’t speak to these at the SRC Council when the motion about the cuts were brought up? AC: I think that the NDIS cuts were put through extremely rapidly. They were put through without consultation with disability advocates and disability groups. I think that there is this argument being used, is that it’s because of all the people rorting the system, and that it’s unsustainable. I can see that no effort has been put into actually finding providers who do do that, and instead they have chosen to just gut the system. I think that this has been a backward step for the Labor Party, and I believe that we need to keep organising against it. I also think that we need to ensure that the disabled community on our campus is properly supported and they are being advocated for by us. HS: And why didn’t you speak to that at the SRC Council? AC: I don’t know if that’s a relevant question to my position on the NDIS, there are a lot of motions that are put up in council every meeting that not everyone speaks on.  HS: It was specifically asked by the other factions in the room if you wanted to talk on it, and you didn’t. I was just wondering if there was a reason why? AC: I personally did not speak to it. Other people from my faction did go up and speak to the motion, there was no way that showed me being like “we don’t”. HS: So one thing that, as I’m sure you know, other factions critique is that you’re a member of the Labor Party. What is your theory of change as a person in the Labor Party? AC: I am in the Labor Left. My theory of change is that you have to understand the powers that are in the government. We have a goal, and that is to push the Labor Party to the left, but the goal is to make change and do things that are better for people, and that happens either with or without the Labor Party. It’s not necessarily about the Labor Party. It’s just we want to have a voice in those forums where we can contest the decisions of the Labor Party. The reason, though, that I do choose to be in the Labor Party is because I believe in the union movement, and I believe that historically, quite a few years ago, the Labor Party was a working class party, and it heavily relied on the unions, and I think that bringing it back to its union base is important. HS: So that’s the theory of change. AC: It’s that we want to make change with or without the party. HS: From within. AC: Yes. HS: So Labor factions have traditionally run on a campaign of service provision and visibility. However, in recent years, Grassroots have adopted a service provision approach as well and advocacy on university committees and parliamentary inquiries. So, how does NLS (or Labor Left or Student Left) distinguish themselves from Grassroots? AC: I think that there was a distinction made in council that these service provisions were not about providing financial support for students. It was about the staff getting vaccinations as well, and the students should; it was a good initiative.  I think that there is kind of a disagreement between broader student services that we want to implement. They’ve voted down a contraceptive health subsidy, which I think is important to a lot of people like women on campus who need those supports. I think that there is a kind of lack of willingness to engage with a majority of students to understand what kind of services they want the SRC to see, and I think that there needs to be a different approach when going to those committee meetings with management, which is focused on trying to get the best out of those situations, and then making it very clear when management has not accepted the things that you’ve come with, and then organising students against that. HS: How will your faction approach the proposed referendum on USyd cutting ties with Israeli institutions? AC: We are in full support of the referendum, I will be voting yes in that referendum. I think it’s interesting to have it during the elections, and I think that you’ll get a lot of people out there voting in it as well because people are already coming onto campus knowing about these elections, and it will get the word out to a lot of students, it’s a very good thing.  HS: Do you think you guys will have it on your how-to-vote, and publicise it on your social media?  AC: I will publicise it on my social media. HS: Like your faction’s? AC: Yes. HS: So a policy of yours is that you will push both university management and the government to protect student activists against repression and censorship. How will you do that? AC: A lot of lawyers have come out and they’ve said that the CAP is repressive and unacceptable. I think that there’s been a lot of campaigning against, specifically the university, for that policy. What is important now is to get a broader amount of students petitioning against it and campaigning against it. I think that we have a lot of relationships in the SRC, with lawyers as well, which can help in that fight. I think that it involves engaging with SUPRA, the USU, maybe the USU board members, and other stakeholders as well to push the university to roll back the CAP. In terms of the government’s repression on freedom of speech, we have the ability to continue protesting it, to email our MPs to stand out and say that we don’t agree with these policies and that they are repressive. HS: How will you hold the NUS to account? AC: We also work in the NUS. We have office bearers elected to the NUS, and what that means is that we have a certain level of say over what happens, and we have relationships with the NUS, which kind of allows us to talk to them, put forward our policies and petitions. I think that this year there’s a broad consensus that the NUS has not been fully representative of all students, and I think that you know needs to change, but that happens through our power in the NUS. HS: Yeah, we might just circle back about how you sort of distinguish yourself from Grassroots. So I guess in terms of the service provision, would you say that both factions are capable of executing service provision, but you guys just have better plans and execute it better? AC: I think that there’s a certain level of collaboration that needs to happen to implement student services, that means negotiating with the USU, working with SUPRA. But I think what’s really important as well is actually getting the university to pick up and adopt those service provisions, so it’s not taking away money from the SRC that we need. That can be done through trial runs of examples that get the university to want to pay for them. I think that’s a different approach in the way that we should do it. There is kind of a… HS: Sorry, you’re saying the trial runs is a Labor Left strategy or the Grassroots strategy, just to be clear. AC: That was just like an example of how you can get the university to adopt policies like that. But I think the work that was done on the $5 meals meant that it didn’t come out of the SRC’s budget line, and the university does it. I think that that is very important when there’s 45,000 undergraduate students that need these services, and that’s the kind of funding that the SRC doesn’t actually have the full capacity to do. It involves a lot of negotiation. HS: So you would employ similar strategies to the $5 meals? AC: Yes. HS: One thing you mention is the accessibility of the SRC. So, what specifically do you mean by accessibility? Given that for the strike, Grassroots made a big push to inform, work with, and provide consideration, and guidance to both disabled and international students specifically? AC: The accessibility to the SRC is about every kind of student and the type of student who can get involved in the SRC.  I think that there needs to be an understanding that a lot of students are taking music subjects, visual art subjects, and they don’t actually have a forum to get involved in the SRC.  There’s often kind of been a toxic culture that’s being cultivated in the SRC, which involves shutting down other people’s ideas, yelling at people, having councils where the agendas are changed to put certain factions’ motions at the end, and I think that kind of environment makes it very hard for new people to come in and see what it’s like. You have a lot of students who want to get involved who don’t want to join a political group. They don’t want to be in a faction, but they do want to have their voices heard. That requires going out to all of the different campuses at USyd, having in-person conversations with people, and meeting them where they’re at to try and get them involved.  HS: And you guys would do that by fortnightly barbecues. Would you do that in any other way? AC: We need to have SRC booths or stalls set up at other campuses, where that means going out to the Conservatorium campus for a day and talking to students there. There can be boxes set up where people can put in letters to the SRC, and there can also be more advertising about how you can contact the SRC, who you can contact in the SRC to get your voices heard. I do think the fortnightly barbecues work very well. You get a lot of students who you wouldn’t normally get, but I think it’s also about taking it out to all other campuses instead of only having a very Camperdown campus focus. HS: Collectives are non-factional spaces for students to get involved who may not want to be in a faction. What’s your approach and your faction’s approach to the collectives? AC: As I said before, I think the collectives are really important. I think they do provide another avenue for students to get involved and that they create safe spaces for people, a sense of community. HS: We’re reaching the end, don’t worry. Final pitch to students. What is it?  AC: I would like to become an SRC that students have faith in and that they can trust and feel like there is somewhere to fall back on. I think that there are so many different aspects of the current way the SRC runs that can be improved. I think that money doesn’t have to be rolled over that goes back to university management. I think that the SRC can be a bigger body, and I think that more students can get involved. The SRC should represent anyone and everyone. HS: How would you describe the other Prez candidates?  AC: Individually?  Is it like their political ideologies or like them as people? HS: They’re your opponents for President. How would you describe your opponents? Just like one or two sentences. AC: Yeah, I think that Grace has made an interesting decision to run again for president. I think that it demonstrates a lack of faith in other students having an ability to be involved in the SRC, and that the way that collaboration with other factions in the SRC and broader student bodies hasn’t been a very motivating or successful approach to the SRC.  I understand that Emma and Socialist Alternative more broadly don’t agree with service provisions as an approach to student unionism. I know that they don’t think the caseworkers are a necessity.  Vieve, I’m not sure. HS: Final question: Have you done a preference deal with other factions? If not, which factions would you like to do a deal with? AC: I have done a preference deal with Unity, and I would be open to doing a preference deal with any of the other presidential candidates or left-wing factions. HS: So there’s not one faction that you would politically align with more than another? AC: I think that everyone has a very different theory of change. I think that when the left is working together and united, then it’s stronger, and so I would be willing to work with any of them. HS: All right. Well, we’ll leave it there. Let’s get some fresh air.