Will Gillard destroy Labor, too? Is Julia Gillard doing to Labor what she did to the Australian Union of Students? From her official site: In 1983 she was elected national Education Vice-President of the Australian Union of Students (AUS) and moved to Melbourne to complete her degree at Melbourne University. Later that year, she was elected President of the AUS. What happened next: The AUS was then totally dominated by the extreme left. In 1983 â the year she was elected AUS president â an AUS annual council defeated heavily a call to oppose "all acts of terrorism and political violence" (AUS Annual Council 1983: motion N28). Furthermore, the AUS annual council declined to recognise the rights of religious clubs and societies at universities to "express their views on campus" or to have access to campus facilities (AUS Annual Council 1983: motion N34). The AUS declared 1983 to be the International Year of the Lesbian. It also adopted a policy on prostitution which said, in part: "Prostitution takes many forms and is not only the exchange of money for sex. â¦ Prostitution in marriage is the transaction of sex in return for love, security and house-keeping." Quoted by Helen Trinca, The Australian, April 6, 1984, p.7. This bizarre statement made headlines across Australia. Anti-AUS student activists produced posters with the slogan: "AUS says your mother is a prostitute!" By early 1984, not only Liberals, but moderate Labor and Jewish students, were campaigning vigorously to abolish the AUS. While Julia Gillard and her left-wing colleagues were defending the union, campus after campus was seceding from it, depriving it of funds and bringing about its rapid collapse. A different take, from the Green Left Weekly: In 1977-78, AUS's travel service, AUS Travel, was caught up on a technicality relating to rules governing the institution of travel companies. Hundreds of AUS travellers were stranded in different countries because airlines wouldn't honour their tickets. This debacle was organised by the government because of the success of the TEAS campaign. AUS died soon after because it thought it couldn't do without its services arm. Instead of cutting its losses, it bankrupted itself trying to bail out the travel company... The ALP let AUS go down because it was gearing up for a term in federal office and didn't want a left-controlled union which would present any block to the massive economic restructuring it planned to carry out in the interests of capital.