By Kristine Liu and Regina Ng
Nominations for the 2026 ANUSA elections are currently open, closing on Friday 24 September. Polling begins on Tuesday 6 October at 9am.
If you have been scrolling Instagram lately, you may have noticed a sudden burst of new and impractical “candidates” allegedly campaigning for the 2026 ANUSA elections.
Accounts including Gamble Your ANUSA, Stagnate Your ANUSA, and Abolish ANUSA have emerged as satirical campaigns, proposing policies ranging from make Wamburun (Hall) sink faster and delivering pokies to Chifley Library, to putting combat tanks outside the Vice-Chancellor’s office.
Joke campaigns are not new to ANUSA elections. Previous campaigns have included the 2025 tickets Dubai Chocolate in the BKSS and Matcha in da Bubbles. This year, ‘Gamble Your ANUSA’, ‘Stagnate Your ANUSA’, and ‘Abolish ANUSA’ have each taken differing approaches to satirising the election process, from gambling-themed policies to questioning the need for ANUSA altogether.
Despite presenting themselves as candidates, none of these Instagram campaigns will be running in the election.
Their organisers agreed to speak to Observer, although they have chosen not to reveal their identities. Regarding their election intentions, they revealed they are not registered ANUSA tickets and are not nominating candidates for any ANUSA positions.
Stagnate Your ANUSA
Stagnate Your ANUSA has positioned itself as an alternative to a conventional election campaign, built around impractical promises and a fictional political persona.
The campaign was originally intended to be called “Stagnate to Create a Golden Statue of Genevieve Bell on University Avenue for ANUSA”. Stagnate Your ANUSA describes the campaign as a “voice for the unspoken… lighthouse for the guidelines”, with the ultimate goal of making “the university worse”.
Stagnate Your ANUSA organiser explained that the satire is partly directed at the seriousness with which student politics can sometimes be treated.
“I always thought it was funny how seriously some things in student politics [are] taken. I went to the AGM about ticketed voting and I couldn’t stop laughing as people very much lacking public speaking skills would go up and larp as their favourite politician, or the recounting of votes two times.”
The Stagnate Your ANUSA organiser stated they decided to create the campaign after realising they could not name a single member of ANUSA apart from the ANUSA President. They also expressed a motivation of improving low participation in student politics. According to them, the “insanely low turnout” and the relatively small number of votes required for some candidates to be elected reflects a wider lack of engagement with ANUSA among the student body.
The campaign organiser said the joke campaign had already prompted some students to take notice of the election.
“I asked a person next to me…and they both told me they only realised that there was an ANUSA election this year because of my campaign. I’ve been told by them they only plan on voting because of the joke candidates.”
For Stagnate Your ANUSA, this is one of the unexpected benefits of the campaign. While the organiser describes the project as primarily intended to be funny, they argue that attracting students who would otherwise ignore the election adds a more meaningful purpose to the campaign.
“If [Stagnate] or Abolish decide to run and we have a very strong turnout in favour of ourselves, perhaps there is then a conversation to have about if ANUSA is actually effectively able to connect with the students they’re made to represent and not just the same five friend circles who vote for them in and out.”
Other joke campaigns have taken a similarly unserious approach to the election process.
Gamble Your ANUSA
Gamble Your ANUSA centres its campaign around gambling, using the language and imagery of betting to parody the process of campaigning and voting.
The campaign said the popularity of joke candidates should be viewed as part of the freedom to stand in the election process, while suggesting that students are capable of distinguishing satire from genuine candidates.
“The popularity of joke candidates is something that Gamble Your ANUSA takes very seriously. If they [other candidates] want to post online, stick up their posters, and pester students on Uni Avenue then they are well within their rights to do so, just like every other punter having a half-arsed tilt at an addition to their resume. But we like to think that any voter with a modicum of common sense knows how to weed out the joke candidates.”
While the campaigns are deliberately absurd, the organisers’ jokes often draw on recognisable frustrations with university and student politics. Their proposed policies exaggerate real debates about the university, ANUSA, and student life, using deliberately impractical solutions to turn those frustrations into comedy.
For the organisers, the campaigns also provide a way of engaging with election season , which can otherwise receive limited attention from the broader student body. The popularity of such accounts online raises the question of whether students are responding simply to the humour, or whether the jokes reflect a wider frustration with the way student politics is conducted.
Even though many of the joke campaign organisers have emphasised they are of a light-hearted nature, some of the issues underlying their jokes reflect broader concerns recognised by students. In particular, dissatisfaction with university leadership and the perceived gap between the loud delivery of former candidate promises and their follow-through remain common themes that unite the joke campaigns.
For Gamble Your ANUSA, Stagnate Your ANUSA and Abolish ANUSA, the real purpose may be in getting students to pay attention to an election they might otherwise have ignored.
Graphics by Anushkaa Ahuja
Know something we don’t know? Email news@anuobserver.org or use our anonymous tip submission.
If you have an issue with this article, or a correction to make, you can contact us at news@anuobserver.org, submit a formal dispute, or angry react the Facebook post.
If you don’t have an issue with this article and want to hear more from us, we’re in the process of making a newsletter! Sign up here, and have the latest news delivered directly to you.
Want to get involved? You can write articles, photograph, livestream or do web support. We’re also looking for someone to yell “extra!” outside Davey Lodge at 1AM. Apply today!
ANU Observer 