A plan to have a "men's officer" for students at the University of Tasmania has outraged the National Union of Students. The NUS has condemned it as "backlash politics" based on the mistaken notion that men and women were on a "level playing field" and that power imbalances between men and women had been eradicated. Tasmanian student union president Bruce Patterson, however, argued that a referendum on the issue had found a clear majority of students favoured having a men's officer.