Students take anti-budget action to the streets
Thousands of students took anti-budget action on streets across Australia on 20 August. The National Day of Action organised by the National Union of Students had a clear demand: that the Abbott government’s assault on higher education be stopped in its tracks.
Education minister Christopher Pyne has attempted to implement some of the most severe attacks on university students in Australian history. Fee hikes over the next two years, the complete deregulation of university fees and the introduction of interest rates on student HECS loans make up the core of the government’s agenda.
If successful, these policies will herald an entirely new era in Australia higher education. The cost of a degree, the level of student debt and the class divide between the richer universities and the poorer would be massively increased.
When the budget was released in May, the government clearly viewed the student movement as an easy target. It believed that student unions were too weak to mount a challenge. But successive mobilisations of students across the country this year have proven the government wrong.
The protest on 20 August was only the latest instalment in a student campaign that has put Abbott and Pyne on the back foot.
Now its entire agenda for higher education is in jeopardy. Opposition and cross-bench senators from Labor, the Greens and the PUP have all pledged to block the attacks in the Senate. They have been encouraged by the incredible unpopularity of the proposed changes.
Recognising that his desired policy simply will not be passed in its current form, Pyne now talks openly about the need for compromise.
The student movement needs to capitalise on this momentum. We can’t rely on the promises of the parliamentary opposition parties, which are apt to sell out and make compromises of their own. Our strength is on the streets, where we can demonstrate the widespread anger of students.
We will need further protest action if we are to defend our education.
[Declan Murphy is the education officer at Monash Student Association.]
