Students to hold nationwide vote on Gaza

The National Union of Students has endorsed a call by Students for Palestine to hold a national student referendum on Palestine. Across the country, university campuses will hold mass meetings at which students will vote on the following motions:

1. Students censure the Australian government for its complicity in the genocide in Gaza. We demand an end to all weapons sales to Israel by Australia and Australian companies, and call for sanctions on Israel.

2. Students call on all Australian universities to end their complicity with Israel’s genocide by ceasing all partnerships with weapons companies.

The votes on each campus will be reported as they come in and collated into a national result. The intention is to send a clear message to the government and Australian universities that students will not stay silent in the face of their complicity in the Gaza genocide.

The Albanese government has all but admitted that Australia is arming Israel through the export of crucial weapons components. As the Guardian recently reported, the company RUAG Australia is the only global supplier of a key part of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jets used by Israel in Gaza. According to an Australian defence industry website, the “uplock actuator system” opens and closes bay doors “to enable the F-35 to drop its payload more quickly and maintain its stealth capability”.

Australian universities enjoy research partnerships with and scholarship funding from major weapons companies, including Lockheed Martin, which manufactures the F-35. This is what Defence Minister Richard Marles meant when he told David Speers on ABC’s Insiders that Australia is “an F-35 country”.

The Labor government’s and universities’ complicity in the genocide is at odds with public sentiment, which continues to grow in favour of the besieged and starved Palestinians and for an end to Israel’s relentless assault on Gaza. A recent poll conducted by Pew Research found that about three-quarters of Australians now have an unfavourable view of Israel.

And why wouldn’t they? Anyone with eyes and a heart should feel outrage and horror at the images of one-year-old children dying of hunger while food sits in trucks only kilometres away. Or footage of American and Israeli soldiers using breadlines in Gaza for target practice.

That broader public sentiment is echoed on university campuses, which continue to be major sites of protest and dissent on Gaza. The referendum is an opportunity for students across the country to send a vote of no confidence to our universities and our government, a mass and defiant gesture of dissent in the face of their complicity.

It is important that the National Union of Students, the peak union body for university students across the country, supports and promotes the referendum. Members of Socialist Alternative on the NUS national executive have largely done this, pushing for the union to publicly condemn the genocide and support student protests.

Across the country, student unions are generally run by different factions of Young Labor, meaning that the NUS operates as little more than an anaemic cheer squad for the ALP and a career stepping stone for Labor students.

Members of Socialist Alternative in the NUS and in student unions across the country have consistently argued that our unions should not limit their horizons to those of a right-wing neoliberal Labor government that has stood steadfastly by Israel from the start. It is not only our moral responsibility to stand against the crimes of our government and of Israel, but a vital question for the relevance and continued existence of student unionism in this country.

The national student referendum is an example of precisely the sort of thing student unions should be throwing themselves into, giving a lead to students who are sickened by the live-streamed images of mass murder and ethnic cleansing in Gaza and outraged at the role the Labor government and our universities are playing in it.

To join other students standing up and demanding to be counted, register at palestinereferendum.org.