A victory at Monash University
The left has achieved its biggest victory in several years in the Monash Student Association elections.
Left Hook – a ticket convened by members of Socialist Alternative and independent campaigners for education rights, refugee rights and a host of other progressive issues – won the offices of Environment and Social Justice and Education (Public Affairs). This is the first inroad to be made by an activist ticket into the Labor-dominated union in several years.
This year hundreds of Monash students attended demonstrations against the federal government’s education cuts. Though fairly modest, the protests have laid the basis for a campaign against the Liberals.
The campus work was crucial to the strong left intervention into the student elections. With proven campaigners now occupying the major activist positions in the student union, the campaign against the cuts is in a far stronger position to go forward than it was when the cuts were announced.
Left Hook was the only ticket that put front and centre the need to build such a campaign. It was also the only ticket that made fighting for social justice, and standing up against Tony Abbott, a priority for the union.
Left Hook campaigners have also been working with Monash staff in the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU), who have taken industrial action a number of times since the start of the year.
Many of our campaigners worked with the NTEU through the Education Action Group, and many more attended the picket lines on the NTEU’s half-day strike in semester two.
Both of the other major tickets – one of which is tied to the Labor left, the other to the Greens and the vegan restaurant Wholefoods – ran almost identical campaigns that paid scant attention to the cuts and largely disregarded the need for activism.
Continuing to build and wage arguments for defiant actions and political involvement will remain the key tasks for on-campus activists in the year to come.
