Last week was another wonderful display of solidarity at the University of Melbourne, with the NTEU embarking on our second week-long strike in as many months. While the previous industrial action was localised to five work areas, this strike brought out staff from across the entire university. 
The strike was voted on and then reaffirmed in the largest meetings ever held by the union on campus, with more than 400 and 450 in attendance respectively. Cost-of-living pressures, deteriorating working conditions and the lack of movement at the bargaining table convinced many that the action was necessary. The success and inspiration of the previous strike in August—which forced the university to respond to our claims around job security for the first time, limited as the offer was—was another decisive factor. It became clear that serious strikes pressure university management like nothing else. 
We walked out at 12pm on Monday 2 October, kicking off the week with a rally outside one of Duncan Maskell’s “Vice-Chancellor’s Roadshow” events at the Faculty of Science. Hundreds gathered in the foyer of the building, where our chants reverberated and disrupted the event from the outside, while staff in the lecture theatre took to the stage to challenge Maskell directly. It was a great start to the week. 
Picket lines were set up every morning along the Swanston Street entrances of the campus. We held the line, approaching students, staff and other campus workers to explain the reasons for the strike, urging them to support our campaign and not enter the campus. 
Many paused to take our leaflets and were willing to hear us out. There were a determined few, however, who insisted on breaking the line. The university’s head negotiator Martin Bower threatened to drive his motorbike through our picket on Thursday morning. 
Proving that even bosses exaggerate their CVs, Bower describes himself on his LinkedIn as a “highly effective communicator” who’s “wide ranging experience in industrial relations provides a solid basis for building relations with unions and other external parties”. 
This less-than verified charmer retreated after outraged staff members stood our ground. When he eventually drove off, possibly to work on his communication skills, the picket line erupted. “The workers united will never be defeated!” would have rung in his ears for a while. 
Between rain showers and bursts of sun, strikers and student solidarity activists chanted and sung our hearts out. By Friday evening, I had three separate song sheets with the lyrics to union classics “Union maid”, “Which side are you on” and “On the picket line”, which we had belted out again and again throughout the week. 
Staff across work areas and faculties also spent time swapping stories about their experiences at the university. Details of the pressure of unreasonable workloads, the stress of constant restructures, the lack of transparency and cruelty of management, were met in turn with stories of collective organising. 
The campaign can be credited with drawing in a new layer of union activists prepared to organise and debate the way forward. For example, there was a flourishing of activity in the School of Mathematics and Statistics, with dozens of tutors on strike and more than 100 tutorials cancelled. The tutors continued to use the strike to build the union. They entered classes that were still running to make announcements about the strike and speak to staff not already involved, managing to recruit a few more staff members to the union.
Union and strike committee meetings throughout the week were well attended, members across the branch all discussing the next steps of the campaign. We face university managers who have consistently downplayed or ignored our key claims, a series of anti-union laws designed to curtail effective actions, as well as the limitations of our own union leaders—who too often have conceded rather than organised serious campaigns, let alone been prepared to confront the laws. 
Despite these challenges, the mood at the end of the week was hopeful. A full band joined us at the pub for one last rendition of “Solidarity forever”, our voices—singing and scheming, organising and debating—floating off the rooftop bar and into the streets of Carlton as the strike came to a close. 
The week was one to remember for everyone involved. It was the first week-long strike for many, the second strike for some. We shut down more than 500 classes, disrupted key administrative functions and student services, stood our ground and blocked university entrances, and, once again, forced the question of our demands onto the campus and onto management. 
The campaign is far from won. But we have made serious gains in recruitment, rebuilding union traditions on campus, as well as helping to set an example for effective enterprise campaigning in the sector. 
The Age recently described our campaign as “some of the most serious workplace unrest in the institution’s history”. For that, we should all be immensely proud.

Ridah Hassan

Another great strike at Melbourne Uni 

Adam Abu-Mahmoud passed away in Liverpool Hospital on 18 July after he was chased and repeatedly stabbed by a group of teenagers in Sydney’s south-west. The paramedics arrived to find Adam bleeding in the arms of his father, with the knife still lodged in his back.
Had this been a white teenager attacked by a group of Muslim or Arab men, the mainstream media would have burst into life to mourn the (white) life lost and to decry the barbarism of Islam, the problem of radicalised Muslim youth and the Arab gangs terrorising our streets.
Instead, this murder was treated with the callous Islamophobia that the Australian establishment has perfected: relegated to page 18 of the Daily Telegraph, squeezed alongside an advertisement for First Choice Liquor. A teenager murdered, sure, but have you heard about the sweet deal on the 12 pack of Coronas?
Such is the backward world we live in. Racists like Sonia Kruger are given a national platform to play the victim, cry “unsafe” and sob their pathetic tears having been called out for bigotry, while the real violence experienced by Arabs and Muslims hardly earns a mention, let alone any sympathy.

Murder of Muslim relegated to page 18, next to the cheap beer ad

Barry Spurr is Oxford educated, Australia’s first professor of poetry and poetics and specialist consultant to the federal government’s review of the national English curriculum.
An investigation by the independent media outlet New Matilda has also found that he refers to prime minister Tony Abbott as an “Abo lover”, to Nelson Mandela as a “darkie”, to women as “whores” and to Asians as “Chinky-Poos”. In fact, he appears to be a supreme bigot on almost every front, according to emails he has sent over the last couple of years, extracts of which have now been made public.
An old saying is, if you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit. The Sydney University academic tried this on, defending his bile as “whimsical linguistic games”. Few were convinced. The university was forced to suspend the professor pending an investigation into his conduct.
At a snap protest outside his office, students ripped up Spurr’s name tag and pinned the more accurate “Barry Spurr, Professor of Bigotry” to his door. “Racism? No way! We got Barry banned today!” echoed down the halls of the John Woolley Building, where he has been crafting his hate speech.
The demonstration on 17 October was organised by the SRC’s education officers. One of them, Eleanor Morley, explained: “The comments of Barry Spurr are reprehensible and should have no place on a university campus. Organising a snap action was important in letting the university know that students reject his views and demand his dismissal.”
Kyol Blakeney, Indigenous officer and SRC president-elect, also criticised Spurr’s position on the review committee for the national curriculum, “As a person studying primary education and one day hoping to be a teacher, I don’t feel comfortable teaching this curriculum that he’s setting … I don’t feel comfortable leaving out our Indigenous languages in schools. I don’t feel comfortable leaving out the past 60,000 years of history just because in the last 226 it’s tried to be eradicated so many times. I don’t feel comfortable teaching that.”
Spurr is but one face of an establishment that is usually savvy enough to couch its prejudices in more acceptable language. So while the establishment is distancing itself from him, we should be under no illusions that its members are concerned about anything other than the fact that the professor was stupid enough to get caught.
Postgraduate Representative Association international students’ officer Maral Hosseinpour condemned the government for its ongoing fear campaigns against Muslims and others, “They are building a wall of racial hate, xenophobia and misogyny to divide us and rule; to teach us and our children to hate and suspect immigrants and asylum seekers; to hate and harass women wearing hijab in public; to hate and deny Indigenous culture; and to humiliate and discriminate against women and sexual minorities.
“[The government] is demanding that we ‘say something if we see something’. Yes, we fucking see something, and we will say something so loud and clear that everybody including professor Spurr can hear and appreciate its rhyme: say it loud, say it clear – racists are not welcome here!”
To celebrate Spurr’s suspension, students engaged in our own “whimsical linguistic games” in the form of a poetry recital. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by the academic’s favourite T.S. Eliot was adapted by student protester April Holcombe into the “The Hate Song of Barry Spurr”. It ended with the resolute:
Streams of hatred fill your odious argument
With insidious intent
To read you surely overwhelms digestion …
Oh do not ask, “What is it?”
With our answer, we come visit.
In his room the students come and go
Barry Spurr: his job no more, my, no.

Barry Spurr, professor of bigotry

In the last couple of days, there’s been a flood of discussion about the protest that myself and other education activists staged on QandA.
For the most part, we’ve had an extremely positive response – from articles and online comments to individual messages of support and encouragement we have received from people we know, and from people we’ve never met who were inspired by what we did.
On the other hand there’s also been a chorus of people tut-tutting our action, claiming that we hijacked a democratic forum and did more harm than good to our cause.
These claims can be challenged just by considering the attention that the issue of higher education cuts has since received, but there’s more to it than that.
Contrary to what Tony Jones thinks, there’s nothing democratic about the mind-numbing conservative consensus that marks QandA. Week after week, the ABC carts out the most right wing panellists it can find, allows a few people to ask pre-approved questions, lets the panellists retort their pre-written answers and passes it off as, in the words of Executive Producer Peter McEvoy, a “free exchange of ideas”. Doublespeak is alive and well.
Our disruption of a tightly controlled TV show was not undemocratic, quite the opposite. Democracy should mean that in a debate about higher education, students and staff who are directly affected and with the most to lose actually have their opinions conveyed.
QandA is a sham democracy. We had 30 seconds each to ask a question, before being silenced by Tony Jones, self-appointed judge of all that is right and fair.
There are people who have asked why we didn’t we stop there. Why didn’t we debate Pyne? If the permanent smirk on his hideous face didn’t give it away, his responses to us did. Christopher Pyne blatantly lied to us, and then proceeded to use his platform to propagandise and justify the imminent cuts.
The entire set up of the show purports to offer reasoned and rational discussion, but you can’t reason with people like Christopher Pyne. He is a born-to-rule Tory and has no interest in the opinions and struggles of students, workers, the poor, or anyone that’s not a rich bastard just like him. He rules for the 1 percent, and no argument, however articulate or measured, will change that.
The other problem is how narrow the framework of debate actually is. After being escorted outside by security, we were discussing the action with ABC staff. One attempted to refute our claim that we had no voice on the panel by the fact that we “had Anna Burke”. That Anna Burke, a member of the party that introduced $2.3 billion in higher education cuts, can be considered an “opposition” to Pyne and the IPA reflects the sad state of politics in this country, and how little debate there actually is in mainstream discourse.
The fact is that none of the political parties represent the voice of students. In any case, we want to speak for ourselves. We want to take on politicians directly and on our own terms. That means putting forward arguments, raising our voices, speaking out of turn, calling out politicians on their lies, and yes, even chanting and using banners.
The political establishment and its official channels and processes aren’t there for us to use, but for people like Christopher Pyne. Students don’t get their speeches broadcast on TV or on the radio, we don’t have mates who run the newspapers. The response we’ve received to our protest doesn’t undermine, but confirms our view that sometimes the only way to be heard is to disrupt business as usual and refuse to be silent in the face of stifling conservatism.
We have reached a critical moment. Higher education is facing the biggest attacks in decades. The Commission of Audit, the Kemp-Norton review into higher education and comments from Pyne himself have indicated that in the upcoming budget, students can expect to see fee increases, the undermining of student welfare and the full or partial deregulation of the higher education system.
There is every reason for students to be pissed off. We don’t want to be polite, we don’t want to be respectful, or courteous, or measured. We are angry about the government destroying our education system and our lives, and we are going to say so.

You’re wrong Tony, we were right to protest

For the first time in Australia, a bill is under consideration that will grant legal personhood status to foetuses.
The Crimes Amendment Act 2013 (also known as Zoe’s law no. 2), currently before the NSW parliament, takes its name from the story of Brodie Donegan, who was 32 weeks pregnant when a drug-affected driver ran into her, causing the death of her unborn daughter Zoe.
Brodie and her partner Nick, who identify as pro-choice, argue that the bill is not intended as an intervention into the abortion debate. Rather, they want losses and/or injuries suffered by unborn children to be recognised as legally distinct from losses and/or injuries suffered by their mothers. The origin of Zoe’s law is tragic. However, the bill must be challenged.
The bill is being supported by a range of anti-abortion activists in the NSW parliament, such as Liberal attorney general (and former president of Right to Life NSW) Greg Smith and Christian Democrat Fred Nile. Their motivations are to undermine women’s confidence in exercising control over their own bodies. Their immediate interest in Zoe’s law is to generate guilt about abortion.
There are potentially other ramifications. If passed, the bill could open the door to attacks on women’s control over their reproductive rights. While the bill contains clauses to exempt medical procedures and is therefore not an immediate attack on abortion rights, it is easy to see how giving foetuses personhood status could potentially conflict with the rights of women who do not want to proceed with a pregnancy.
There is little to stop personhood status being applied to foetuses in other cases, if granted in this one. In the context of NSW, where abortion already falls within the Crimes Act, adding further legal ambiguities will do nothing to help women rightfully assert full control over their reproductive choices.
Defend abortion rights: oppose the Crimes Amendment (Zoe’s law) Bill 
<a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/230710120421115/?fref=ts">8am Thursday 24 October, Corner Martin Place and Elizabeth St, Sydney</a>
<a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/1408841492680043/?ref=ts&amp;fref=ts">1pm Sunday, 3 November, Sydney Town Hall</a>

‘Zoe’s law’ a threat to women’s rights

In 1979 Tony Abbott was the president of the Sydney University Student Representative Council. In the most recent SRC elections at Sydney Uni, the broad left Grassroots ticket kept this fact in our minds as we campaigned tirelessly for the three week election period for an SRC where right wingers have minimal influence.
Our efforts paid off. The broad left now occupies 10 out of 33 positions on the SRC. Our presidential candidate fell short of victory by only 3 percent, giving the Labor factions who have dominated the campus a serious run for their money.
We also won two National Union of Students delegate positions.
Our platform was a commitment to student activism on education and social justice issues, with our marriage equality ticket getting one of the highest votes in the election.
Reassuringly, another popular ticket run by Socialist Alternative simply titled Fuck Tony Abbott also won a seat on council.
Of the remaining council positions, 13 went to the two Labor left factions, and the rest to Labor Unity and the independents. One negative is that the Labor right secured the presidency. The election of office bearers will take place on 4 November. With a left majority on council we hope to form an activist and left SRC ready to take the fight to Abbott into 2014.

Another great strike at Melbourne Uni

Murder of Muslim relegated to page 18, next to the cheap beer ad

Barry Spurr, professor of bigotry

You’re wrong Tony, we were right to protest

‘Zoe’s law’ a threat to women’s rights

Student elections at Sydney Uni

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