It’s no secret that Australian universities are increasingly enmeshed with the defence sector and weapons companies. Now, TAFEs are being tuned up to serve Australian imperialism and the $368 billion AUKUS nuclear submarine deal. 
A recent federal government announcement of a $28 million National Security TAFE Centre of Excellence in Adelaide illustrates the trend. The facility boasts “state-of-the-art equipment” to help apprentices develop artificial intelligence and robotics skills. According to the South Australian government, it will be central to fulfilling Australia’s “national security needs”. What this actually means is training young people to build weapons of war and destruction. 
Another example is a recent advertising blitz by Roger Cook’s Labor government in Western Australia. The premier says that, as the country becomes increasingly tied to the US and UK military industrial bases, Western Australia “will play a central role” in building Australia’s military capacities. The state Labor government is spending $11.5 million on an AUKUS Defence Industry Incentive to provide handouts to military corporations and contractors to expand their workforces. 
In January, the state government invested another $14.6 million in a new WA Defence TAFE Centre of Excellence, which significantly expanded the number of military-related courses offered to meet the needs of the Henderson Defence precinct. The precinct, in the southern suburbs of Perth, will service and maintain nuclear submarines and employ 10,000 people. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced another $12 billion in extra funding for Henderson last month. 
Western Australia is key to AUKUS. In 2027, five nuclear-powered submarines from the US and UK will begin rotating through the HMAS Stirling naval base at Garden Island, 5 km off the coast of the Perth metro area. One thousand US military personnel and their family members will soon be based there as well, making the city a potential target in any major imperialist conflict. 
Defence Minister Richard Marles has repeatedly stated that Australia needs to build a “strong and resilient industrial base” to meet the demands of AUKUS. More broadly, the Australian ruling class wants to assert its regional power with a beefed-up military. To achieve this, the plan is to reshape attitudes and sections of the education system to cater to the needs of AUKUS. Strengthening Australian ties to the US military is central to this. 
The normalisation of militarism is also occurring in primary and secondary schools. A 2022 publication, Minors and Missiles, by the Medical Association for Prevention of War, reported an increasing trend for school STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) programs being tied to weapons companies, and that the Department of Defence is the lead agency in half of all national STEM initiatives.
This is only the beginning, and none of it is in the interests of working-class students. While governments spend millions of dollars building new military-oriented TAFE programs, they neglect systemic problems in the TAFE system (such as poverty wages for apprentices, old and outdated facilities, and underpaid teachers and staff) and refuse to do anything substantive to address the key issue of economic security facing young people—the housing crisis. 
Instead of militarising our TAFE sector, students should be offered courses to help make the world a better place, not ones geared towards building weapons of mass destruction.

Ella Marchionda

The militarisation of TAFE

Student union elections are taking place on university campuses across the country. Given that only a minority of students vote in the elections nowadays, it’s fair to say that most students probably don’t know this is happening—or even know the first thing about their campus union.
This year, for example, in the RMIT University Student Union elections, about 6,000 students voted out of a student body of more than 60,000. While that level of suffrage might have been standard for nineteenth-century Prussia, it’s a sign of the general decline of student unionism in Australia.
Student unions used to be famous—even notorious—as political and activist bodies that organised and fought to improve students’ lives and the wider world around them. Today, most student unions don’t organise much more than some pretty sad free food events and occasional parties that are even sadder. 
It’s not as though there’s nothing to fight for. Financial precarity is increasingly common for university students. More and more students take on full-time work while they study to make ends meet. And the average student in their 20s leaves university with more than <a href="https://australiainstitute.org.au/post/the-crushing-cost-of-a-university-education-hungry-sleep-deprived-students-loaded-with-debt/">$30,000 of debt</a>, compared to $12,600 in 2006. 
Young people are also tuned in to the world around them: the genocide in Gaza has thousands of us outraged, horrified and wondering what on Earth we can do to stop it.
The need for fighting student unions could hardly be more urgent. So why do our unions spend so much time on glorified sausage sizzles?
Student unions and radical politics
Students have always been involved in politics and activism, but it was in the 1960s with the anti-Vietnam War movement that Australian university students burst onto the stage of history. The campuses became a major front in the battle against brutal imperialist war.
In 1971, a mass meeting of Melbourne University students declared their student union building a sanctuary for people evading conscription into the army—the so-called draft dodgers. The next year, Sydney University followed suit. Radicals at Monash University caused an uproar when they started to collect money for the “enemy” in Vietnam, the Communist-led National Liberation Front, in effect committing treason. In the political ferment, the notion that student unions should stay out of politics and focus instead on providing services seemed preposterous.
After the US and Australia withdrew in defeat from Vietnam and the anti-war movement ended, students remained a force to be reckoned with. In 1973, the peak student union body, the Australian Union of Students (AUS, precursor to today’s National Union of Students), declared itself in favour of “the building of a socialist Australia”. The AUS Women’s Department, established in 1975, became an important national forum for the women’s liberation movement. In his essential book It Can’t Happen Here, author Graham Hastings writes: 
“The culture of vigorous theoretical debate inside the Women’s Department played a vital role in the development of Australian feminism in the second half of the seventies and papers produced by the Department were cited at international women’s conferences.”
Back when university was still free, the Liberal Fraser government tried twice to introduce fees for higher education, first in 1976 and then again in 1981. Both times it was defeated by national student union campaigns that brought thousands of students into the streets. 
In the end, it was the Hawke Labor government that got the better of free education in 1986, introducing a $250 “administrative fee” that paved the way for the system we have today. But Hawke met serious resistance, including a coordinated boycott of the new student fees. Thousands of students across the country refused to pay and risked being unenrolled.
Their capacity to move students into militant action and beat back government attacks made the student unions major targets of conservative lawfare campaigns aimed at destroying them as a political force. Some of the Liberal Party’s most odious creatures—like Tony Abbott, who was president of the University of Sydney student union in 1979—cut their political teeth in these battles.
Young Liberals aren’t highly active in student unions these days, probably in part because, whenever more than two Young Liberals are put together in a room, <a href="https://www.canberratimes.com.au/video/breaking/x98ehm0/liberal-students-rip-up-red-zone-rape-report-at-university-of-sydney/">misogyny happens</a>. But in the 1970s and ’80s, Liberal students led major campaigns against unions taking left-wing political stances. Sometimes the Liberals formed an alliance with right-wing Labor students. Catholic crusader Tony Abbott complained in a student publication:
“When AUS champions the women’s movement; homosexual liberation; the anti-Uranium campaign and anti-Kerr [the governor-general who sacked Whitlam] campaign, it is moving beyond the scope of unionism.”
But among those who did support the existence of student unions—from small-l liberals to Labor students to revolutionary socialists—there were very different ideas about how unions should operate. 
Socialists and radicals thought the unions’ strength lay in their ability to mobilise students to fight to improve their lot and combat oppression and injustice. It was under radical control that the AUS took up its call for a socialist Australia. 
Moderates in the union argued that the focus should be on welfare provision and student services. This was considered the best way to keep university management on side. Polite advocacy on behalf of students behind closed doors was preferable to disruptive protest. 
For many of these moderates, the union was their gateway to a political career, especially to high office inside the Labor Party. Labor is and has long been the dominant force in student union politics. Anthony Albanese got his start at the University of Sydney. His defence minister, Richard Marles, was the general secretary of the National Union of Students in 1989. The 1983 Australian Union of Students president was a Melbourne University student named Julia Gillard.
Student unions today
The decline of militant student unionism has tracked with the broader decline of radical politics and class struggle in Australia. The “service provision” model of student unionism has come to dominate—and with it, a generation of student union leaders for whom the unions are about beers, barbecues and building their careers. 
This dovetails with a vision of student unions as partners of the corporate executives who run our universities, even as they push through major cuts to jobs and courses. For example, the student-led <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/fighting-course-cuts-at-anu">No Cuts at ANU campaign</a> fighting against massive attacks at the Australian National University has received virtually no support from the ANU student union, ANUSA. The union accepted management’s dubious justifications for $250 million in cuts and, rather than fight, instead argued that the union should consult with management on how to minimise the impact of the cuts on students’ mental health. 
So it’s little wonder that most students today don’t vote in student union elections. Years of moderate and “apolitical” student unionism have lowered expectations so much that barely anyone expects much from their student representatives anyway. This situation ultimately benefits moderate student union groups, who are much more comfortable in elections fought out through social networks and backroom deals rather than open political debate. 
And while they often deliberately cultivate an “apolitical” image, student unions, like the ANUSA and many others, are still dominated by the Labor Party machine. Most unions are run by one faction or another of the ALP, particularly the right-wing Student Unity faction, which opposes free education and has an appalling record of reactionary political positions. The student unions are a perfect training ground for <a href="https://redflag.org.au/node/7263">aspiring ALP operators</a> to learn the grimy arts of factional warfare and using people to gain power. It’s hardly the sort of environment that might attract young left-wing students who want to fight the system. 
Labor’s national dominance is also reflected in its control of the National Union of Students. This year, during the federal election, the NUS ran a barely concealed (and barely noticed) “vote Labor” campaign, telling students to “put the Liberals last”. 
The ALP machine’s control over the unions puts it well to the right of many students, a large proportion of whom vote for the Greens, a party that supports free education and other progressive policies, such as climate change and Palestine. 
The history of student unionism in Australia proves that this terrible state of affairs can be turned around. The state of the world today demands it. University students are a bigger chunk of the population than we ever have been—there are around 1.6 million of us in the country. We need student unions that can turn us into a force to be reckoned with and revive the best traditions of student activism: fighting against war, oppression and the corporatisation of our universities.

James McVicar

The sad story of student unions in Australia today

Take a stroll through the halls of a campus student union office and you’ll likely find it half empty. And you’re much more likely to see an elected student union representative handing out a free breakfast once a week than you are to see them organising a political campaign. It’s no surprise then that socialists are sometimes asked why we would bother with student unions at all.
Despite their current state, student unions have the potential to foster campus activism, give important leadership to students on political questions and even sometimes to make an impact on Australian politics overall.
The first reason for this is students themselves. They are a critical social group drawn together on campuses and encouraged to learn about the world, interrogate the ideas of the system, and develop their capacity for critical thought. While this doesn’t ordinarily result in students being politically active, in exceptional times a minority can explode into protest activity. 
Every significant social movement of the modern era has featured student activism—catalysing struggle in other social groups, leading youthful, militant and passionate demonstrations, and planting the flag for a different sort of society.
In Australia, student unions are at the heart of student politics and can be key to effective student campaigns. Campus-based unions, and the National Union of Students (NUS), have the authority to call demonstrations, the bank accounts to finance the necessities of activism and the affiliate structures and communication networks that can reach and influence tens of thousands of students. 
They also draw together the different currents of student political thought and are often the centre of debates. Those student factions, some of which are intimately linked to Australia’s main political parties, have been the training ground for generations of political activists, both in the trade union movement and in federal and state politics. 
So any serious socialist organisation needs a foothold on campuses and a presence in the political institutions of campus life if it has any chance of being part of the “real world” of Australian political life.
Over the last decade or so, the student unions, like the trade unions, have atrophied due to a declining activist culture, legal attacks and the approach taken by the mostly ALP-aligned representatives in the unions’ leadership positions. For the most part, the current student union leaders find various excuses to do little—citing the fact that many students are apathetic or that student unions rely on university administrations for continued access to funding. Campaigning against university management or encouraging student activism, it is said, would imperil the unions. So, under the leadership of these students, our unions mostly confine themselves to social events and food pantries dressed up as “mutual aid”. 
University administrators are currently on a national spree of course and staff cuts and a campaign to suppress campus Palestine solidarity activism. Limiting the actions of student unions to what these managers consider acceptable—as has happened at the University of Melbourne, where the student union has been reluctant to stand consistently for Palestine, or at Western Sydney University, where the student union is voluntarily cutting its activist positions in an effort to safeguard its funding—is a road to nowhere. 
The socialist approach is different. While we know we can’t simply wish a radical campus culture into being, we also know that if student unions took a lead on social justice issues, we could start to rebuild a more left-wing campus culture. Socialist students fight for their unions to take a stand on social issues, even if they are controversial, because doing so helps to win wider layers of students to a particular cause and gives them opportunities to become activists themselves. 
Student unionism is also important for building the ranks of the revolutionary left. Students have always played a substantial role in revolutionary socialist organisations. Student unions can organise campaigns that draw more people into political activity and provide opportunities for debate with other political forces. Student revolutionaries have to both debate and work alongside students from Labor’s left and right factions, the Greens and coalitions of independents. This means gaining experiences that are invaluable for members of a socialist organisation—like running election campaigns, learning when to compromise or hold firm and dealing with obstructionist bureaucracies. 
Student politics
Socialist Alternative is the largest and most active left political group in Australian student politics. Our organisation has maintained a consistent presence in the student unions for more than twenty years. Currently, we have more than 30 elected student union representatives across the country. There are Socialist Alternative clubs at twenty campuses, which has allowed us to become the second most powerful faction in the National Union of Students, after the Labor right. Over the last five years we have polled 21-29 percent of the NUS delegate positions elected on campuses around the country. This year, our members hold the NUS Education, LGBTQI+ and Vocational Education office bearer positions.
Socialist Alternative has a long history of pushing support for Palestine within the student unions. While student unionists from both Labor right and left have taken sponsored trips to Israel almost every year, our members have prevented the national union from adopting the IHRA definition of antisemitism, and spent years arguing to the other student political factions that our default position should be a support for freedom of speech and democratic rights on campuses.
This year, through the NUS Education Office, we have organised an inquiry into censorship of Palestine supporters on the campuses, and a national student referendum in which more than 5,000 students voted in support of Palestine. The latter engaged many students in the Palestine solidarity campaign for the first time, with some becoming ongoing campaign activists.
For the last two years of the genocide, we have fought to drag our union into action. We have organised several student strikes for Palestine, in which thousands of university students have walked out of class for Gaza. In 2009, we established Students for Palestine, an activist campaign group. Last year, working with others in SFP, we organised student general meetings to vote on subjects like university ties to weapons companies and support for sanctions against Israel. These were the largest on-campus events for Palestine in Australia’s history, sometimes the largest meeting on any topic since the 1970s. In many places, the motions passed were required to become official student union policy. 
We faced significant opposition from others in the unions. At Melbourne University, student unionists from other factions attempted to prevent the meeting by calling in a law firm. The meeting went ahead only after socialists made it clear that it would happen with or without the union. At Adelaide University, the hard-right international student faction running the union attempted to prevent the meeting by refusing to convene the union council, where the forms to call an SGM must be approved. Socialist Alternative members scoured the constitution and found they could go over the heads of the union—as long as they found 300 students to support their efforts. They did, and held Adelaide University’s largest student meeting in years.
In May 2024, with SFP, we brought the Gaza solidarity encampment movement to Australian campuses. After initiating the campaign at Sydney University, we organised solidarity encampments at Monash, RMIT, Latrobe, Deakin, Adelaide, Curtin, Wollongong and the University of Queensland. We refused to allow the inaction of our student union leaders to hold us back.
We also know that one of the most basic functions of student unions ought to be a defence of their members. Ten years ago, when a Liberal government attempted to raise the cost of degrees, the student movement, led by a Socialist Alternative NUS education officer, used the infrastructure of the unions to roll out a national campaign of protest. While doing so was not appreciated by the government or university managements, the campaign contributed to the defeat of the planned fee hikes, drew many students into union politics and raised the profile of the student unions to a height not equalled since.
We have led too many other campaigns to note in one article. But we do so because we know that activist, left-wing student unions can stop right-wing attacks, draw students into campaigns, build a culture of protest and inspire other social groups. However, this won’t happen if the careerism and conservatism currently dominant in the leadership of student unions go unchallenged. Someone needs to go in to bat for activism, social justice and a combative approach to the government and university managements that are more interested in making money and serving power than delivering a quality education. 
This is why socialists contest student elections, attend student union meetings, fight to win positions in the national union and organise against conservative union bureaucrats.

Grace Hill

Socialist Alternative’s approach to student unions

The Interim vice-chancellor of the Australian National University, Rebekah Brown, has announced that there will be no more job cuts as part of sweeping restructures that began in 2024.
This comes as a relief to the remaining 105 staff whose positions were slated to be cut under the proposal to “Renew ANU”. The announcement, made in an all-staff town hall meeting on Thursday, is a testament to the sustained pressure by members of the National Tertiary Education Union and students involved in the “No Cuts at ANU” campaign. It follows the resignation of the former vice-chancellor, Genevieve Bell, last week.
The cuts have left no part of the university unscathed. Renew ANU aimed to slash $250 million in spending across the university, including $150 million on salaries. But five areas still face major overhauls, including the College of Arts and Social Sciences and the College of Science and Medicine. These include substantial cuts to the world-renowned School of Music, which would end the teaching of performance and composition.
According to the latest figures from the union, nearly 1,100 staff have been forced out since last year. Academics who relocated to Canberra for their dream jobs have found themselves competing with their colleagues for a smaller number of positions in Hunger Games-like spill and fill processes. In backing down from further job cuts, Rebekah Brown confirmed that they are no longer needed for the ANU to meet its “savings” target. 
This is partly due to the university’s voluntary redundancy scheme. Touted as a win by the union, the scheme allowed the university to cut jobs on the cheap. Those expressing interest in it have fewer entitlements than those who are made redundant and must have their application approved by senior management. If their position is deemed necessary, it will be rejected. The fact that 175 staff have taken a voluntary separation package rather than wait to be made redundant speaks to the depth of resentment towards the ANU and the desire by many to leave.
The cuts have generated significant opposition from staff, students and the wider Canberra community. More than 2,000 people have signed a petition calling on the ANU Council to stop the cuts and terminate the employment of the chancellor, Julie Bishop (and the now departed Genevieve Bell). This follows staff resoundingly rejecting a proposal to forgo their scheduled pay rise in December last year, and more than 800 supporting a motion of no confidence in the chancellor and vice-chancellor earlier this year.
Students involved in the No Cuts campaign have protested and organised forums against the cuts, including a Special General Meeting of the Australian National University Students’ Association earlier this week. The meeting voted to sack Julie Bishop, reverse Renew ANU, open the ANU’s financial books and fully fund free education.
Although many are understandably celebrating the end of Bell’s reign and the wave of job cuts, there is no indication that the restructures will be completely scrapped. In fact, Brown was clear in her town hall address that she intends to “complete the Renew ANU strategy”, including the decision not to embed performance into the curriculum of the new Bachelor of Music.
This comes as no surprise. As the former provost, Brown, like Bishop, is part of the same management team overseeing the cuts. For her part, Bishop remains chancellor despite allegations in a Senate enquiry that she bullied an academic on ANU Council to “near suicide”.
Forcing a widely hated vice-chancellor to resign in disgrace and ending forced redundancies should give hope and confidence to those facing similar attacks at universities around the country. While it remains to be seen exactly how much of the original plan to disestablish, amalgamate and centralise various parts of the ANU will be implemented, the fight for a university that puts staff and students before profit continues.

Elliot Downes

No more job cuts, but the fight continues at ANU

Genevieve Bell has resigned as vice-chancellor of the Australian National University. The ex-Intel executive, who we now know wasn’t as “ex” as advertised, quietly remaining on Intel’s payroll while raking in a hefty $1.1 million salary, has been hailed in the New York Times as an “oracle with magical predictive powers”.
But Bell didn’t predict the months-long revolt of students and staff that made her position untenable. She leaves behind a legacy of cuts and arrogance that ignited one of the biggest campus campaigns in ANU’s history.
Under Bell’s “Renew ANU” restructure, courses were gutted, staff were sacked, and students’ education was trashed. At the School of Music, one-on-one lessons and performance subjects, the very core of the program, were axed. Across the university, workloads were piled higher, departments stripped back and core subjects binned.
The justification? An alleged $250 million operating deficit. But ANU’s own 2025 financial report recorded a healthy surplus. In other words, it was a political choice: sacrifice staff jobs and student education for “financial sustainability”.
Students and staff refused to accept it. In July, 500 rallied outside the Chancellery demanding Bell and Chancellor Julie Bishop be sacked, and the cuts reversed. Music students staged an extraordinary 24-hour protest performance. Staff held a historic no-confidence vote, with overwhelming majorities declaring they had no faith in Bell or Bishop’s leadership.
At the centre of the fight has been No Cuts at ANU, a student campaign led by members of Socialist Alternative. From the start, No Cuts argued that management is not on our side, that compromise is a dead end and that only mass protest could win.
This combative approach starkly contrasted with the ANU Student Association (ANUSA). Rather than calling for Bell’s head, ANUSA insisted that we treat her as a “worker” and explore “constructive” ways to manage the cuts. In practice, this meant bowing to management and refusing to harness student anger. This is precisely the approach that has let decades of attacks on universities go unchallenged.
The Bell saga illuminates the transformation of universities. For decades, governments have slashed public funding, forcing universities to operate as corporate machines. Students are customers, workers are exploited, and executives are recruited straight from the boardrooms of business and politics, hence Bell and Bishop.
These executives don’t share a common interest with us. They exist to make the university profitable, no matter what the cost to education. That’s why Bell could spend more than $1 million cracking down on Palestine solidarity activism while crying poor and sacking staff.
The lesson is clear. We cannot appeal to the moral virtue of executives like Bell. Petitioning or pleading with them to “listen” is futile. Trying to meet them on “their level” with arguments about profitability and the university’s prestige only capitulates to their managerial logic.
Some in ANUSA even argued that calling for Bell’s sacking might provoke the university to defund the student union. But if management tried that, it would only have opened a bigger fight—one we could have won with protests and the continued involvement of staff. The worst mistake would have been to preemptively surrender.
Bell’s resignation is a victory for everyone who rallied, protested and refused to back down. But the cuts remain. The fight now is to stop Renew ANU in its tracks, reverse the existing course cuts, and drive Julie Bishop out alongside Bell. 
ANU students have shown the way: mass, uncompromising action works. If we keep building, if we refuse to compromise, we can win. And our struggle can inspire students elsewhere to take on the corporate executives who are gutting higher education.

Lucy Chapman-Kelly

How ANU students sacked Genevieve Bell

In the last two weeks of August, thousands of students across the country came together to condemn the Australian government’s complicity in the ongoing genocide in Gaza and to call on universities to end their ties with Israel. 
At mass meetings on nineteen campuses, nearly 5,000 students (more, if those who participated online are included) voted in the national student referendum on Palestine, organised by Students for Palestine and the National Union of Students. The motions—to censure the government and to cut university ties with Israel—both passed with the support of more than 97 percent of voters. The University of Queensland will vote on 3 September. 
The meetings were the biggest ever Palestine solidarity events on many campuses. And they were an indication that the tide of public opinion, particularly among young people, has well and truly turned against Israel’s crimes and our own government’s continued support for them. 
At Macquarie University, where more than 200 students packed a lecture theatre, one speaker related that her grandparents had been displaced in the 1948 Nakba—the campaign of massacres and violent evictions of Palestinians leading to the establishment of Israel. She was moved, she said, because she had never expected to see such numbers out to support Palestine at her own university. This growth in the Palestine solidarity movement is a trend visible nationwide. Students for Palestine clubs are now springing up even on small campuses in regional towns.
The votes were even more substantial on larger campuses with a history of Palestine solidarity activism. At the University of Melbourne, 640 students voted unanimously to condemn the Israeli government’s actions. Similarly, more than 600 attended at RMIT, and more than 500 at the University of Sydney. Hundreds of thousands across the world have now viewed footage of these referendums, some of which were broadcast from Sydney <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVUYyNoiw3A">on Al Jazeera</a>. 
In some places, handfuls of Zionist students and Liberal Party members attended meetings and spoke to justify Israel’s war on Gaza. Their arguments rested largely on the idea that pro-Palestine sentiment is making Jewish students on campus unsafe. Everywhere they spoke, they were confidently countered by students who are part of a genuinely anti-racist movement, which places the blame on Zionism and the Israeli state rather than Judaism, and which counts amongst its ranks increasing numbers of pro-Palestine Jewish students. Other speakers against the motions made the case for weapons companies, without which universities would lose funding. 
Most students, however, think their universities should conduct research to further humanity’s interests rather than to boost profit margins. For these students, the moral imperative to stand for justice far outweighs any concern about universities’ financial situations.
The national referendum initiative is part of a growing movement that aims to hold the Australian government and institutions accountable. The ever increasing horrors in Gaza have pushed larger numbers of students to get involved in activism, but students have also taken inspiration from the broader pro-Palestine movement. The 300,000-strong march across the Sydney Harbour Bridge, and the historic national day of protests that followed, have mobilised and galvanised our side. 
While the protests have clearly put pressure on the government, nothing has been done to end Australia’s weapons trade with Israel or apply sanctions on the Israeli government. In fact, as students pointed out, Defence Minister Richard Marles has proudly declared that Australia is an “F-35 country”—part of the supply chain for the fighter jets Israel is using to obliterate Gaza. Universities have similarly refused to sever their ties to genocide. 
Our institutions say that they are committed to free thought and critical inquiry. But when it comes to criticisms of their affiliations with entities that contribute to the perpetuation of violence and occupation in Palestine, their real commitments become clear. Whether through research funding, partnerships with Israeli institutions or other forms of indirect support, universities across the country are complicit. 
Students who have spoken out over the past two years have been suspended, Palestine solidarity events have been banned, and, on many campuses, university security is more repressive than the police. Events like the referendum are helping to create more space to speak out about the genocide.
The referendum is not just about registering votes, but building momentum for sustained action on campuses and beyond. The votes in favour of the motions are an indication that, as in so many past movements against capitalism’s crimes, young people are on the right side of history. They demonstrate that we are not satisfied with promises about future Palestinian statehood while starvation ravages Gaza and the bombs continue to fall. They are a mandate for continued activism.

Yasmine Johnson

Thousands of students vote for Palestine

“When bombs fall on Gaza it’s not just Netanyahu who is responsible. It’s also the companies who make the drones, the governments who fund them and the universities that silence dissent”: this was how Palestinian activist and La Trobe alumni Hajar Riad opened a pro-Palestine meeting on 20 August at Melbourne’s La Trobe University. 
The event was organised as a counter-panel to the Bendigo Writers Festival, which was supposed to take place the previous week at La Trobe’s Bendigo campus but which was effectively cancelled after more than 30 speakers pulled out citing concern over a code of conduct that prohibited discussion of the genocide in Gaza. 
The Bendigo Writers Festival was promoted as an event that “brings together diverse voices … sparking ideas, conversation and inspiration”. Instead, it’s highlighted the draconian attack on free speech by universities looking to stifle activism against and opposition to the genocide in Gaza.
Two days before the festival, writers and presenters in the “La Trobe Presents” sessions were sent a code of conduct that required them to “avoid language or topics that could be considered inflammatory, divisive, or disrespectful”. They were also told they had to abide by La Trobe University’s “Anti-Racism Action Plan”, which defines criticism of Israel as antisemitism.
The plan was implemented in May 2025 as a response to the 2024 Gaza solidarity encampment and the mass Student General Meeting for Palestine, where more than 250 students voted for La Trobe to cut ties with companies involved with the genocide. The purpose of the plan is to make it harder for students and staff to criticise Israel’s genocide, and the university’s complicity in it. 
Randa Abdel-Fattah, a Palestinian author and academic, wrote in her withdrawal letter: “At a time when journalists are being permanently silenced by Israel’s genocidal forces, it is incomprehensible that a writers’ festival should seek to silence Palestinian voices”. More than 240 journalists have been killed by Israeli military forces since October 2023. This makes Israel’s war the deadliest for journalists in modern history. While those seeking to get the truth out about what’s happening in Palestine are being killed, those trying to talk about it in the West are being silenced, by institutions that supposedly stand for “free thought” no less. 
The counter-panel was a demonstration of opposition to university management and a show of solidarity with those standing up against oppression and injustice. It attracted more than 30 students and staff and involved discussions about how best to oppose genocide and censorship in our work and studies.
La Trobe Student Union Education Officer Maeve Russack was the final speaker on the panel. She argued, “I think that there’s a key lesson to be learnt from the Bendigo Writers Festival and it’s that the university and their policy book are not an omnipotent being, but are something that can be resisted and something our side must continue to resist”.

Alicia Griffiths

La Trobe staff and students speak out against university censorship

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
<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/aug/15/is-australia-supplying-weapons-to-bomb-gaza-heres-what-we-know-about-fighter-jet-parts-in-the-f-35-program">recently reported</a>, 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 <a href="https://asiapacificdefencereporter.com/ruag-australia-achieves-manufacturing-milestone-on-uplock-actuator-system-for-f-35-joint-strike-fighter-program/">an Australian defence industry website</a>, 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 “<a href="https://youtu.be/uxUntSTXpGc?si=Yfo31D11IP3N1aK2">an F-35 country</a>”. 
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 <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/06/03/most-people-across-24-surveyed-countries-have-negative-views-of-israel-and-netanyahu/">recent poll</a> 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 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKpkZNAFwkc&amp;ab_channel=SenatorBernieSanders">target practice</a>. 
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 <a href="https://x.com/AlboMP/status/1710737658362876219">from the start</a>. 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 <a href="https://palestinereferendum.org/">palestinereferendum.org</a>.

Students to hold nationwide vote on Gaza

The University of Melbourne has begun construction on a new $2 billion “defence” research campus at Fishermans Bend. The campus will allow the university to further its collaboration with international arms manufacturers to design new weapons. 
Last year, students demanded that the university divest from partnerships with more than thirteen weapons companies. But now, the university is angling for even closer connections with the defence sector. This is despite at least two of the companies, Boeing and BAE Systems, <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/06/states-and-companies-must-end-arms-transfers-israel-immediately-or-risk">being warned last year by the UN</a> that their transfers to Israel could make them complicit in war crimes. 
Now, UoM students are demanding that the university halt the construction of this “weapons campus” and end its complicity in Israel’s genocide.
The Citizen, a publication of the university’s Centre for Advancing Journalism, <a href="https://www.thecitizen.org.au/articles/at-fishermans-bend-university-of-melbourne-angling-for-defence-contracts-relationships#:~:text=In%20an%20August,of%20Melbourne%E2%80%99s%20campus%E2%80%9D.">reported in February</a> that the university previously petitioned the Department of Defence to “consider greater connectivity” between the proposed Fishermans Bend campus and the Defence Department’s specialist Defence Science and Technology Group, which is also located in the suburb. 
“The University claims to be on about the big social challenges and trying to make the world better”, Tilman Ruff, an honorary associate professor and a founder of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, <a href="https://www.news.com.au/national/victoria/news/the-university-of-melbournes-new-campus-has-students-and-academics-seething/news-story/ed698e07f91089b4defaa5bbcdba8fff">told news.com.au earlier this month</a>.
“It’s hard to see how getting in bed with war profiteers and particularly makers of now illegal weapons of mass destruction fits with trying to do good in the world for the betterment of humanity.”
Boeing manufactures and sells F-15 fighter jets and Apache AH-64 attack helicopters to the Israeli Air Force. BAE Systems, another of the world’s largest defence contractors, is a key supplier to the F-35 fighter jet program. 
Documents obtained from the university under Freedom of Information reveal that, after a student protest against a forum hosted by Boeing at the Parkville campus in 2024, the university reprimanded students speaking out against war crimes while reassuring the company of the university’s solid commitment to collaboration at Fishermans Bend.
The “weapons campus” aligns with a broader Victorian government initiative to lure more arms manufacturers and military contractors to the area. Melbourne University will provide space and materials for companies to improve their weapons and hardware. It will also funnel engineering students into the war industries. The campus will serve as the brains behind the bombs. 
The university is open about its intent to develop “leading-edge defence technologies” and describes the campus as “a site for multinationals and SMEs to engage in the Defence ecosystem ... supported by our state-of-the-art materials fabrication laboratory, ocean simulation facilities and autonomous robotics testing sites”.
The university is also gushing about the opportunities presented by the federal government’s proposed acquisition of nuclear-powered submarines. It is hard to miss the connection between its <a href="https://www.unimelb.edu.au/newsroom/news/2023/november/university-of-melbourne-welcomes-student-places-to-support-nuclear-powered-submarines-student-pathways">positive statements about training nuclear scientists</a> and the Fishermans Bend campus’s intended defence research into “marine systems technologies” and “optimising the performance and security of submarine, ship and amphibious operations in the open ocean and coastal areas”.
Students for Palestine Unimelb opposes collaboration between the university and the military. We have collected signatures from more than 1,000 students for a <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DMpBwh5zmEC/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&amp;igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==">special general meeting for Palestine</a>, organised by the student union. If four hundred students attend, the meeting’s decisions will be binding on the union. If a mass meeting votes in favour of all motions, the union will campaign against the construction of Fishermans Bend, against all university ties to weapons companies, against the <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/melbourne-university-expels-palestine-solidarity-activists">repression of student activism</a> and to organise a <a href="https://freedomflotilla.org/">fundraiser for the next Freedom Flotilla</a> sailing to break Israel’s blockade and bring aid to Gaza.

Emma Dynes

Students campaign against Melbourne University’s ‘weapons campus’

Dean: “We have received an anonymous complaint about your teaching related to Palestine.”
Teacher: “What specifically about my teaching?”
Dean: “I can’t say specifically, because that could breach the student’s anonymity.”
Teacher: “How can I respond to the accusation unless I know what it was I said that was the problem?”
Dean: “I can say only in general terms that there were several examples. That you were not presenting all sides of the debate.”
Teacher: “Can I know whether it was one of my students who complained?”
Dean: “No. And you cannot tell anyone of the existence or nature of this complaint.”
This conversation occurred at an Australian university. We know about it only because it was described in a confidential submission to the People’s Inquiry into Campus Free Speech on Palestine. In all likelihood, similar conversations have been happening behind closed doors in deans’ offices at campuses all over the country. 
University staff and students are being subjected to spurious complaints and opaque disciplinary procedures for expressing support for Palestine. They are being accused of prejudice—or worse, of antisemitism—for speaking against a genocide. In many cases, those students and staff aren’t even allowed to speak publicly about their experience. 
The widespread censorship of pro-Palestine speech on Australian university campuses was what motivated a group of students in Students for Palestine to establish a People’s Inquiry. Inspired by the Russell Tribunal of the 1960s, which assembled prominent figures to investigate US war crimes in Vietnam, the People’s Inquiry brought together members and representatives of the National Union of Students, the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network, the Jewish Council of Australia, as well as Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi and human rights activists and academics. The aim was to shine a light on the alarming situation unfolding on university campuses. 
After the People’s Inquiry was launched, we received more than 150 submissions from twenty universities across Australia, an indication of the systematic nature of censorship when it comes to Palestine. The submissions detailed instances of repression, intimidation, silencing and punishment of university staff and students expressing support for Palestine and opposition to Israel’s genocide.
A small selection of the submissions formed the basis for the inquiry’s preliminary report, “Don’t talk about Palestine: it’s a career killer”. The title was taken from one of those submissions. In it, the submitter said they had received that advice from the director of a political research centre based at the University of Queensland. 
Following the preliminary report’s publication, the People’s Inquiry held two days of public hearings, one at the University of Sydney and one at the University of Melbourne, inviting university students and staff to share their stories. 
Before they were allowed to proceed, People’s Inquiry organisers at the University of Sydney were required by management to read out a statement assuring the audience that the university was committed to “freedom of speech and academic freedom as foundations to a vibrant democracy and our pursuit of knowledge”. The university was trying to cover its backside. But platitudes about free speech and “vibrant” democracies rang hollow in a room full of people who had come to listen to and share stories of censorship and arbitrary discipline. The irony appears lost on Vice-Chancellor Mark Scott, who didn’t accept an invitation to appear at the hearing. 
At the University of Melbourne, a photographer with the Australian Associated Press was initially prevented by security from entering the room where the hearing was taking place, but he was eventually let in. Maybe it was the act of an overzealous guard, but “Journalist denied access to free speech inquiry” would not have been a good headline for the university in any case.
The public hearings shed further light on the regime of censorship on university campuses. The panel heard from National Tertiary Education Union branch committee members who revealed that two staff members had been sacked from the University of Melbourne for speaking about Palestine. A medical student related that he was refused permission to organise an information stall on the situation in Gaza at the annual medical students’ conference.
There are high-profile cases of university repression of pro-Palestine speech, such as the <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/the-university-vowed-not-to-spy-on-students-now-it-s-using-tracking-data-to-punish-them-20240704-p5jr3y.html">tracking of pro-Palestine students</a> through the wi-fi at the University of Melbourne. There’s the case of the international student at the University of Sydney who faced the <a href="https://honisoit.com/2025/03/usyd-threatens-transgender-student-with-deportation-after-violating-the-cap/">potential cancellation of her student visa and deportation</a> for writing pro-Palestine messages on a whiteboard.
Then there are the cases of repression and censorship that don’t make the headlines: the private meetings with management and the veiled threats couched in the language of “safety” or “wellbeing”. Many instances have been reported to the People’s Inquiry, but there are likely many more.
While we should not encourage university management to take a more active role in policing speech and political opinions on campuses, it is remarkable that supporters of Israel seem to have faced no consequences for cheering on a genocidal regime that is using starvation to decimate Gaza’s civilian population. At Monash University, Israel supporters <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/universities-crack-down-on-palestine-solidarity">repeatedly harassed and assaulted</a> pro-Palestine students at the Gaza Solidarity Encampment and faced no consequences.
Students and staff speaking and protesting in support of Palestine are often accused by supporters of Israel of spreading hatred and division. Yet when Mark Leibler, a member of the University of Melbourne’s University Council, <a href="https://johnmenadue.com/post/2025/02/jaccuse-the-jew-who-accuses-his-fellow-jews-of-being-antisemites/">in a social media post</a> described anti-Zionist Jews as “repulsive and revolting human beings” whose family members murdered by the Nazis would “undoubtedly be turning in their graves”, the university defended him on the grounds that the remark was made “in his personal capacity” and not as a university representative. Perhaps if students clarify that we oppose genocide in our “personal capacity” rather than as university students, we might be let off the hook? Somehow, I doubt it.
Why is this happening?
Universities often cultivate a self-image as institutions of free inquiry where challenging and controversial ideas are debated on their merits. In reality, universities serve power. Where it does exist, space for genuine political dissent has been carved out on the campuses despite university managers rather than because of them.
The higher education sector caters to modern capitalist economies’ ideological and technical needs. Universities are enormous workplaces: highly paid executives sit at the top and determine the day-to-day life of thousands of professional and academic staff. Each university competes with its peers in a global education market, vying for lucrative international student enrolments.
Reflective of their deep integration with and dependence on governments, universities frame their purpose in terms of the “national interest”. A <a href="https://universitiesaustralia.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/2025-federal-election-statement-Universities-matter-to-Australias-future.pdf">statement published by Universities Australia</a> in the lead-up to the 2025 federal election described universities as “vital national assets” that “underpin our nation’s prosperity” and strengthen our “international competitiveness”. 
Let’s remind ourselves what “national interest” really means. It means shielding Australia’s allies from attack or criticism, even (or especially) when that ally is committing crimes against humanity.
The national interest means spending upwards of $368 billion to acquire a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines—a sum that could build more than a million new public housing units. In a media release from November 2023, Universities Australia again spelled it out: “The planning, construction, operation and maintenance of our nuclear-powered submarines will not be possible without the skilled workers our unis educate or the research they undertake”.
As great-power conflict returns to the centre of world politics, Australian universities are giddy about the research and funding opportunities being presented. The University of Melbourne, for example, is spending $2 billion on a new campus at Fishermans Bend that will host partnerships with major weapons manufacturers.
Little wonder that the universities react with hostility to the pro-Palestine movement. Our movement wants to disrupt business as usual. We call out the crimes of a key Western ally in the Middle East and our own government’s complicity. We oppose the booming military-industrial complex. 
The problem for university managers is that students have been at the forefront of this movement. Students, many staff and thousands of others have refused to be silenced and browbeaten. We have rejected the lies of the people in power. We have camped, petitioned, occupied, rallied, assembled and protested for Palestine. 
In response, campuses have become the centre of attacks on free speech and political organising. Labor-appointed Special Envoy Jillian Segal paid particular attention to the universities in her “Plan to Combat Antisemitism”, which is, in reality, a plan to silence criticism of Israel. She wants universities to crack down even harder on pro-Palestine action and thought, and her plan proposes cutting funding from universities that don’t.
The repression playing out on campuses is serious. But it is possible to push back. Universities are susceptible to pressure. Defending the indefensible crimes of the Israeli state demands an authoritarian logic, but universities are also under pressure at least to appear to support open academic inquiry. Resistance from students and staff can beat back the attacks. The People’s Inquiry into Campus Free Speech on Palestine aims to give a voice to those who have been silenced and to expose the universities’ chilling attacks against those who stand for justice in Palestine.
James McVicar is a panellist on the People’s Inquiry and the education officer for the National Union of Students.

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