Student protest can turn the tide against education attacks
Australia tails the US in everything from culture to war. Think of reality TV, fast fashion and the Middle East. Over the past few years, the Coalition government has been trying to import another well-known (and much hated) aspect of US society – its debt-fuelled, class-divided higher education system.
With this one, they’ve slammed into a roadblock. In recent years, students have hit the streets time and again to fight back against the Liberals’ cuts.
It started in 2014, when the newly elected Abbott government (with a disapproval rating outshone only by Donald Trump’s) launched a full-scale attack on everyone who didn’t regularly rub shoulders with the Business Council of Australia. We were told it was time to tighten our belts, to stop being the country of “lifters and leaners” and to get over the archaic idea that education should be accessible without taking out a mortgage-sized loan.
The jewel in the crown of their higher education package was full university fee deregulation – or $100k degrees. If implemented, this would have meant the conversion of “sandstone” universities into fully fledged Harvards and Yales – playgrounds for the elite, while the rest would have to make do with overcrowded, under-funded concrete blocks.
No-one was buying the Liberals’ rubbish. Mass opposition quickly turned to action as the National Union of Students, and particularly the socialist activists within it, kick-started a protest campaign to block the legislation. The biggest student protests in a decade crushed the dreams of federal education minister Christopher Pyne. The sweet cherry on the cake came when he was later booted out of the portfolio.
But the attacks have not stopped. University vice-chancellors have started implementing the US model at a local level through trimesters and restructures, which have resulted in thousands of staff sacked and many courses and programs axed. Cuts to student welfare have also been passed with bipartisan support.
While the Liberals have realised that their flagship attack is too electorally poisonous, new (but mind-numbingly predictable) education minister Simon Birmingham has proposed measures to gut funding and saddle students with more debt.
These changes, to be implemented from next year, would increase the average cost of a degree by $3,000, while a 2.5 percent “efficiency dividend” would result in $2.8 billion in funding cuts. Once again, students are being asked to pay more for less.
Graduates earning a mere $42,000 a year will now be forced to start repaying their (skyrocketing) HECS debt.
But none of this is set in stone – it can be defeated. The failure of the previous Coalition government has taught students that, if we fight, we can win.
In the past month, Birmingham has had a napkin thrown in his face during a speech at the National Press Club, been heckled during a live stream of the ABC’s Q&A program, watched his frontbench mates be mobbed by angry students, and once again been challenged by protests of university students, high school students and staff members in cities and towns across the country.
A national day of student protests on 17 May drew thousands into the streets – and not just in the capital cities. Activists at the University of Wollongong held the biggest campus rally in a generation, which was mirrored in Newcastle.
In Brisbane, prime minister Turnbull was targeted by hundreds of students as he addressed a posh luncheon. At the University of New South Wales, the vice-chancellor was also in the firing line of a rally against the plan to introduce trimesters. Many more protesters marched and chanted through central Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Adelaide and Perth.
The fight does not end here. The Liberals have been relentless in their attacks and are not going to give up easily. But the successes of the past few years prove there is no need to accept defeat. If students continue to protest, they can turn the tide away from the US model. Successful student campaigns in Quebec, Germany and Chile are a testament to that.
The National Union of Students is still on alert to confront any Liberal politician who wanders onto a campus, and will keep protesting until this policy is as dead as deregulation.
