This is an abridged version of a discussion paper by Alison Dellit, Jorge Jorquera and Natasha Simons on behalf of the Resistance National Executive.
The No Fees campaign on campuses has a number of challenges before it. The ANU occupation of the Chancellery lifted the expectations not only of the majority of ANU students, but also of thousands of students nationwide, who have got a glimpse of the possibility of mobilising students to have a real impact on government and big business policies.
It was undoubtedly that campaign and the threat of it inspiring further student unrest that led the Labor Party to make a temporary retreat on its undergraduate fees proposals.
Ahead of us now is how to build the campaign and make further gains. The Labor government has no intention of making a fundamental change to its higher education strategy.
In 1986, a $250 "administration fee" was introduced for all students — the first up-front fee. The government followed this by deregulating postgraduate fees.
There were mass demonstrations, with students rallying around the country to fight these attacks, and a national coordinating body, the National Free Education Coalition (NFEC), was set up. Boycotts of up to nine months were organised, with 2000 student boycotting the fee on UQ alone.
The campaign used mass mobilisation — rallies, marches and occupations involving thousands of students. The Labor government was forced to drop the fee, a significant victory for the student movement.
NUS
At the same time, however, a process of cooption by the ALP was under way, with NFEC being undermined and a National Union of Students being sold as the representative body that would stop attacks on students.
Many activists saw a national union as a progressive step towards more national cooperation, but NUS quickly proved to be bureaucratic and ALP driven. Whereas NFEC had been a coalition of activists, NUS spent a mere 7% of its initial budget on campaigns.
Prevented from introducing an up-front fee, the Labor Party used HECS in 1989 as another way into user pays education. NUS proposed to run a legal challenge to defeat HECS, which spent tens of thousands of dollars of students' money and never got anywhere. This served to demobilise the student movement.
As it stands, HECS still leaves tertiary education funded in large part by government. As a result, Labor has been trying to implement cost-cutting measures to further place the funding burden on students; these include the Austudy cuts and postgraduate fees.
It has kept student enrolments up and held back funding increases, forcing universities to cut corners on quality and find other means of funding, such as course and materials fees.
All these measures, however, have their limits. The only way for the government to radically shift the burden is to implement some system of up-front student fees, or possibly through a massive increase in HECS.
Building opposition
Whether Labor or Liberal can implement this "student pays" system will depend on what student and community opposition can be generated and organised.
The Labor government is very good at destroying campaigns against its austerity program. It focuses on coopting the leaderships of movements and forcing their "consensus" on the campaigns. Consider, for example, how much more difficult it would have been for the Labor government to have slashed real wages and conditions if it had not been for the complicity of most of the trade union bureaucracy.
Similarly, the Labor government has relied on its ability to keep the student movement within the tight reins of the National Union of Students and through that to demoralise, coopt and destroy the potential leaderships of anti-government student mobilisations.
What made the ANU No Fees campaign so successful in affecting government policy is that it demonstrated the possibility of organising student anger and opposition. The government has no problem with big NUS-orchestrated campaigns that stop at minor or token changes. In any case, the Labor government always draws up its proposals with this in mind, leaving a certain room to "negotiate" with NUS.
If we, want guarantees (like finishing our courses without fees), not just loan scheme concessions, we have to continue to build a No Fees campaign that challenges the direction of the government's higher education program. This is what gained us the strength to get at least some concessions.
Even to guarantee these concessions, let alone to generally prevent up-front fees, we will have to build and extend the campaign to other campuses.
What have we learned? We could summarise the overall strategy used in this campaign in the phrase mass independent action.
We have built a campaign that relies on drawing large numbers of students into action — demonstrating our collective strength through strikes, rallies, occupations and every sort of expression of mass opposition.
It has been guided by a political framework that is independent of the Labor government. So whatever tactical moves the campaign has made, it has remained within the framework of fighting for free education and hasn't been drawn into accepting "privatisation with student input".
It's an independent campaign also in relying on student action independent of the university, government and Labor and Liberal channels and structures. It's not university and government committees but marches, occupations and the like that have been the central arena of student mobilisation.
What next?
Opposition to the legal workshop fee and the continuing threat of up-front postgraduate fees is still the key starting point for building the No Fees campaign.
These are the key demands around which we will first draw students into the campaign. As the campaign grows, students will begin to take up other issues and become more aware of their power to make a difference.
At ANU, for example, we have to find every means of increasing the number of students willing to mobilise against the legal workshop fee. Primarily this will mean building a series of big actions and possibly further strikes.
The threat of other postgraduate fees and of HECS increases and funding cuts will convince more students to join the campaign. It is critical that the links between the different "options" for further higher education restructuring be drawn out. Students have to be convinced that if they don't fight now, they will lose much more.
As we convince more students, the key task becomes giving them the confidence that collectively they can have an impact. Mass actions are central to this. They give students an indication of the power we have when organised collectively: primarily the power to inspire even greater masses in action and to draw other sections of the community which are struggling against privatisation into alliances with us.
We've already seen the potential for this in the amount of trade union support the campaign has. That's not surprising when you consider that the key trade union in Canberra (the CPSU) has a political leadership committed to building campaigns challenging Labor government austerity.
As for the Students' Association election campaign, it has to fall within our broader strategy. We should be aiming both to use it as a forum for building the anti-fees campaign and to put in the Students' Association a committed activist leadership directly accountable to the campaign.
Having the leadership will ensure that the campaign is not blocked by a Student Association limited to a lobbyist approach. It will give the No Fees campaign extra leverage to build and extend the campaign to campuses nationally and link up with trade unions and other community groups. Winning the Students' Association elections gives more scope to build a campaign to boycott the legal workshop fee next year.
Extending the campaign nationally means we need to take responsibility for building the national anti-fees activist conference in Melbourne, December 5-6.
This conference will be an essential discussion and planning session for the campaign next year. For more information, contact the ANU No Fees campaign on (06) 249 2444.