Anne Picot, Sydney
Socialist Alliance activists joined unionists, students and community education activists on January 31 to picket the national ALP conference. Chanting "No fees for TAFE" and "No fees and no job cuts", we leafleted conference delegates and observers with information about how to make the promise of an affordable TAFE into reality.
The NSW Labor government has just increased TAFE fees by as much as 227%, in the midst of a re-organisation which will cut hundreds of public sector jobs. The NSW TAFE unions, Teachers Federation and the Public Service Association, have refused to collect the new fees. The Labor government responded by taking the unions to the Industrial Relations Commission to try to force a back-down. The teachers have pledged to teach students whether they have paid or not.
Students are applying for exemptions from paying fee en masse — as is their right — but TAFE management is refusing to accept their applications.
While these are useful tactics, the critical next step for the campaign is to get more students together to plan mass actions on the TAFE campuses.
The picket of the ALP conference was important to raise the issue of TAFE fees in the minds of delegates and in the view of the media. New Labor leader Mark Latham promised "20,000 extra TAFE places, without the need for heavy student debt" in his speech to the conference. Increasing TAFE fees flies in the face of that promise, as well the cause of equity in access to education.
Many Labor members — and delegates — are horrified by the fee increases and job cuts. We need to make common cause with them through a campaign of public actions such as rallies and sit-down demonstrations in the streets and on TAFE campuses. A public campaign drawing on the unions will put pressure on the Labor government to withdraw the increases. Access to TAFE is too important to wait on electing a Latham Labor government.
[Anne Picot is a member of the Socialist Alliance and the National Tertiary Education Union.]
From Green Left Weekly, February 4, 2004.
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