Students won't be silenced
Zoe Kenny
This year the federal government is moving ahead with its anti-student union legislation, euphemistically referred to as "voluntary student unionism". VSU is designed to eliminate the funding base for university student unions, as well as getting rid of "universal student unionism" — which will drastically reduce membership of student unions. This is a blatant attempt to destroy the organisations that students have and to weaken students' ability to defend their rights as students.
This is not the first time that an attempt has been made to introduce VSU. Ever since left-wing university students began to lead the campaign against Australian involvement in the Vietnam War and in the process won more leading positions in student unions, there have been numerous attempts by the Liberals to destroy student unions.
In the mid 1990s, Coalition state governments in Victoria and Western Australia introduced VSU legislation, albeit in different forms, with the WA version being much more destructive. The Howard Coalition government is attempting to push through a version of VSU which is based on the WA version. This only allows universities to collect fees for academic purposes, bans compulsory fees for student associations and allows the government to charge universities huge fines if they don't follow the new regulations.
It's clear that the federal government has decided that the Victorian version of VSU — which allowed student unions to provide services, but tried to prevent them from running political campaigns — did not go far enough and have gone for the WA "scorched earth" version.
The introduction of the WA model of VSU into federal parliament has given the more conservative sections of the leadership of the anti-VSU campaign — headed by Labor Party students — the fuel they need to avoid a political campaign — they are mainly focusing on the provision of campus services as being the key thing at stake.
While it's true that this model is going to have a detrimental effect on student services, and this is going to make life even harder for disadvantaged students, we should make sure that the campaign against VSU does not simply become one to save student services and not deal with the issue of the right to run political campaigns.
One of the dangers of this line of argument is that if the VSU legislation is watered down, which happened before in Victoria, and universities are still allowed to levy a fee for services, then the anti-VSU campaign could be demobilised, with its "protect services" wing claiming the campaign has "won" — even though elected student representatives will have lost control over the fees charged to students. Such a scenario is looking more likely.
John Mullarvey, the chief executive of the Australian Council of Vice-Chancellors, told the April 21 Australian that the board believes the way forward is to lobby the government to allow universities to have a "compulsory services and amenities fee". The suggested compulsory service fee would cover sports clubs, international student services, and child care, dental, welfare, computer, and photocopy facilities.
The government's attack on student's rights cannot be separated from its broader attack on higher education. VSU is a key part of federal education minister Brendan Nelson's higher education "reform" package — a series of measures that constitute a massive attack on publicly funded university education.
Ultimately these changes are aimed at creating a fully privatised higher education system. University education, which should be a fundamental right for all people, will once again become the exclusive privilege of the wealthy.
The government knows it will be easier to implement its privatisation plans if student opposition can be demobilised. VSU is aimed at weakening the ability of students to wage campaigns against the Nelson "reforms".
VSU is also a part of a broader attack on the rights of working people in general. At the same time that students' rights are being attacked, the Howard government is also attacking the rights of Iraqi people who are suffering under a brutal US-led occupation which Australian troops are backing. The government is attacking the rights of asylum seekers. It is preparing to attack workers' rights to organise and defend themselves against employers.
VSU is also about weakening students' ability to conduct campaigns in solidarity with other sections of the population who are resisting the Howard government's agenda.
The socialist youth organisation Resistance advocates that the anti-VSU campaign highlights this through its demands and slogans — for example, by calling for "Money for education, not war!".
The anti-VSU campaign also needs to link up with the National Tertiary Education Union, which is fighting its own battle against the government's attacks on higher education.
[Zoe Kenny is the national coordinator of Resistance.]
From Green Left Weekly, April 27, 2005.
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