BY SHUA GARFIELD
HOBART — The National Union of Students (NUS) education committee met on January 25 to plan its campaigns for 2001.
One of the main issues discussed was how NUS should respond to the Labor Party's federal election policy announcement on January 24, that it would establish a University of Australia On-line (UAO). Federal ALP leader Kim Beazley claimed that by 2010, an on-line university with 100,000 students would make university education more accessible for single parents and students from remote areas.
The ALP's claim that on-line education is necessary to enable single parents and students from remote areas to access a university education highlights the barriers to tertiary education. For example, many single parents can't attend university because child care is too expensive and students from remote areas can't afford to move to the city for university because Austudy pays too small an allowance.
Members of Student Unity (SU), the NUS faction comprising members of the right and centre-left ALP factions, argued that on-line education is preferable to free child care services because some parents don't want to use child care.
Most committee members agreed that the ALP's proposal for an on-line university would not solve the universities' funding crisis, especially when it is not proposing to restore the $1 billion annual funding which was cut from university budgets during the 1990s.
However, ALP members on the committee argued that NUS should not publicly criticise the ALP's education policy in an election year. Instead, they argued, NUS should aid the ALP's election campaign and lobby for a better education policy. In the end, a motion opposing the UAO was passed.
Also adopted were plans for an April 5 national day of action with the slogans "Our education is not for sale", and "Out of the classrooms, on to the streets". Five key demands are to be raised on the day: free education; reversal of funding cuts; a livable income; an end to corporate influence on universities; and, an end to attacks on staff.
The plans were adopted despite Student Unity's complaint that the national day of action should confine itself to attacking the federal Coalition government and assisting the ALP's election campaign .
The committee decided that the national day of action should also be used to oppose the influence of big corporations on universities by building support for the anti-corporate movement's plan for blockades of the stock exchanges on May 1. NUS would seek to organise student contingents in the May 1 (M1) demonstrations and blockades of stock exchanges with the theme, "We are not customers, universities are not businesses."
Also passed was a motion calling on the NUS national executive to support rights for refugees by endorsing the demands for refugee detention centres to be closed and the money saved to be diverted to providing social support for asylum seekers.
[Shua Garfield is the NUS Tasmania education officer and a member of Resistance]