By Nick Fredman
LISMORE -- Student activists here kicked off the year with a lively protest on February 18 against tighter restrictions to Austudy eligibility and other attacks on education.
A lunchtime speak-out was organised by the Student Representative Union of the Lismore campus of Southern Cross University (SCU) and the NSW branch of the National Union of Students. Thomas Michel, education officer of NUS (NSW), addressed enrolling students about the Howard government's agenda for cutting higher education.
On February 20, the federal government was forced to make a partial back down on Austudy means-testing under pressure from the senate, Coalition backbenchers (particularly from rural and regional electorates) and the community.
The amended guidelines will make it easier for 8500 applicants who were cut off Austudy because of administrative bungles to appeal, and restrict the department's practice of using overblown averages contrived from Australian Bureau of Statistics figures when assessing a family's wealth (rather than using figures supplied by the applicants themselves).
NUS (NSW) president Andrew Burke noted on February 21 that "the government's back flip is too little, too late for many students". Many students, discouraged from further study because they would have received less or no Austudy, have missed enrolment deadlines.
Tania Chisholm, a full-time SCU student with three children, spoke in Lismore as one of thousands of students to have their Austudy benefits slashed, despite the revised government guidelines. Guidelines set in place in December assess eligibility on the basis of expenditure rather than actual income. Chisholm said: "The benchmark quoted by the government for expenditure is only $12,500. Our rent is $9600 a year. Effectively the government is telling me to feed a family of five and educate three children on $3000 a year."
Around 100 people then marched to the administration building, where six balaclava-clad activists seized the balcony of vice-chancellor Barry Cunningham's office. To the cheers of those below, they denounced the complicity of the administration in implementing the education cuts. Despite a sudden torrential downpour, the rally marched to the city where 20 students occupied the Austudy office.
Northern NSW student activists will now build towards the March 26 NUS national day of action against education cuts, with a rally planned at the Coffs Harbour campus of SCU.
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