NTEU initiates education campaign

The Victorian division of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) launched a “Cost of education” campaign at its February 28 council meeting. Targeted at schools, community groups, families and other unions, the campaign will address the growing costs of education resulting from the federal government’s “reforms”.

The campaign will increase pressure on university councils to reject HECS and fee increases, or at least delay them until the federal election.

James Cook University and the Australian National University have decided not to increase HECS, for the time being. Decisions at Griffith, Newcastle and Monash universities are pending in March. Deakin University’s decision to raise HECS by the full 25% for most courses was condemned by the Victorian NTEU “as a betrayal of the regional communities it serves”.

General meetings of NTEU members will consider protest actions and the potential to ban the implementation of fee increases.

Jeremy Smith

Behind the business of war

MELBOURNE — “Put the name Bechtel into the Google search and find out how many sites come up”, said noted Marxist historian Humphrey McQueen, speaking at a Socialist Alliance forum “Behind the business of war”, held at Melbourne's Trades Hall on March 4.

McQueen, author of A New Britannia and The Essence of Capitalism, a Marxist History of Coca-Cola, argued that too much of the left attributed the driving force of US imperialism to the supposed dominance of its “military- industrial complex” (a term first used by US President Dwight Eisenhower in January 1961).

McQueen pointed out that the share of GDP devoted to “defence” spending in the US had in fact declined from a high of 34% in 1944 to a low of 3.4% in 2002. “We are not looking at an economy that is driven by military spending”, he argued.

McQueen described the downsizing and outsourcing now being imposed on the US armed forces, with one in 10 defence personnel now working for private companies. The biggest winners from the US occupation of Iraq were not those companies directly involved in the “defence” industry, but rather those involved in “reconstruction”.

“We can’t just repeat the mantra of military-industrial complex that we learnt 40 years ago”, McQueen concluded. “We have to keep ourselves up to date so that we have the kinds of answers to meet the kinds of questions that we’re likely to face.”

The forum was also addressed by Socialist Alliance member Sarah Thorne who gave a report on the Mumbai World Social Forum that she attended in January.

Graham Matthews

From Green Left Weekly, March 10, 2004.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.

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