Students put Kennett on spot

Students put Kennett on spot

By Brendan Meilak

MELBOURNE — On September 2, TAFE students from across Victoria assembled at the Peninsula TAFE in Frankston to tell premier Jeff Kennett what they think of his funding cuts to the TAFE system.

More than 30 students marched through the streets of Frankston to the Town Hall, which Kennett was visiting. The students chanted "Hey-hey, ho-ho, Jeff Kennett has got to go".

At the hall, students asked Kennett to guarantee that TAFE amalgamations would not result in campus closures, course cuts or staff job losses. He refused to make the guarantee.

Kennett tripped over his own words: having declared that "We in Victoria live in one of the most robust democracies in the world", he was unable to find an answer when asked by the students how democratic his voluntary student unionism legislation was.

From GLW issue 332