By Jorge Jorquera
Several thousand students around the country demonstrated on August 10 against the federal government's latest attacks on higher education. Smaller protests have since followed in a number of cities. But most of these protests have declined in size. Is this because students are just not interested in defending education and their rights?
Though insufficiently organised, the August 10 National Day of Action supported by the National Union of Students (NUS) did demonstrate student anger at the federal budget. The possibility of building on this initial student response remains, with the threats to block the budget in the Senate keeping the budget a national issue. A sustained anti-budget campaign could undoubtedly put the Labor government under pressure.
The response by NUS, however, has been to focus on lobbying senators, while turning off any further large student mobilisations.
Actions following August 10 have been organised by cross-campus education committees and other campus activists. As in the past, NUS has acted in loyalty to the Labor Party. Thus the president of NUS Tasmania declared following the National Day of Action, "Free education is a dead issue".
Many left activists on campus have gone with the NUS tide and stepped back from campaigning against the budget, instead busying themselves with running tickets in Student Representative Council elections.
But what is the point of running in SRC elections if you can't win on platforms to mobilise students against government and big business attacks? It's not enough for the left to run SRC tickets that make general statements about student rights but lack any commitment to campaign on the issues. That approach reflects a sentiment that if you make too many waves you can't get elected, that students are too conservative.
If the left is going to take up the fight against continuing attacks on education by the Labor government, then it must regain a mass campaigning perspective.
Such struggles are the base for a strong campus left. Since the death of the free education campaign that characterised campus political life during 1987-89, that part of the left which sacrificed campaigning activity for an intervention in the National Union of Students has declined badly. In 1987, at the first NUS national conference, Left Alliance, which has led the left intervention in NUS for most of this time, had just under 40% of the conference delegates. Today it has around 10%.
The consistent decline of Left Alliance since its formation in 1987 is a clear sign that if the left on campus does not put campaigning first, it will suffer marginalisation.
The election of Jennifer Crothers on the Resistance ticket for women's officer in the University of Tasmania SRC elections in late August has reopened the discussion on strategy for the student movement. The ticket won on an up-front free education and radical campaigning platform — this on a campus with no real left traditions, and with the highest student vote in years.
The victory demonstrates that a campaigning perspective challenging the Labor Party's austerity program can tap into student anger. It confirms that the potential for a student fight back has not been smashed. This is confirmed also by the ongoing willingness of students to protest against attacks on education as well as the strong support for environmental, women's rights and other social issues on campus.
The lack of left political leadership is the biggest block to the revival of the student movement. The left as a whole on campus needs to make an assessment about strategy. We have to reopen the discussion on the National Union of Students. It isn't good enough to just continue labelling those left activists who don't support NUS, "right wing" or "anti-union".
Why is it that, five years after a lot of the campus left opted to work in the NUS framework, this same left is now more marginalised on campus and in NUS? NUS today is controlled predominantly by Labor, sometimes even in cooperation with Liberal Party students.
The central question is what the left on campus prioritises: campaigning around student rights, education and other progressive issues, or the so-called "principle of supporting a national student union".
There's not really much in dispute if the left can junk some dogmas. Let's agree that something is not a union just because it calls itself that. Let's also agree that the most important priority for the left on campus is to mobilise students against Labor's attacks on education, women's rights, the environment, workers rights — in fact the whole Labor austerity program. If this is our priority, then it's where our resources should be focused.
When some on the left prioritised NUS, they turned things upside down. This is the time to draw the lessons. The victory in Tasmania is a sign that students are angry. Already there have been two Anti-Fees Coalition meetings on the University of Tasmania, following the August 10 action. Both meetings had over 20 new activists.
Let's stop wondering why no other campus has been able to sustain a campaigning mode. NUS has drawn millions of dollars and hundreds of activists from the struggle against Labor's attacks. If these resources were prioritised for the campaign rather than for NUS affiliation fees and faction fighting, we could really see what student sentiment is.
When the left prioritises building active campaigns, then we will see the left leading the political debates and the resurgence of the student movement. This way also, the student left will play an important role in the struggle against Labor's attacks on working people. Those on the left who fail to do this risk becoming apologists for Labor's cuts.