Fred Fuentes & Amber Pike
"If the French can do it, we can too. We're going to fight to stop VSU!" This popular chant at a march in Melbourne on April 12 summed up protesters' feelings about the federal government's "voluntary student unionism" law, passed on December 9 in an attempt to silence and destroy student organisations.
The April 12 national day of action demanding the repeal of VSU was called by the National Union of Students at its annual conference in December. Afterwards, however, the ALP-dominated NUS executive overruled the conference decision on this theme, focusing instead on a welfare campaign targeting student poverty.
While this dampened enthusiasm for the protests, there was still a lively showing in Sydney, where 800 students and unionists marched from Sydney University to the University of Technology, Sydney, then into the city centre. The NSW police had attempted to get the Supreme Court of NSW to ban the march on the grounds of traffic disruption, but backed down at the last minute. The police application for students to be made to pay for security barriers outside the UTS tower building was dismissed by the judge.
However, the police did deploy the "Middle East riot squad", formed after last December's Cronulla riots, and used it to attack the peaceful student protest. The riot squad attacked a student sit-in on George Street and arrested 26 people.
Four students have been charged and the others fined for "crimes" such as offensive littering, obstructing traffic and swearing. All of the students will be appealing the fines, which total more than $10,000.
Rachel Evans, NUS national female queer officer, told Green Left Weekly: "The NSW government can shut down roads and divert traffic to help make money for a private tunnel company, but it won't abide students exercising their democratic right to protest." She added that the attempts to "shut students up" will not succeed. "They can cut our funding, but they can't dampen our resolve. We're uniting against Howard and his cronies to fight off VSU and the industrial relations laws."
Feiyi Zhang, NSW state education officer, told GLW that this is not the first time the NSW ALP government has tried to criminalise the right to dissent: six students were arrested for protesting peacefully against US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice when she visited Sydney last month. Given the police's heavy-handedness, egged on by the NSW government, student activists are now discussing how they can defend the right to protest.
Union solidarity with the students was amply demonstrated by contingents in Sydney from the construction union, Liquor Hospitality and Miscellaneous Union, Community and Public Sector Union and National Tertiary Education Union. "It is important that students and workers support each others' struggles", Simon Cunich, a Sydney University global solidarity officer and Resistance activist told GLW. Resistance members distributed a statement calling for a student strike on June 1 to support the workers' rights campaign.
Sean Seymour-Jones reports from Melbourne that about 300 students carrying balloons and banners gathered at the State Library and marched to the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, where speakers from the RMIT student union and the Young Unionist Network described the role that student unions have played in organising people to oppose war, racism and attacks on unions.
In Perth, reports Nathan Verney, following speak-outs at the University of WA and Murdoch University, 150 people from four universities marched on the Subiaco office of federal education minister Julie Bishop, demanding the repeal of VSU. The protesters also declared their solidarity with other unions under attack, some of which joined the students' action. Addressing the rally, UWA education group and Resistance activist Trent Hawkins pointed to the French students' and unions' persistent mobilisations as a powerful reminder of how "people power" can block the implementation of bad laws.
From Green Left Weekly, April 26, 2006.
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