By Kathy Newnam
BRISBANE — With election fever high at the University of Queensland, there have been a number of discussions about the way forward for the campaign against the Liberals' attacks on education.
It is important to unite to fight these attacks. This is why Resistance attempted to draw together a united left ticket for the UQ union elections. As it happened, no other left groups were interested in unity, and there are five left tickets running in the election.
Union elections should be an opportunity to build a united campaign against the attacks on education. This means developing a platform that all forces agree on and that can involve a broad range of students.
Activists at UQ have also been dealing with the question of how to relate to the Labor Party. Some activists have opposed any criticism of the Labor Party on the basis that the real enemy is the Liberal Party and this is where we focus the fight back.
A united campaign means working with all forces that are willing to help build it. But we must not allow the perspectives of the campaign to be limited by the Labor Party and its "re-elect the ALP" solution.
It was the Labor government that laid the foundations for the current attacks on education. The Labor Party would have us forget this, with claims that HECS in fact opened up education for many people. We cannot allow these lies to go unanswered.
Both Liberal and Labor governments have pushed a user-pays mentality to justify their attacks. In building a broad campaign against the Liberals' attacks we must re-win the idea that education is a right and thus should be free. That means raising the arguments for free education and building a campaign that will be able to go on the offensive.
[Kathy Newnam is running for national student affairs officer for the UQ union on the Resistance ticket.]