Student protesters tackled and pepper sprayed by police at education summit demonstration

By CHRISTINE LAI

Student protesters were tackled and pepper sprayed by NSW Police at a demonstration on Tuesday afternoon demanding the cancellation of student debt and an end to education cuts. The protest was hosted by National Union of Students (NUS), Sydney University Education Action Group (USyd EAG), UNSW Education Collective and the UTS Education Action Group.  

The protesters marched from The Star to Jones Bay Wharf, where they attempted to disrupt the Australian Financial Review (AFR) Higher Education Summit, a platform where Vice-Chancellors, politicians and figureheads came together to discuss structural changes in higher education. The corporate event cost attendees $1000 per ticket.  

Activists were met with violence by the police, where they were pepper sprayed and tackled for protesting against attacks on the tertiary education sector. 

NUS Education Officer Luc Velez condemned the violence of the police against students, asserting that their attacks would not “stop our movement.”  

“Students deserve justice, students deserve an education system where we don’t have to get maced by violent cops in our demand for more,” Velez said.  

University of Sydney Education Officer Deaglan Godwin declared that the response from the police during the protest was one of the “best lessons of our lives, a lesson far superior to that which you gain in the corporate university” which was a lesson in the “real role of the police.” 

“The real role of the police is not to protect and serve us, it’s to uphold the law and order of the rich. We have the right to determine what our education will look like, and we need to say it won’t look like furthering the needs of the Australian economy and it won’t be put to the service of building more mining machines. 

We say our education should be a right and not a privilege,” Godwin said. 

Student protesters maced with pepper spray by officers

Macquarie Students Against Uni Cuts (MSAUC) activist Amy Lamont decried the assault of police, opening her speech with, “I can’t see anyone because I’ve been maced in the face.”  

Lamont looked to ongoing industrial action at the University of Sydney, where staff have had five days of strike this year in their fight for secure working conditions, with demands including a wage claim to the Cost Price Index (CPI) plus 2.5 per cent per year and enforceable targets for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employment. Previous campaigns have involved 24-hour and 48-hour strikes, with staff and students picketing to block entrances across the university campus.  

“All these VCs, politicians and representatives of businesses want our education system to be more profitable, which only means more friendly to Australian capitalism. We will not accept this continuous neoliberalism of our education,” Lamont said. 

NSW Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi applauded student activists for their action, stating “you have every right to be here fighting for your future and the future of the world.” 

“For far too long short-sighted governments and private interests have dominated conversations about higher education in this country and this is exactly what’s happening up there today” Faruqi said.  

Police response an “attack on the right to protest”: Greens Senator

Greens Senator for NSW David Shoebridge asserted that the fight for the right to protest continues, criticising the federal government for their willingness to “cut funding” while being “perfectly happy to see an increase in defence expenditure.”  

“What I witnessed today by the NSW police, what we saw today is a serious attack on the right to protest, the collective right to get together and demand a better future,” Shoebridge said.  

USyd Education Officer Lia Perkins condemned the attacks of the NSW police, and referred to the recent anti-protest laws which intended to “criminalise protesters for gathering in public and for exercising what should be a fundamental right of our society.”  

Perkins spoke about the controversial Job Ready Graduates package that was implemented under the Federal government and has seen the cost of humanities degrees doubled and remove Commonwealth Support (HECS) from any student who takes over seven years to complete a degree, or with a ‘low completion rate’.  

“This is still in place under the Labor government, and they have no indication of overturning it so far” Perkins said. 

Student protesters yelled chants to AFR Education Summit event attendees who watched on from the balcony of Dolton House Jones Wharf. Chants included: “We have the right to demonstrate, this is not a police state” and “No cuts, no fees, no corporate universities.”  

One student was charged with trespassing and taken into police custody. They will face court in three weeks time.  

The demand for the cancellation of all student debt instead of a “debt sentence” was agreed en masse. Student protesters ended the action by yelling “Not enough justice, too many coppers”.