CounterCourse 2025

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Acknowledgement of Country

We would like to acknowledge that the production of this publication, along with all of our activism, takes place on Stolen land. We operate largely on the lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora nation. We pay our respects to them.

from their families at accelerating rates. The abuse of incarcerated Indigenous children with the reintroduction of spit hoods in the Northern Territory.

Australia continues to be a profoundly racist state, with the rise of racist rhetoric from both sides of the political aisle.

Racists like Peter Dutton have been spewing antiIndigenous filth, trying to get the Indigenous flag removed from press events. There is a long and determined fight ahead for Indigenous justice.

The University of Sydney is a colonial institution which removed Gadigal people from their land. It continues to displace First Nations people in Redfern, which has served as a hub of Indigenous protest and struggle.

The oppression and discrimination of Indigenous peoples continues today. The continued murder of Blak people in police custody, with no killer cop held accountable.

The continued removal of Indigenous children

We join in solidarity to call for liberation, justice, sovereignty and land back for occupied and colonised people all over the world.

Sovereignty was never ceded. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land.

EDITORIAL

2025 SRC Education Officers Jasmine Al-Rawi & Luke Mešterović

Hello and welcome to Countercourse 2025! You are currently holding the annual magazine of the Education Action Group (EAG), the largest of the SRC’s on-campus activist collectives. Every year, members of the EAG compile Countercourse to highlight what we’ve accomplished, argue where we should head next, and debate issues that relate to students, like cost of living, HECS fees and course cuts. We believe that a better world is only possible through fighting for it, so we hold frequent meetings and rallies and find time for banner painting, stunts and educational sessions in between.

In previous years, we’ve successfully defended the departments of Studies in Religion and Theatre and Performance Studies from abolition, fought alongside staff members in their strike campaign for wage increases and more recently highlighted the university’s ties with weapons companies. This year, we are focused on resisting the university’s crackdown on free speech, which restricts the right to put up posters, set up stalls and hold rallies — key parts of the university experience.

Activism is one of the most rewarding things you can do. Our movement is only as strong as our members, so we ask that you join us this year as we fight to create a more just university for all.

We hope to see you soon.

And management, if you are reading this, our views do not represent the university.

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EDITORS-IN-CHIEF CONTENTS Jasmine Al-Rawi Luke Mešterović

6 How Free Is Free Speech? The State

of Free Speech in Today’s Universities Jasmine Al-Rawi & Luke Mešterović

EDITORS

8 What’s Next for the Fight Against

Ethan Floyd Ty Seeto

Anti-Protest Policies On-Campus?

Ethan Floyd

Grace Street

10 Why the CAP Could Be Unconstitutional

contributors Jasmine Al-Rawi Ethan Floyd Aron Khuc Tara Marocchi Emma Searle Lilah Thurbon

Angus Fisher Tobias Hansson Yoshi Leung Luke Mešterović Grace Street Khanh Tran

artists

Lilah Thurbon 12 Stop the Cuts to Our Education!

Explaining the Corporate University Yoshi Leung 14 The Sydney University Dirt List

Grace Street & Khanh Tran 16 What Can the ALP Offer Students?

Angus Fisher & Emma Searle 18 Returning to the Roots: Reflecting on

Jasmine Al-Rawi Katarina Butler Luke Mešterović Hannah Rose Grace Street

Teach-Ins at the Encampment Grace Street

cover art

22 Tomada!: Argentinian Students Take

With thanks to

23 Australia Today and the Death of

Bipasha Chakraborty

Katarina Butler You, the reader The SRC Publications Managers for all of their work and support S R C E D U C AT I O N AC T I O N G R O U P

21 Students Against Placement Poverty

Aron Khuc

the Fight to Milei Tobias Hansson

the “Lucky Country” Tara Marocchi 24 Countercourse Puzzles

Luke Mešterović

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2024: A YEAR OF ACTIVISM

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COUNTERCOURSE HANDBOOK 2025

2024 was a year of resisting the injustices of the system. We are proud to have been a part of the Gaza solidarity encampment; showing solidarity with Palestinians facing indiscriminate bombing of housing, hospitals and schools. We are also proud to have stood with refugees demanding permanent protection.

We stood with nurses striking for higher pay, CFMEU fighting against union deregistration and Woolworths warehouse workers striking against dangerous productivity frameworks. We also fought for free speech on campus and climate justice at the Rising Tide coal port blockade.

This is what our student unions need to keep doing to resist every attack on students and workers, and continue fighting for the oppressed across the world. Everyone should join that fight in 2025.

Thank you Jasmine Al-Rawi, Ishbel Dunsmore, Lauren Finlayson, Ethan Floyd, Yasmine Johnson, Vinil Kae, Yoshi Leung, Yuliannova Lestari and Annabel Petit for the photographs.

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How Free is F The state of free speech in today’s universities While we’re still arguing about whether there’s life after death, can we add another question to the cart? Is there life after democracy? What sort of life will it be?

So the question here, really, is what have we done to democracy? What have we turned it into? What happens once democracy has been used up? When it has been hollowed out and emptied of meaning?

Arundhati Roy One of the key pillars of democracy is free speech. Yet that pillar is crumbling before our very eyes. The list of things that cannot be said and is lengthening by the minute. The punishment for disobeying such rules gets harsher with every new policy. Our universities appear to be transforming into pioneers in the practice of silencing students.

Over the past year, we have seen the adoption of draconian policies aimed at restricting free speech across the country. Such attacks are justified with terms like “psycho-social safety” and “social cohesion”. In reality, student activists are getting punished for advocating against injustice, but this turn is a worrying sign not just for activists but for all students and student organisations on campuses. What is a university without vibrant posters adorning the walls?

Without student participation in bake sales, information stalls and protests?

The University of Sydney has threatened to pull funding from student organisations and discipline students if they do any of those activities without permission, or say anything that breaches a “civility rule”. Rather than improving the psycho-social safety of staff and students, these measures will make staff and students more afraid to speak up and organise freely without fear of misconduct. The repercussions aim to scare students into silence, most directed at those challenging the university which often are student unions.

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This shows there’s much more at stake. It is not just activities that represent the university that are subject to censorship, but the activities of independent student and staff unions. There is good reason that student unions need to be independent from universities, how else can they represent the direct interests of students against the commercial interests of the university?

Universities have attacked free speech because it is not in their interest for students to freely express themselves. It is not in their interest for students to protest cuts to their courses and departments.

It is not in their interest for students to protest cuts to staff wages and the casualisation of the workforce. It is not in their interest for students to set up an encampment outside the Quadrangle to highlight their investments in weapons companies that are facilitating apartheid and genocide.

There is good reason that student unions need to be independent from universities, how else can they represent the direct interests of students against the commercial interests of the university?

This is why university management is threatening students with suspension and student organisations with funding cuts – they are threatened by us. They are threatened by any form of free speech that might make them look bad. So they behave like a company, punishing those who expose their hypocrisy and dirty laundry so they can continue to maximise their profits – which in previous years has exceeded a billion dollars.

This is not why people come to university, nor is it what we should expect from an educational institution. The best education, like the best society, is one that is dedicated to empowering people to hold truth to power and speak freely.

And the only way that we can create this change is if we organise and keep our

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Free Speech?

By Jasmine Al-Rawi And Luke Mesterovic pressure on those who wield power. This is not a new idea – we are a part of a long tradition of students who have spearheaded movements that have resulted in concrete change both here and across the world.

The best education, like the best society, is one that is dedicated to empowering people to hold truth to power and speak freely.

Among the most inspiring of these is the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, where students in the 1960s at UC Berkeley were faced with a similar dilemma to what we face today – a ban on oncampus political activities and stalls. Then, the students were highlighting racism and apartheid in the American South. Today, we’ve faced repression for highlighting racism, apartheid and genocide in Palestine. At Berkeley, the students had the courage to stand up to their university management and refuse to comply with the bans. They were faced, just as we are today, with threats of suspension and even arrest. But they resisted. They made it impossible for their university to carry on enforcing the ban, and in the end, they won. Their struggle should inspire our own. What we are fighting for is not only right, but importantly, it is a fight that we can win.

It’s a fight we must win. We know the threat that these rules present to us now. But what will our university look like if we don’t get these rules repealed? What will it look like in one year’s time? Five years’ time? Ten years’ time?

As students, we need to ask ourselves how much we care about freedom of speech on our campus. Whether we believe be something that is real and vibrant and gives us the ability to organise and fight for our rights and the world we want to build, or whether it should remain as Arundhati Roy identified – a meaningless bit of glib that has been hollowed out and emptied of all its meaning.

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What’s Next for the Fight Against Anti-Protest Policies On-Campus?

ethan floyd looks ahead at what the campus access policy means for students, and how to fight against it.

The introduction of the Campus Access Policy (CAP) and the recommendations from the Hodgkinson Review represent a coordinated push to suppress dissent and student activism at the University of Sydney. At their core, these measures challenge the very essence of student organising by limiting the spaces and avenues available for protest and by placing administrative roadblocks in the path of dissent. For those of us who were part of the historic Gaza solidarity encampment last year, these policies strike at the heart of the activism that once brought urgent global issues to the University’s front lawns.

The CAP imposes stringent regulations on demonstrations, requiring prior notification and confining protests to specific “open spaces” on campus. The outright ban on “camping” – a direct reaction to the encampment – is one of the most glaring examples of how this policy seeks to stifle creative forms of protest. Meanwhile, the Hodgkinson Review doubles down, proposing policies like the new “civility rule,” which makes students and staff responsible for clarifying the intent of their words, leaving little room for the impassioned spontaneity that often defines protests.

These policies are a direct assault on the University’s tradition of protest and dissent. From the anti-apartheid protests of the 1970s to the climate strikes of recent years, students have consistently used their voices and bodies to demand accountability from power. Now, the University seeks to bury that history under layers of bureaucratic control and vague appeals to “student safety.” These restrictions go beyond physical spaces – they attempt to suppress the culture of dissent that makes our campus a site of critical thought and action. By curbing our ability to protest, the University is erasing the fundamental role students

and our moral responsibility to stand in solidarity with the besieged people of Gaza. Students pitched dozens of tents in defiance of the university’s partnerships with institutions implicated in Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

play in shaping its identity and future.

These measures are justified under the guise of protecting safety and academic freedom, yet they appear to prioritise the University’s shameful partnerships with weapons companies and Israeli academic institutions over the right of students to challenge those partnerships.

While these policies might initially seem targeted at a specific group or movement, their implications affect every student. Here’s why: The CAP and Hodgkinson Review set a precedent for regulating speech and assembly. Today’s cause may be the genocide in Palestine, but tomorrow it could be climate action, workers’ rights, or any other movement that challenges power structures.

Universities have historically been hubs of activism and student life, but these policies risk turning our campus into a sterile, tightly-controlled environment where dissent is inconvenient and unwelcome.

By clamping down on protests, the University aligns itself with a national and global trend of anti-protest legislation.

This emboldens other institutions – particularly in the Group of Eight universities – to adopt similar measures.

Interested in fighting for free speech on campus and against course cuts? Join the Education Action Group! You can find the EAG on Instagam under 'usyd.education.action' to see when meetings or campaigns are happening.

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However, the encampment also revealed the challenges activists face: public safety narratives were weaponised against protesters, and administrative complaints painted the encampment as a source of discomfort for students, rather than what it was; a case study in grassroots organising and community care.

These same narratives now underpin the CAP and Hodgkinson Review recommendations, sending a chilling message to student activists nation-wide.

The fight against these policies requires a reinvigorated student movement that sees these challenges as opportunities.

We must document every instance where these policies are used to silence dissent, bringing them to light and rallying students and staff against them. Building solidarity across campuses and tapping into the history of student organising, we can ensure that no protest is isolated or overlooked. Our efforts today will inspire future generations to uphold the values of activism and justice.

The CAP and Hodgkinson Review seek to reshape our campus, but their success depends on our complacency. The Gaza solidarity encampment proved that collective action can force important issues upon the notice of those in power.

By refusing to be silenced, students can defend the right to protest and ensure that universities remain vibrant spaces for dissent, debate and change.

The fight against anti-protest policies isn’t just about reclaiming our right to dissent – it’s about preserving the soul of student activism and the values it embodies, and rising to this moment together.

The encampment on the University’s Quadrangle lawns last year was more than a protest; it was a powerful assertion of students’ agency Graphic opposite by Luke Mešterović.

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Why the CAP could be unconstitutional

By Lilah Thurbon Author’s note: I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. I am just a law student with internet access and a bone to pick with University management.

The University of Sydney has effectively banned protests on its campuses.

This authoritarian crackdown on free political expression began in June 2024 with the adoption of the Campus Access Policy (CAP) that bans, amongst other things, the use of megaphones, disruptive demonstrations and camping (oh, how on the nose!).

This growing trend of repression looks set to continue with the University’s commitment to adopt, in full, the recommendations handed down in the Hodgkinson External Review. These include a blanket ban on protest encampments, attaching banners to footbridges, and lecture announcements. The review also recommends that the University implement an Orwellian-sounding “New Civility Rule,” under which “each person utilising a word or phrase is responsible … to identify to the audience the context in which it is used” or risk facing disciplinary action for misconduct.

This is antithetical to the true value of education.

Universities should be places of robust and unfettered participation in public discourse.

Such a restrictive approach to free speech and political expression is just one brick in an ever-expanding wall of corporatisation and conservatism sweeping university campuses across the country. The University aims not only to stifle opposition to management, but to keep the neoliberal hegemony its education is responsible for reproducing firmly intact.

This is antithetical to the true value of education.

Universities should be places of robust and unfettered participation in public discourse.

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This is for lots of reasons. They’re places steeped in traditions of student radicalism, with rich histories of protest against historic injustices like war in Vietnam, apartheid in South Africa and, most recently, Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza. Their campuses are places where young people form their political beliefs and put their ideologies to the test in public forums; from lecture halls, to debating societies, to the theatre that is student politics.

Participation in public discourse is also a stated object of at least one university, the University of Sydney, in its enabling legislation, the University of Sydney Act 1984 (NSW).

This is not the only legal significance of the public discourse when it comes to universities. Public discourse is often political discourse, and participation in such discourse necessarily takes the form of political communication.

In the landmark case of Lange v Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the High Court held that “freedom of communication on matters of government and politics is an indispensable incident of that system of representative government which the Constitution creates” through the requirement that the House of Representatives and the Senate shall be “directly chosen by the people.” The Court went on to decide that “legislative power cannot support an absolute denial of access by the people to relevant information about the functioning of the government in Australia.”

Their campuses are places where young people form their political beliefs and put their ideologies to the test in public forums; from lecture halls, to debating societies, to the theatre that is student politics.

In layman’s terms, the constitutional protection of political communication is constructed as freedom from government restraint on political expression, as opposed to a positive right to express political views.

COUNTERCOURSE 2025

preferable alternative to traversing a series of untested constitutional questions before the full bench of the High Court. However, this is not the case.

While section 6(2)(d) of the University of Sydney Act plainly states that an object of the University is to promote participation in public discourse, there is no broader protection for political discourse. This means that the University can and does put various bad faith arguments to the effect of “the CAP is necessary to preserve the base level civility required for such participation.” Absent the enlivening of the constitutional protection, it’s unclear why the enabling legislation cannot authorise the CAP.

This means that courts can only intervene on a constitutional basis if a restriction on political expression, like the CAP, is an exercise of governmental (or ‘public’) power not compatible with the system of representative government from which the freedom is derived.

There is also a broader victory in subjecting the University to constitutional limits that prevent them from limiting the political communication of their students.

The legal status of the CAP and the Hodgkinson recommendations, once implemented, is murky. It’s unclear whether the authority exercised by the University Senate in adopting them can be limited by the constitutional protection for free political communication.

However, I think there’s a compelling argument that it is.

If the University derives its legal capacity wholly from an Act of state parliament, and the legislative authority of state parliaments is limited by the implied freedom of political communication, it then makes sense that the authority of the governing body of a university is as well. An act of state parliament should not be able to confer powers that, were they exercised by the state parliament itself, would be unconstitutional.

This is a far stronger protection than relying merely on a statutory object, as the implied freedom of political communication delineates clear limits on public power that do not rely on a specific interpretation of a statutory object. For example, ‘political communication’ has been interpreted to include things like protest, which discourse could be understood as omitting.

Finally, there is also a broader victory in subjecting the University to constitutional limits that prevent them from limiting the political communication of their students.

It’s a bold and authoritative declaration that university campuses ought to be bastions of robust political debate that allows the left to continue to mobilise free from fears of adverse action. A successful constitutional challenge would also set a precedent that could be relied on in the fight against repression more generally, such as mounting legal challenges to anti-protest laws.

University campuses ought to be bastions of robust political debate that allows the left to continue to mobilise free from fears of adverse action.

The University of Sydney, like all other public Australian universities, is a statutory corporation. Its legal capacity is therefore derived from its enabling legislation. In practice, this means the University cannot take any course of action that isn’t authorised by the Act of parliament under which it’s incorporated. Per the doctrine of ultra vires, which universities are bound by as statutory corporations, acts that are inconsistent with the explicit provisions of their enabling legislation are invalid to the extent of that inconsistency.

University management realises the power of student unionism and student activists. It’s why they’re throwing out the nation’s proverbial rule book to try and quash it.

But there’s power in numbers and change in desperate need of being made — it’s time to scrap the CAP and get on with it!

It might seem like a legal suit on the grounds that the University has contravened its enabling legislation is a

Art by Katarina Butler

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STOP THE CUTS TO OUR E

EXPLAINING THE CORPORATE

BY YOSHI LEUNG Universities across Australia are being attacked with cuts to our education. Already, we have seen $250 million in cuts at ANU. This means 600+ staff are set to be sacked and the faculty of health and medicine disestablished. Staff estimate 40% of all courses are to be abolished at UOW, where the entire languages department is being cut. Similar restructures are happening at Macquarie Uni, UNSW, UTS. Now, wideeyed students are enrolling just as USYD management is cutting $90-110 million from our education. According to the 2025 USYD handbook, 69 units have already been shed from the arts alone, including 20 units from philosophy.

The university will spend millions on marketing to attract prospective students. Instead of the exciting and empowering education that USYD promotes, students can look forward to a watered-down education and less degree choice. Things especially don’t add up when USYD boasted a profit of $351.8 million in 2023. This is following a whopping profit of $1.08 billion in 2021, where in the same year the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences made a $135 million surplus despite justifying cuts on ‘financial hardship’.

Why is this Happening?

This round of cuts was initially justified due to Labor’s proposed international student cap, which would limit international enrolments to 270,000 across Australian Universities. It’s no secret that Universities use international students as cash cows, whose student fees can be four times more than the domestic student. With their second-largest source of revenue threatened, University Vice Chancellors opposed the student caps, and rushed to implement austerity measures to make back the $110 million it estimated to lose in forecasted revenue – as in, $110 million more in profit – as if you needed more proof that universities are run like greedy corporations.

But even though Labor’s international student cap bill was blocked, course cuts and job losses are going ahead anyway. That’s because universities are driven by a much deeper issue: profit. Under capitalism, education is bought and sold to students. Neoliberal restructures of education, like increasing class sizes and cutting less profitable courses, helps universities save money in order to make more profit. But it doesn’t stop there, as a profit-driven entity the University is not content with the millions it rakes in every year.

Education cuts are a choice Of course, university executives don’t want to sacrifice their own million-dollar salaries to reap rewards, so while staff Image: Joan Wong for the Chronicle

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EDUCATION! UNIVERSITY

are being sacked or casualised – being fed lines of how the university has it tough – Vice Chancellor Mark Scott’s pay can rise by $75,000 in 2023 to a total of $1.17 million (more than the Prime Minister!).

This is why we will continue to see stark contradictions between the massive profits of our universities and worsening learning and working conditions. USYD management is choosing to implement cuts to education to maximise profits at the expense of students and staff. This is the reality of education under capitalism.

The university should be using its millions to subsidise the costs of education because we should have a right to education for education’s sake, but this would hurt its bottom line.

More than just Cuts Recently, FASS has proposed to staff the entrenching of a 4500 words per hour marking rate, which will put more pressure on already overworked and underpaid staff and drastically decrease the quality of feedback students will receive. Furthermore, USYD management is planning to implement more mandatory ‘program-wide’ courses like FASS1000, an infamous core subject for first-year BA/BAS students, for every year of all degrees. Standardised courses such as FASS1000 centralise majors within the discipline so specialised units can be discontinued and costs cut under the guise of promoting equitable assessments. Similar models have been introduced in other universities, including UOW’s new 8/8/8-degree structure. The neoliberalisation of our university education takes many forms but all lead to less degree choice, course cuts, major job losses, worse studentstaff ratios and worse learning and working conditions.

How do we fight?

Students have a right to attend university that prioritises improving working and learning conditions for staff and students. But USYD executives have fundamentally opposed interests to students and staff, so we cannot appeal to them for change.

This is why you should join in the fight to stop the cuts at USYD! The Education Action Group organises in a long tradition of student activism, which understands the strategy to win involves masses of students and staff coming out to protest when our education is under attack. Only then can we organise against the increasing neoliberalisation of our university and work towards building an alternative where education is not run for the profits of the minority, but the interests of those who make the university run!

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THE SYDNEY UNIV KHANH TRAN AND GRACE STREET DIG UP THE DIRTY LIT

It’s no surprise that the University of Sydney is wealthy, sitting on a handsome $4.43 billion endowment. We hear you ask: just how much is that figure? Here’s the answer: that number is more than three times our closest rival down south at the University of Melbourne ($1.33 billion), taking top spot as Australia’s wealthiest university by a wide margin.

Data that we obtained from a freedom of information (FoI) request under the NSW Government Information (Public Access) Act 2009 (GIPA) revealed that the University holds shares in over 400 companies as of March 2024. Among them are five weapon manufacturers, another thirty-five are either in the fossil fuel industry, mining or contractors within the sector. This is all before we consider other unethical investments especially in gambling and companies tied to Israeli occupation and human rights violations.

For these reasons, we’ve compiled The Dirt List, because you should know what your student fees are going towards:

WEAPONS MANUFACTURERS

Safran is France’s second-largest arms manufacturer.

It produces commercial and military aircrafts, missile launching systems and other arms. The company registered revenues exceeding $38 billion in 2023.

The company has an ongoing record of working with Israeli defense companies, with Safran signing a Memorandum of Understanding with Israel-based Rafael Advanced Defense System in 2021.

In January last year, protests against Safran were led by Palestine Action France following the firm’s work “with Elbit to develop the “patroller” drone which is now being used in Gaza”.

Airbus is one of the 15 largest arms companies in the world and has been identified as a key company in the border industrial complex

by Border Wars reports for its helicopters, drones and border security systems in Africa, Europe, Australia and the Middle East.

Airbus closely collaborates with Israel’s Ministry of Defense’s Directorate of Defense Research and Development, long-term partner of Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), and together they have worked together to create a Remotely Piloted Aircraft System (RPAS) which is used to spot refugees and migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean sea to Europe. According to the April 2021 Border Wars Briefing report co-published by Transnational Institute and Stop Wapenhandel, Airbus is the contractor for one of the largest border security projects worldwide: the construction of a €2 billion border surveillance system along the borders of Saudi Arabia, a country with one of the most repressive regimes in the world. The Airbus P-3 Orion surveillance planes were used until 2022 by the Australian Air Force as part of the highly controversial maritime wall targeting refugees arriving by boat.

Airbus is also involved in the production of nuclear weapons and is the exclusive provider of ballistic missiles used in the French nuclear arsenal.

Woodward is an American munitions manufacturer based in

BOYCOTT, DIVESTMENT AND SANCTIONS TARGETS

Colorado with more than $3 billion in revenue. As documented

by Palestinian journalist Alam Sadeq and published in the New York Times, GBU-39 bomb fragments with parts identified with Woodward were found in Rafah on 29 May 2024 that killed at least 45 Palestinians and wounded hundreds more displaced civilians.

The goal of our FOI in 2024 was to unearth the University’s ties to Israeli companies complicit in occupation and genocide in Palestine. However, much of this information was withheld for privacy and sensitivity reasons, or obscured by the vague admission that “the University has identified $2.25m of exposure to Israeli companies in the private equity and venture capital funds (which the University is unable to sell).”

of honorarium payments and travel payments. These are two major Israeli universities, that the University of Sydney is partnered with, which are complicit in the occupation of Palestinian land and the genocide of Palestinians through the location of their campuses and vigorous support for Israel’s war in Gaza.

While the University confirmed that it did not have investments in companies featured on the OHCHR database of companies conducting business in illegal Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, but their accounts showed over $1 million spent on AirBnB and over $300,000 on Booking. com. The FOI data also revealed our University holds shares in many prominent companies targeted by the BDS movement for their complicity in violations of Palestinian rights, including Amazon.com, Walt Disney, Adidas, and Domino’s Pizza.

It also listed the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv University as “foreign suppliers,” to whom there was a long list PAG E 14

The University is also indirectly complicit in supporting Israel’s Elbit Systems through one of its key fund managers, French banking conglomerate BNP Paribas. BNP Paribas was appointed as one of USyd’s fund administrators in September 2024.

According to a 2022 report by Don’t Buy Into Occupation, a coalition of 25 civil society organisations across Palestine and Europe, the French banking conglomerate lent approximately US$83 million to Elbit Systems, making it “the largest European lender to institutions and companies active in the occupation and colonisation of Palestine.”

Furthermore, as per French newspaper Le Monde, BNP Paribas confirmed that it helped financing the Israeli defense giant, but apparently only by financing the export of arms to NATO COUNTERCOURSE 2025

VERSITY DIRT LIST TLE SECRETS OF AUSTRALIA’S WEALTHIEST UNIVERSITY countries. While they may be able to turn a blind eye to financing the weapons sent directly to Israel to be used against Palestinians, they are still bankrolling and supporting Elbit Systems as a global defence company carrying out genocide.

This is on top of allegations that the banking giant has underwritten more than US$28 billion in loans to companies complicit in illegal Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (The West Bank).

FOSSIL FUEL AND MINERAL COMPANIES The number of companies tied to these two industries amounts to 35. By numerical count, this means that this accounts for 11% of all companies that USyd invest in (excluding LICs). This is huge. This is a list of some of them (as of March 2024): Many of these names are constantly involved in desecration of sacred First Nations sites: Rio Tinto recently destroyed Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura Country and ancient sites with their detonation of Juukan Gorge in the Pilbara in 2023, and in the same year BHP was reported to have been underpaying Australian workers for 13 years. There are also a significant number of companies who run mines, particularly in critical minerals and gold or lithium.

GAMBLING In December last year, we worked with The Guardian Australia‘s Henry Belot to unveil the University’s deeply concerning ties to Australia’s and the global gambling industry. As the country with the world’s highest number of gambling machines per head of population and the world’s largest gambling loss per capita (Queensland Government Statistician’s Office, 2021).

It’s hard to escape the perception that USyd has a significant conflict of interest when it comes to gambling. Profits that come from enormous gambling harm that the University itself purports to alleviate and design solutions for through its Centre of Excellence for Gambling Research.

The University’s answer is that its shares and the gambling industry’s $600,000 sponsorship the Centre of Excellence – a self-designated rather than independently designated title unlike those appointed by the Australian Research Council (ARC) – does not compromise its research into gambling harms. USyd has yet to disclose the full extent of its ties, withholding the market value of the relevant investments. We are still waiting.

Aristocrat deserves special mention because the company also frequently appears in USyd’s Careers Fairs. In March 2024, Aristocrat was USyd’s 23rd top investment.

The University of Sydney also invests in UnitedHealthCare, infamous for its 32% insurance denial rate.

WHAT’S NEXT? The Education Action Group firmly opposes the corporatisation of universities and is committed to making universities free and responsible public institutions that do not use the fees taken from exploited students to invest in unethical companies.

We are lodging more FOIs to investigate the properties and companies that Australian universities have investments in or ties to in their endowment and other funds.

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WHAT CAN THE ALP OFFER STUDENTS? PAGE 16

" CONSECUTIVE LABOR GOVERNMENTS CAN BE PUSHED TO BE BETTER, AND ARE THE ONLY FEASIBLE PATH TO CHANGE." ANGUS FISHER BELIEVES A RE-ELECTED LABOR GOVERNMENT IS A BETTER OFFERING FOR STUDENTS. Before I begin my case, I note that my own and National Labor Students’ (NLS) belief is that education should be free and accessible to all.

I will explain how this world is most likely under consecutive Labor governments and through the strategy NLS undertakes. I also note the flaws of the ALP — this piece does not seek to undermine them, but instead urges readers to ask more from the party. There are two parts to this debate — firstly, what will the next three years be; and secondly, what will the future beyond that look like for Australia’s tertiary policy? At the end of this, hopefully, you will see why I believe there is value in re-electing a Labor government for the benefit of university and tertiary students.

poor. Most notable was Morrison’s neoliberal Job-ready Graduates Package, which significantly increased the fees for humanities and arts degrees to “provide more opportunities for people to gain the qualifications they will require for the jobs of the future”, effectively incentivising enrollment in courses deemed to lead to employment. Students’ enrolment patterns did not change. The Liberal government also oversaw cuts to university funding, increases to student fees, and the attempt to decrease the HELP debt repayment threshold from $55,000 to $42,000. If the parties follow their past policy settings, a newly elected Liberal government will be catastrophic for students.

The debate has to be set up as such: there are two ways Australia could look post-election. Either Anthony Albanese remains our Prime Minister or Peter Dutton is elected as the 32nd Prime Minister of Australia. Regardless of the promise of the Greens’ education policy such as free university, they will not be elected to government this year (and I believe that they will never be elected to government, especially considering their recent drop in popularity). Hence, we either have an ALP or LNP government. The question then becomes “is the ALP or LNP better for students?” The answer is the ALP.

A re-elected Labor government is a better offering to students. However, I also believe that consecutive Labor governments will be best for students in the long run. This is because, in my opinion, they can be pushed to be better and are the only feasible path to change. NLS’ strategy for this is a two-pronged approach, whereby we push for change inside and outside of the ALP. This strategy recognises the reality of Australian democracy — that it is often slowmoving and hence incremental in change — and seeks to push it to the left to get reforms like free education. However, this strategy only works if we are honest and steadfast in our critique of the party, for being content with the status quo is the greatest failure.

To prove this, let’s compare the current and prior Labor and Liberal governments respectively. The current government has overseen the Australian Universities Accord, which resulted in reforms like a National Student Ombudsman to address student grievances such as student safety and welfare and ensure fair treatment across universities. They are also partially paying placements in nursing, midwifery, teaching, and social work. There was also the introduction of a minimum allocation of Student Services and Amenities Fee (SSAF) of 40% of SSAF revenue to student-led organisations. Beyond the Accords, they cut $3 billion in student debt for 3 million Australians, capped indexation to the lowest of the CPI or WPI, and expanded fee-free TAFE. The prior Liberal government’s track record on education policy is comparatively

Angus Fisher is a member of the Australian Labor Party.

Anthony Albanese protesting against course cuts, 1983

COUNTERCOURSE 2025

" THE AMOUNT OF ATTACKS CARRIED OUT ON STUDENTS BY THE LABOR PARTY IS ALMOST IMPRESSIVE." EMMA SEARLE ARGUES THAT LEFT-WING PEOPLE MUST SERIOUSLY FIGHT AGAINST THE SYSTEM ITSELF. $8 per hour, in sharp contrast to the legally mandated minimum wage of $23 per hour. On average, a rental in Sydney costs $770/week, and thanks to Labor’s policy, students will be able to pay for less than half of their rent, earning only $319.50 for a full-time work week. As students go hungry during placement, we should be grateful that, unlike the Liberals who say “let them eat cake,” Labor tosses bread crumbs from atop Albanese’s $4.3 million mansion.

But what about NLS’ strategy of pushing “for change inside and outside of the ALP”?

NTEU members during the staff strikes , 2023

A tale as old as time; as we head into another federal election year, defenders of the Labor Party dangle people’s ire for the Liberals as an electoral carrot to claim another term in office. This should be called out for what it is: utter concession to the crimes of the ALP. The amount of attacks the Labor Party has carried out against the working class, the oppressed, and students in just over two years is almost impressive.

The most immediate concern for most Australians is the grueling pressures of the cost-of-living crisis.

In the past year, all five Living Cost Indexes (LCIs) have risen. Most acutely affected by this is students, with rent prices surging by more than 10% in the last year, and 65% of students cutting back on food expenditure due to immense financial burden. On top of the insurgent wave of economic crisis hitting young people today, our futures are also being swamped by an ocean of HECS debt. The indexation rate on HECS was 0.6% in 2021, and is now 4%.

While NLS waves Labor’s $3 billion dollar student debt cut as a win for students, it reminds me of the price-gouging stunt being pulled by Woolworths and Coles: hike up the price of goods, in this case increase indexation, then slightly lower the hiked price and sell it as a discount.

As the living pressures on students skyrockets, the Labor Party introduced sorely inadequate tertiary education policies to win back the hearts of students.

One of the most insulting reforms has been partially paid placements, bestowing upon students a pitiful

S R C E D U C AT I O N AC T I O N G R O U P

Let’s first take the incident of Fatima Payman’s expulsion from the Labor Party. Nine months into the genocide in Gaza — while Penny Wong was busy cutting UNRWA funds to Palestine, and Albanese providing Israeli weapons companies with millions of dollars — then Labor member, Fatima Payman, threatened to cross the floor on the question of Palestinian statehood. Labor’s response? To run her out of the ALP for daring to break “party unity”.

The most egregious of Labor’s crimes, however, was putting the biggest construction union, the CFMEU, under dictatorial administration. Strikes are a powerful means of demanding more from the ruling class, but this policy demolished key democratic structures within the union, replacing 268 elected officials with a single man named Mark Irvings, who now boasts a $600,000 salary. Everywhere you look, Labor has sought to crush any resistance to its abysmal treatment of working people.

Unlike NLS, who seeks to sow progressive illusions in the Labor Party, left-wing people must organise a serious fight against the system itself. The ALP has proven itself a faithful ally of the rich and powerful — committed to suppressing dissent from within its own ranks, from protestors and from the unions — revealing the necessity to redirect our focus from pleading with pro-capitalist parties and toward rebuilding a mass protest movement.

Emma Searle is a member of Socialist Alternative.

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COUNTER COURSE HANDBOOK 2025

Sketches by Hannah Rose. Doodles by Grace Street. Notes on left by Ishbel Dunsmore, note on right by Taylah Cooper.

S R C E D U C AT I O N AC T I O N G R O U P

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COUNTERCOURSE 2025

STUDENTS AGAINST PLACEMENT POVERTY

ARON KHUC

After years of student campaigning allowed for everyone raises serious Art by Sam Wallman from groups such as Students concerns about what the Labor Against Placement Poverty (SAPP), government considers ‘adequate ments, particularly Social Work and the federal Labor government has reforms’. Compared to police trainee Nursing, have completion rates that passed the Commonwealth Prac payments that are paid around 6 fall well below the average completimes more than the proposed wage tion rate of all Bachelor degrees.

Payment bill. for teaching, nursing and midwifery According to the Universities The bill introduces payments for students who are entering a largely Australia Graduate Rate Statistics university students undergoing female-dominated industry, it is 2021, the average Bachelor degree social work, nursing and midwifery, disgraceful that students have to completion rate was 62.6% while and teaching placements. Yet there prove that they are poor enough to Social Work stood at 49.5% and is a clear lack of understanding of receive payment for their labour with Education at 52.9%, despite these placement poverty’s severity and its massive bureaucratic hurdles. The being highly essential fields. In a impact on students amid a cost-of- discrepancy between the wages of time where there is a critical shortage living crisis. From July, a $319.50 a police trainees and students under- of these workers who work with the week means-tested payment would going work placements reflects the most vulnerable, provide essential be available for social work, nursing priorities of the Labor government healthcare, and educate the future and midwifery, and teaching work and broader views of what is consid- generation, these reforms are not adequate for students in placement placements. However, there are ered more valuable to society. poverty. multiple caveats to this. Students are required to report their parents’ or guardians’ incomes which will inevThese payments are also not availitably screw many students who are able to most other students who are independent of or are ‘no contact’ required to do placements, including with parents and guardians, or earn those in allied health, medicine, higher than the threshold. Adding salt veterinary medicine, engineering, to the wound, international students and agriculture, and who are strugare excluded from receiving these To satisfy their degree requirements gling with placement poverty for their payments despite already having and graduate, social work students accreditation. Students should not be to pay approximately $45-70,000 need to complete 1000 hours of excluded from receiving wages for per year upfront for their studies, placement (equivalent to 26 full-time their labour because they have not on top of the costs of moving to weeks), nursing students 800 hours completed a certain degree, partica different country, soaring rent (equivalent to 20 full-time weeks) ularly when faced with the near-imprices and dealing with cost-of- and education students 600 hours possible conditions of getting by in living pressures. Furthermore, there (equivalent to 16 full-time weeks). contemporary Australia. All placeis another restriction to accessing the During these periods, students are ments must be paid liveable and payments, where you need to have generally unable to hold other jobs universal wages, and we must push been working more than 15 hours a and often have to choose between the Labor government to make it week before the placement, show- purchasing fuel for their place- illegal for placements to be unpaid. casing just how out-of-touch the ments or getting food on the table Labor party is with young people. and a roof over their heads. Many students have delayed their degrees The Commonwealth Prac Payment of or completely dropped their degrees Art opposite by $319.50 equates to $8 per hour for a because they were unable to afford Jasmine Al-Rawi.

40-hour working week (35% below to continue to be in placement the poverty line) which is not even poverty. Many courses with place-

“All placements must be paid liveable and universal wages”

S R C E D U C AT I O N AC T I O N G R O U P

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TOMADA! ARGENTINIAN STUDENTS TAKE THE FIGHT TO MILEI TOBIAS HANSSON

In December 2023, amid recession, rampant inflation and a staggering poverty rate, far-right politician and TV personality Javier Milei was elected as President of Argentina.

This was to be the beginning of a nightmare for the ordinary people of the country. Since then, Milei (a former rock musician, a climatechange denier and a friend of Jordan Belfort, the Wolf of Wall Street) has taken a chainsaw to the public sector, slashing public spending and taxes for the rich, attacking unions, and going on a privatisation and deregulation spree.

One of his favourite targets has been Argentine universities. He’s cut the funding of public universities by 71%, arguing that students form part of a privileged elite.

In October 2024, he said, “In a country where the vast majority of children are poor and do not know how to read or write or perform a basic mathematical operation, the myth of free university becomes a subsidy from the poor to the rich.” This is bullshit. 48% of public university students in Argentina are first-generation students from poor, working-class families, and the vast majority have to work to support themselves while studying.

University staff are also critically underpaid, with many living below the poverty line, and their meagre wages are now under direct attack.

Milei threatens the future of the entire working class. Argentine students and staff have a common interest in fighting his sociopathic policies. As a student said, “They are taking away from us the possibility of dreaming. For many, the public university is the only possibility of studying. It is taking away our future, and we are not going to give it up that easily.”

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As this suggests, the students have thrown this rotten deal back in Milei’s face. They’ve joined a mass movement against his government that has seen 1.5 million Argentinians out on the streets. 500,000 students have marched in Buenos Aires alone, joining countless ordinary workers in bringing their rage to the government’s door. The complicity of Argentina’s congress has enraged young people across the country, and since October, beginning at the University of Buenos Aires, over 100 assemblies of students and staff have formed to organise the fight against Milei. Responding to the arguments of socialists, they’ve voted en masse to occupy their universities. Since then, 72 faculties at 30 public universities are tomada (meaning ‘taken’, i.e. occupied by students) and more than 100 faculties are taking some kind of action. While the occupations have been concentrated in Buenos Aires, they’ve spread across the entire country, from Córdoba to Santa Cruz. The students have taken complete control of their universities, performing all the tasks of the administration.

The extent of student power is remarkable. Students have taken over cleaning, security, arranging lessons and providing food.

They’ve barred the deans and faculty administration members from entering the buildings, only allowing staff inside to clock on.

Lessons are now conducted on public roads; the classrooms have been turned into sleeping spaces.

Film screenings, live music, games and karaoke keep morale high while political discussions are held regularly. A mood of confidence and excitement has gripped the student body. As one student said, “The idea is t o

start taking back the social, the political, the polis, which is all of us–when the people are organised, we become the danger!”

Importantly, none of this would be possible without the leadership of student activists. In an increasingly radical, left-wing movement, socialists have played a significant role. Chief among them is the Workers’ Socialist Movement (MST), a Trotskyist political party that has also helped organise rank-and-file trade union action and two general strikes. Facing right-wing careerists in the student unions who want to take over leadership of the struggle to wind it down, MST activists have fought to expand the movement’s horizons.

Working together with staff, as well as ordinary workers across the country, the students have managed to successfully defeat a number of bills attacking their rights and living standards. But the battle for the universal right to a quality education continues.

The courage, creativity and rebellious spirit of the Argentinian students offer an inspiring example for us to follow. Here in Australia, we also face attacks on our education, this time driven by the universities themselves. There are many lessons on how to fight this for us to learn.

However, the occupations show what we are capable of. When students and staff get organised and fight for their interests, they become a force to be reckoned with.

However, in order to become that force, we need activists willing to put in the time and effort needed to fight the system, grow our numbers, and make our own Milei’s tremble in their boots.

COUNTER COURSE 2025

AUSTRALIA TODAY AND THE DEATH OF THE LUCKY COUNTRY TARA MAR OCCHI

Traditional conservative histories of Australia will characterise us ‘The Lucky Country’. This is a term that is layered with connotations to the hard-working, hard-drinking larrikin man, red-cladded brick homes, sprawling backyards of the far suburbs, and lazy days in the hot sun. ‘The Lucky Country’ is a country defined by some as ‘classless’ because it constantly presents itself as a land of opportunity.

Alongside this, ‘The Lucky Country’ is defined by its egalitarian image, the celebrated figures of the ‘bush legend’ and larrikins, as well as an aversion to snobbery and defiance of authority. Titling Australia as ‘The Lucky Country’ continues a mythriddled narrative that Australia, even with all of its flaws, is a land of immense opportunity for all, and with a little hard work and perseverance, anyone can achieve what their heart desires.

However, for a good majority of working people within this country, this image of ‘The Lucky Country’ falters at the reality that many young Australians are facing today. Currently, working Australians, students, and other young people are the ones who are suffering the bare-brunt of the stick.

As wages continue to stagnate, rents continue to rise, and the housing market being inaccessible to young Australians, the cost of living is now taking a great toll on the mental health of young people, where 55 percent of Australians aged 15-19 have become greatly concerned about future financial security. How can you blame them when previous generations seemed to have it so easy? Take the issue of housing affordability: In the 1960s, an Australian worker with a full-time income could afford to buy a decent family home in the inner city. In today’s Australia, not only is it most likely that the average working Australian will S R C E D U C AT I O N AC T I O N G R O U P

need at least two incomes to enter the property market, but saving a deposit of 10% will now take 20 years in comparison to around 35 years ago, where it took an average of four years.

Further, the question of even buying a home in the inner-city is not even feasible, and unless an individual is in line to inherit an innercity property, there is a little chance that any young person attempting to buy a property in any of Australia’s capital cities could do so on their own accord. As such, those attempting to enter the market have been told to look elsewhere while wealthy property investors and landlords continue to take advantage of supplyshortages, charging whatever they please, so long as they gain profit.

But why is it that this generation of young people continue to suffer the worst of an economic downturn? One has to look back on the history of decades of self-serving policies from both the Liberal and Labor Governments which have continued to blow up in the face of this generation.

From the 1980s onwards, economic rationalism and the rise of neoliberalism gave way for the private sector to prosper. Though both parties have continued to engage in this practice, it is important to note that the current federal government, despite its insistence on being for the Australian workingclass, has historically been responsible for the decrease in living standards amongst working Australians.

One such example of this was the Prices and Incomes Act of 1983, which was introduced by Bob

Hawke’s Labor Government in 1983. The Accords, supported by the ACTU and some unions, aimed to provide a “social wage” for Australian workers, effectively suppressing any militant response to workers asking for a wage rise.

The implementation of the Accords would later go on to affect Australian workers during the early 1990s recession where unemployment increased.

The current Labor Government has also played a large role in the increasing living standards that are facing current Australians.

Under the Albanese Government, Australian workers have seen the largest fall in disposable income in the past four years, households are indebted, and wages fail to rise.

And so the death of the so-called ‘Lucky Country’ is in full-swing in both a popular and socio-economic context. If the simplest necessities of life are unreachable to the average working Australian, then the real question is what can Australians do today to fight back against a system of great inequality? Simply — working Australian and young people across all sectors need to rebuild a real fighting movement against the capitalist system here in Australia and all across the world.

The history of ‘The Lucky Country’ should not be defined by the false notion that Australia is a land of opportunity for all, nor should it be defined by its popular cultural images of the larrikin figures.

Instead, the definitive narrative of Australia should be remembered and continued onwards as the immense class struggle between the capitalist and the worker, and it is this struggle that should be continued to be rebuilt and revitalised amongst the Left as new challenges emerge for the Australian Left today.

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puzzles 15 These were held during the encampment to educate and build community

Across 1 The _________ Free Speech Movement in the1960s

17 The __________

Action Group, the activist collective that put together this publication

Crossword

3 Bruce _________,

whose review into USyd recommends restrictions on freedom of speech

18 Campus ______

Policy, the 2024 rule that limits free speech on campus

8 Luigi Mangione shot

the CEO of this company (that USyd has shares in)

Down

10 Acronym for the

campaign for students to get paid on placement 12 Construction union under attack by the federal Labor government 14 Number of prongs in

NLS’ strategy toward the ALP

2 The annual coal blockade held in Newcastle 4 The name of the magazine you are holding right now

(Down clues continue on bottom left)

Stuck on the crossword? Read through the articles for the answers!

5 The EAG

endorses the Boycott, _________, Sanction movement

in article on the previous page 11 Jasmine and

Word Search Strike Rally

6 The University

______, your 2025 Education Officers

Stopcoursecuts

7 Fatima _______,

13 When workers withdraw their labour, or hitting all ten pins at once in bowling

has a memorandum of understanding with this weapons company Senator expelled from the ALP for her stance on the genocide in Gaza 9 Country with

a vibrant student occupation movement referred to PAGE 24

16 _______

Solidarity Encampment, the largest USyd protest of 2024

Poster Countercourse SRC Megaphone Stall Politics Freespeech Flyer Scrapthecap Protest COUNTER COURSE 2025