Protestors have been capsicum sprayed by police during a protest at the Australian Financial Review (AFR) Higher Education Summit in Sydney last Tuesday.
The protest was organised by the National Union of Students (NUS) as well as student activists groups from the University of New South Wales, the University of Technology Sydney and the University of Sydney.
Protestors were sprayed with capsicum spray after making attempts to enter the deck level of Doltone House Jones Bay Wharf where the event was being held, with one protestor who managed to get past a line of police, thrown to ground and detained.
Speaking to protestors outside a different entrances of the venue, USyd SRC Education Officer Deaglan Godwin criticised police action against the protestors, saying the police only uphold the law for the rich.
“It’s to uphold the right of awful ruling class papers like the Australian Financial Review, of companies like Deloitte, of the vice-chancellors of our universities, of the government and the head of industry is to uphold the right of them to meet to discuss how they can f*ck over students and further corprotise our education,” he said
“We have the right to determine what our education will look like and we need to say that it won’t look like furthering the needs of the Australian economy, it won’t be built to service building better bombs, building better mining machines, of further destroying the planet.
“We say our education should be a right and not a privilege.”
Similar sentiments were echoed by several other student activists including NUS Education Officer Luc Velez and USyd SRC Education Officer Lia Perkins, both also condeming police action and calling for signficant changes to univesities.
“University education should not be for profit, it should not be put in small corporatised packages where we take online classes from videos from five years ago and have no face-to-face interactions with our teachers, that is not what education should be,” Perkins said.
“We are all here fighting for a better system, we should keep coming out and keep fighting against management and these people in here [and their] ideas of a corporate university.”
Velez told the Tertangala it was “telling” that no student nor staff representation was at the summit, saying, “We ultimately aren’t looking to have a seat at this table.”
“The only way to truly hold our universities accountable is by building the political power to force the change we want to see. We need a culture of connection, community and resistance on campus. The protest about the AFR Summit is part of this project.
“This was NOT a summit of universities, it was a meeting of university bosses and their corporate allies. Students and staff are the real universities – our learning, research and community is where all the value of universities comes from.”
The $1000 ticketed summit had panelists consisting of vice-chancellors, university executives as well as business and government representatives, including Vice-Chancellor and President of the University of Wollongong Patricia Davidson and Federal Education Minister Jason Clare.
In a statement to The Tertangala, Davidson said “I attended the Australian Financial Review Higher Education Summit as a panellist, however, I didn’t witness the student demonstration and wasn’t aware of it until after it had occurred.
“I respect the rights of students to publicly express their views in a peaceful manner.”
The protest comes after a number of strikes and protests at universities across New South Wales, with both staff and students calling for better working conditions for staff as well as an end to wage theft and fee hikes among other key issues.
*Article was updated on 13 October 2023 to correct a typo for ‘capscium’ in the first line.