Students Plan Fee Protest In Key Marginals

Illawarra Mercury

Tuesday June 3, 2003

By SHARON LABI

ANGRY students will protest in Coalition-held marginal seats across the country to try to derail plans to increase university fees.

A month of mass demonstrations is also being planned for August as opposition mounts against the Federal Government's $1.5 billion higher education reforms.

The National Union of Students warned marginal seats would be targeted in a campaign to force a backdown on reforms that would allow universities to charge up to 30 per cent higher fees above HECS rates.

Students are also angry at proposed new loan schemes and the doubling of domestic full-fee paying places that they claim will see student debt soar.

On the hit list are Coalition seats in regional Victoria, western Sydney, NSW's North Coast, Townsville and marginal seats in Adelaide and Perth.

Student union president Daniel Kyriacou said Education Minister Brendan Nelson's seat of Bradfield would also be targeted despite being safe.

``We'll be getting students to go out there and be in the shopping centres, in the malls and also having stalls outside MPs' offices who are in this government trying to explain to voters in those seats how bad this package is," he said.

The campaign was devised in Canberra yesterday as the Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee released its response to the reforms.

Committee president Professor Deryck Schreuder said the package lacked effective indexation to maintain the value of the Government's investment, and allowed the Government greater intervention in university decisions and autonomy.

He also attacked the linking of essential funding to major changes in governance and workplace relations.

More than $400 million in funding is tied to the industrial reforms being implemented.

The vice-chancellors did however welcome the partial deregulation in fees although regional universities will struggle to fill places with higher fees, and have expressed concern for their future.

But Prof Schreuder said the poorer universities should accept the reforms as a package for the good of the sector.

Australian Democrats education spokeswoman Natasha Stott Despoja said the vice-chancellors were being blackmailed.

Dr Nelson defended the reforms in Parliament yesterday, saying they would deliver a world class tertiary education sector.

(AAP)

© 2003 Illawarra Mercury

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