Challenges for Australian activism

so... i am now introducing a new blog that will hopefully be useful to people, regardless of which hemisphere they find themselves in.

i am blogging from Australia, as an activist who has participated for the last few years in the student movement in Sydney. I have witnessed a lot of change even over the last 5 years.

Now, we as students are now seeing student organsisations (as we previously knew them) fall apart and transform around us.

Since the Liberal Party got a majority in the senate last December, it has been able to implement its dream policies. Targeting student organisations was the first priority for the government, because historically, student movements in Australia, like those of the rest of the world, are a backbone of many major social movements. In recent years some of these social movements have been the refugee solidarity movement against mandatory detention of undocumented migrants(2000-2006 current) and the anti-uranium, indigenous sovereignty movements, especially the successful campaign to stop Jabiluka Uranium mine (1996-8).

Voluntary Student Unionism (VSU), has been on the agenda for over a decade, (as the Liberals have been in with John Howard as PM since 1996). VSU has been repeatedly defeated by students, defending our right to organise collectively. But now, we are holding our breaths as the legislation will come in in July. Already, around 600 jobs have been lost around the country, as the management of many student organisations has already given in to their fears that they will be in financial difficulty come July. At the same time, many students are continuing to fight the legislation, however the leadership of the National Union of Students has accepted the legislation now and have halted their fight.

However, the most vital element of student organising is the energy from the grassroots, which remains relatively strong in many areas, especially when grassroots organisers can insulate themselves from careerist office bearers and factional headkickers trying to build their political parties. VSU just forces activists to organise in a different way to how they previously did so, to engage in other ways with students, working on an even more shoestring budget than before, and trying to raise funds and maintain groups in different ways.

I do not intend to write this as a negative, depressing post. I think these are interesting times, pregnant with a lot of potential. Just I am writing this to give some context of the challenges we are facing, so that you might appreciate the dilemmas and questions (many of which are currently organisational) that will hopefully come up in my writings in the future.