‘Education for liberation not for world domination’: student protest in Australia, 1985-2006

Abstract

This thesis charts and analyses student protest in Australia from 1985 to 2006. This period saw an epochal change in Australian universities, with student numbers increasing significantly and tertiary education itself becoming increasingly neoliberal and commodified. Taking issue with the common romanticisation of the Sixties as the defining era of student protest, I argue that students continued to mobilise against the imposition of fees and the process of commodification. Mass rallies and occupations occurred across the continent, and students from metropolitan and regional universities, domestic and overseas backgrounds all engaged in protest. Activism served as a school of dissent, politicising and radicalising those involved beyond the university. At its best, protest even provided a glimpse into an alternate world, where student radicals ‘lived and breathed’ activism and ‘full on fucking direct democracy’ could function, if only momentarily.