student fees

Student activist Joe Hockey protesting the imposition of student fees in 1987

(Article includes 2 versions of the Youtube video of different lengths.) Recommend watching the video footage linked to below. Apologies if you have already seen it. It shows our eminent treasurer leading student protests in 1987 against the imposition of an annual fee upon tertiary students that was quite small relative to the burden being proposed in the current budget.

John Dawkins 1 the then Labor Minister for education who first imposed tertiary student fees

It shows our eminent treasurer leading student protests in 1987 against the imposition of an annual fee upon tertiary students that was quite small relative to the burden being proposed in the current budget.

Joe is proud of his 'up from the bootstraps' personal success, rising to where he has from very modest socio-ecomomic beginnings. Very evidently this success was built on the foundation of a free public education system.

Now wealthy and powerful, Joe is smoking cigars and dancing in celebration as he acts purposefully and directly within his budget to destroy all remnant of the affordable tertiary system that enabled him to rise and flourish. His efforts to end the so-called 'age of entitlement' are a cruel and savage ambition in the context of this background. Words simply cannot capture the essence of such profound and enormous selfishness at work. As many people as possible should see this blatant hypocrisy to be made fully aware of the nature of the fraud that is being perpetrated.

You really would not want to be caught adrift in a lifeboat with this bloke and his running mates. They'd eat your liver while you slept, and then probably whinge that they had no fine wine to wash it down with.

Editor's comment: If the link doesn't work, look for another. It seems that this video is a moving target for being taken off you-tube, but people keep putting it back up. :-)

Here is another version, with more footage of multiple students:

Hypocrite or opportunist? Politician, at any rate.

Footnote[s]

1. ↑ I originally posted then Senator Susan Ryan's photo into this story, mistakenly believing that she had introduced HECS. The Wikipedia article about Susan Ryan explains:

When the Hawke Labor Government was elected in March 1983, Ryan was appointed Minister for Education and Youth Affairs and Minister assisting the Prime Minister for the Status of Women. She was Minister for Education in the second Hawke Ministry and opposed the re-introduction of fees for tertiary education despite strong support in Cabinet for the user-pays principle. She lost the education portfolio in the third Hawke Ministry and was instead given a much reduced role as Special Minister of State. Subsequently the Higher Education Contribution Scheme was introduced to partially fund higher education. Ryan resigned from the Senate on 16 December 1987.

My apologies for that mistake. - Ed