As part of a nationwide effort against the Australian government ending its enforcement of compulsory union fees, thousands of students across the country have taken to the streets in protest. They are obviously not students of simple logic, as their argument, in the words of the President of the National Union of Students, goes like this: “Let’s be honest, if you didn’t have to pay your taxes you wouldn’t and student organisation fees are exactly the same as that.” “Students are happy to pay them but if they didn’t have to I don’t think they would.” I’d be happy to pay taxes if the alternative was a gun to my head, or what amounts to the same. Same if I wanted to attend a uni course and to do so I had to pay union fees.
Many leftists when attempting to substantiate their viewpoint use as their benchmark an almost unanimously respected fallacy. Same in this case. If only they would go one step further and see the light. Just imagine the debate and possible consequences if they asked the government, “How are compulsory union payments any different from compulsory tax payments?” After all, the student union “reps” are “elected” in a similar way to politicians.
The mainstream media do not dare to investigate the validity of either sides arguments – they simply report what the opposing sides are saying, or represent one of them. And the mainstream media are an accurate representation of what most people feel (not think). It is not too difficult to venture a guess at what universities are teaching these days.
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I’m currently studying abroad for the semester at Australian National University in Canberra, ACT and let me tell you the protesting is annoying (especially the girl across the hall with flyers all over her door).
One thing in general though that I’ve noticed is that Che shirts are like 10x more popular here than the state and the Marxist club in general is way more popular than the one back home. I don’t know if that means anything, but it seems like there’s much greater sympathy for statism than in the States anyway. I’d never seen a CCCP shirt until I came here.
I always laugh when I hear members of the current government (which is the highest taxing in Australia’s history and supposedly conservative) say that students shouldn’t have to pay for services that they don’t use.
As per your comment there is no difference between compulsory union fees and taxes but media commentators compare the two but don’t come to the logical conclusion that both are immoral.
I’m an Australian student, and president of the local Liberal Club (Liberal means something different here).
Re: the numbers of students, Australia has around 600,000 higher education students altogether. It looks like about 5000 turned out nationwide. These are the standard rent-a-crowd lefties. In fact, one union even paid bounties to groups who could rustle up the most bodies!
Re: Che Guevara, CCCP parephenalia, Australia was never as involved in the cold war as the USA. Secondly, a lot of wearers just don’t know what the symbols mean. It’s cool and edgy, but essentially evil. In the USA it’d mean nothing to wear a shirt saying “F**k the Diggers”, over here on Anzac Day you’d be beaten half to death.
Re: the John Howard government, they are very high taxing, though it depends how you count. If you include GST, they are the highest taxing, if you don’t include it, they aren’t. However if you use Rothbard’s Predation Ratio, they’re better than previous governments. Predation has fallen from around 51 to 48 over the first 8 years in office.
Correction –
“but *not* essentially *seen as* evil”
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