Hi, I’m James-Benni Brookfield. I’m a socialist and a student activist here at Curtin University studying a Bachelor of Primary Education. This year I’m running with Left Action - Free Palestine to be the Accessibility Officer. I believe we need an urgent fight back in a world of growing inequality. Accessibility is lacking for those in need, especially those in need who are poor. The NDIS scheme is poorly funded and the Disability Support Pension payments are below the poverty line. To make matters worse, the Labor government has continued to cut funding to the NDIS, making a system that was already not serving people effectively even worse.
The Albanese government feels that disabled people are able to be strewn aside. People with disabilities are pushed to the outskirts of society and punished for not being able to participate in the economy. This is not right and it’s one of the many issues that students struggle with today. The standard of our healthcare and education is getting worse, while we watch climate catastrophes and genocide happening on the other side of the world.
But we don’t have to just accept this situation. The reason that student unions exist is to challenge the profit-driven decisions of our universities and our governments. They have the resources and the organising capacity to mobilise students to fight for our rights and for social issues like Palestine. We should be demanding that the government sanction Israel for its war crimes, that welfare be brought up to a livable wage, people with special needs get to access that, and that education be free and fully funded, rather than spending hundreds of billions of dollars on nuclear submarines.
Myself and other members of Left Action - Free Palestine are active participants in movements for social justice - for queer people, for Palestine, for the climate. We need to build activist fightbacks against the horrors of capitalism today. To do that, we need institutions like the Curtin Student Guild and the National Union of Students to use its resources in movements for social justice.
Vote [1] Left Action - Free Palestine
Vote [1] Hamide and Emily for NUS Delegate