Hi, my name is Chloe Jackson and I’m currently doing my Masters in Teaching. I’m running for Vice President - Education with Left Action: Free Palestine - a party of dedicated activists, ready to fight for the issues that students want to fight for. Curtin University’s complicity in the Gaza genocide has added fuel to the fire of anger for many students, who watch as the death toll rises. Our tuition fees and research have landed in the hands of warmongers and weapons companies, and we’re expected to ignore it. Left Action - Free Palestine activists have not sat idly by, instead playing crucial and leading roles in the ongoing campaign for Curtin to cut weapons ties including the Curtin Gaza Solidarity Encampment, and continuing to mobilise students for protests on-campus and in the city. Our university’s complicity has made freeing Palestine an on-campus issue, but they won’t cut their ties without a fight. We need an activist student guild, ready to put up that fight.
Our education is under attack. Teaching, Nursing and Social Work students were offered an abysmal $9/hour paid prac rate this year, an insulting bandaid on top of industry shortages. Students drop out of these courses because cannot afford to live during prac, and if they graduate, they’re met with underpayment and terrible conditions. Many quit within the first year. Labor’s “generous” offer of $427 million pales in comparison to their military spending, with $368 billion to be spent on nuclear submarines. Meanwhile, our staff are underpaid, welfare is unlivable, fees, rents and health care costs are rising, and attacks on Indigenous people, LQBTQIA+ people and refugees dominate the news. All of this is ignored while our quality of education is subordinated to the needs of Australian imperialism.
The Curtin Student Guild has the potential to be an activist body, using it’s platform to talk about these issues and mobilise students into campaigns fighting injustice and oppression, opposing the for-profit policies of our university and the Labor Government, and in doing so, demanding an end to the genocide in Gaza. As Guild Councillors and NUS Delegates, Left Action - Free Palestine activists will be exactly the radical representation our Guild needs.
Vote [1] Left Action - Free Palestine
Vote [1] Emily and Hamide for Guild Councillors
Vote [1] Emily and Ella for National Union of Students Delegates