Hi, I’m Erin Russell. I’m a history student and this year I’m running for President with Left Action - Free Palestine. The world that we are facing as young people is a bleak one. Over the last 10 months we have witnessed a horrific genocide on the people of Gaza, while the Labor government continues to support Israel and our own university maintains research ties with weapons companies who are complicit. We are disproportionately affected by cost of living pressures with sky-rocketing rent and welfare payments well below the poverty line. Our universities continue to charge us tens of thousands of dollars for degrees where staff are so over-stretched (after years of cost cutting) that we can’t get the quality of education that they want to provide us.
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 and that education be free and fully funded, rather than spending hundreds of billions of dollars on nuclear submarines. We should continue fighting for Curtin to cut all ties with companies complicit in genocide by continually getting the word out amongst the student body and involving them in protests.
Left Action - Free Palestine are the people on campus who dedicate much of our time to fighting around these issues. We run in the student elections because we think there should be more people with our approach in the bodies that can affect the most change - the Guild and National Unions of Students. We played a crucial role in the Curtin Gaza solidarity encampment by mobilising students to join both the camp and our many protests against the university executive. We have a history of fighting against the fossil fuel industry, for Indigenous rights, LGBTIQ+ rights, abortion access, and - for many years - Palestine.
Vote [1] Left Action - Free Palestine
Vote [1] Emily and Hamide for Guild Councillors
Vote [1] Emily and Hamide for National Union of Students delegates