Hi! I’m Callum Trew and I study medical imaging on campus while also being an activist. I am a socialist and I’m running with Left Action to be the Faculty of Health Sciences Representative.
Healthcare in Australia has reached new levels of inadequacy. In July of 2025, WA ambulances broke the record for time spent ramping with 7,000 hours spent sitting outside hospitals. That is 7,000 hours of patients being forced to wait due to the underfunding and understaffing of our hospitals. The Labor government is not doing enough. Too many platitudes; not enough action!
It isn’t just workers in healthcare and patients that are doing it rough; it’s also the students. For example: As a student radiographer, I must do 45 weeks of unpaid placement work in order to graduate. Nursing, midwifery, and social work students get paid just over $8 an hour for prac work despite being in incredibly high demand all over Australia.
It is obvious that our government refuses to properly fund and staff our healthcare facilities and education. What is strikingly absurd is where the money is actually being spent. The AUKUS deal - that Labor and the LNP both so adamantly support - has a price tag of $368 billion just on the nuclear submarines themselves! With the Trump administration demanding that US allies (Australia included) boost military spending to 3.5 percent of GDP, this bill will only keep rising.
In the context of nearly 2 years of a genocide in Gaza, the Australian government has done nothing but engage in useless rhetoric against the murder of over 60,000 confirmed dead Palestinians and the planned starvation of an entire people. In addition, Curtin University through its partnerships with pro-Israeli weapons companies is complicit.
We need a student guild that takes up these political issues and is willing to fight for the rights of students and in solidarity with the oppressed. Students have historically always been at the forefront of change in society and that is needed now more than ever. Left Action - Free Palestine is running to push for a student guild that fights for change on and off campus.
Vote [1] Left Action - Free Palestine
Vote [1] Hamide and Emily for NUS Delegate