Student protests are, unfortunately, ‘un-Australian’
Federal Education Minister Christopher Pyne described student protests to higher education cuts as 'un-Australian'. Political ethicist Dr Piero Moraro says protest is just not part of the Australian culture yet and that's not necessarily something to be proud of.
Last week Mr Pyne described students' angry protest at the Federal Budget as 'incomprehensible, anti-democratic and un-Australian'.
The protests were probably incomprehensible only to Mr Pyne himself. Making higher education twice or thrice more expensive is very unlikely to be received with cheers and applause.
Protest and democracy
Nor are those protests 'anti-democratic' – accountability is a distinguishing feature of democracy, it gives the power to the people but this cannot be the mere once-in-five-years power to cast a ballot.
Democracy is about the power to call the politicians to account for how they are doing their job. This is not the Middle-Age, rulers are not untouchable; their power does not descend from God.
Citizens can call them to account for choices that seem to go against the community's interests and this could well involve a degree of anger, proportionate to the wrongness of the policy denounced.
Mr Pyne might not like being yelled at but that does not make students' protest wrong. In fact, it is also naive to think that yelling is necessarily 'anti-democratic'. Sometimes, it is the only way to be heard.
We must ask: what avenues do students have to affirm their view, while the education system undergoes a radical and merciless restructuring? Should they just sit and watch? Should they wait for an invitation from Q&A to actually talk, rather than simply listen to the Education Minister's unchallenged monologues?
Every theory of democracy argues that citizens have the right to engage in civil disobedience, when they have no means to have their voice heard. In this sense, the current student protests are very 'democratic'.
But are political protests 'un-Australian?
A few years ago, the Tory government in the UK did exactly what the Abbott government is planning; they removed the cap on university tuition fees, which have since tripled.
I remember watching British students occupying universities, blocking city centres, and clashing with the police for weeks, for months, before the law was passed. On the eve the UK Parliament passed the reform, students brought the centre of London to a halt in a massive protest that was finally defused, at least in the media, by the sudden appearance of the royal car through the protest thus transforming that event into an attack to the royal family.
Protests of that magnitude have never occurred in Australia, and that is why many now are tempted to follow Mr Pyne in defining what happened last week as 'un-Australian'.
This is a very young country and a lucky one for sure. Australians are yet to learn that political protest is, often, a necessary means against the power of oligarchies that disguise themselves under 'free and fair elections'. Civil disobedience is a right but also, sometimes, a duty we have as democratic citizens.
A country that finds protesting 'incomprehensible, anti-democratic and un-Australian' is the least likely to be a genuine democracy. Looking at those students marching in the streets of Sydney and Melbourne, we should not feel ashamed; rather we should rejoice at a new generation of young, democratically committed Australian citizens.
Dr Piero Moraro is lecturer in justice studies at the CSU School of Humanities and Social Sciences in Bathurst and a research fellow at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics.
Dr Piero Moraro is lecturer in justice studies at the CSU School of Humanities and Social Sciences in Bathurst and a research fellow at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics.
Allan Catlin
May 28, 2014 at 11:45 am
student protests and democracy
Thank goodness for people like Dr Moraro for putting protests into perspective. The definition of democracy is apparently misunderstood by politicians, or is it just ignored when it suits? I'm inclined to believe that the concept of democracy really is misunderstood. It is seen as a way to describe a country's political persuasion, but how many democracies are truly democratic? I would suggest that few, if any, could claim such. If we are not allowed to protest, we are no better than dictatorships, which we openly label as bad.