NTEU Newsroom 7 September 2012
TAFE staff, students and supporters gave Premier Ted Baillieu and his community cabinet the promised “warm welcome” when the Legislative Assembly sat in Ballarat and the Legislative Council in Bendigo on 6 September.
However, neither the Premier nor other government MPs ventured anywhere near either of the rallies which attracted 400 in Ballarat and 200 in Bendigo against the government cuts which rip out $20 million, 100 full-time jobs and 43 courses from the University of Ballarat TAFE and $9 million, 100 full-time jobs and 39 courses from Bendigo TAFE. Thousands of students will lose out.
The protests brought together staff, students, community members and supporters from other unions.
NTEU Victorian Division Secretary Dr Colin Long told the Ballarat rally that concerns about the TAFE cuts had been raised all over the state by unions, students, staff, TAFE CEOs, business leaders, churches, school councils and school principals. Never has there been such a concerted outpouring of anger about the treatment of education in Victoria, he said.
The TAFE cuts are hitting regional areas hardest. Jobs, courses, campuses are already gone and going. Add the cuts to fire fighting budgets announced this week, the cuts to the public service, including the Department of Primary Industries, and, once again, the pattern is clear.
In 1854 the Ballarat Reform League met at Bakery Hill to pass a resolution that formed the basis of the movement that we commemorate today as the Eureka Rebellion: “…that it is the inalienable right of every citizen to have a voice in making the laws he is called on to obey, that taxation without representation is tyranny’.
We will borrow this resolution today and assert with one strong voice: ‘taxation without education is tyranny’.
