VICTORIA University students angry at savage cuts to TAFE funding staged a protest in Footscray’s Nicholson Street Mall on Monday.
Students studying community services work marked National TAFE Day by protesting the job losses, fee hikes and course cuts that followed the state government’s slashing of the TAFE budget by $300 million.
Student Leanne Gooch said that as a single mother, TAFE meant the difference between making a great life for her son and living below the poverty line.
“Cutting TAFE courses and increasing fees takes away my opportunity to get further education and skills to improve my situation,” she said. “TAFE is under attack across Australia so we’re prepared to take a public stand and say: ‘Reverse the cuts from 2012 and stop any new cuts to our public education’.”
Victoria University has been one of the hardest hit by the cuts, losing $40 million last year, slashing almost 80 courses and axing hundreds of positions.
Monday’s protest featured speeches, a public petition and a march back to the Nicholson Street campus.
Western suburbs Greens MP Colleen Hartland told the rally she knows the importance of TAFE because it changed her life.
“The students here today deserve the same options that I had, not the gutted version of TAFE they’re currently getting courtesy of both Labor and Liberal.”
The rally follows calls by the Australian Education Union for the state government to reverse the budget cuts following the Auditor-General’s findings, tabled in Parliament last week, which said Victorian TAFEs had recorded another year of “financial deterioration”.
AEU vice-president of TAFE Greg Barclay said the cuts had had a devastating impact on the viability of the public TAFE system.
“The AEU predicted massive job losses as a consequence of the 2012 budget cuts and we estimate that more than 2000 teachers have been cut from the public TAFE system in Victoria.”
