Dom Perrottet: Enemy of Students

Growing Strong DOM PERROTTET

by Roisin Murphy

At some point in the next three years, you will meet a dickhead college boy, probably an engineer - definitely a Young Liberal - who will mansplain his way through conversations and leave you entirely unimpressed. 20 years ago, that dickhead was Dom Perrottet. And now he’s the New South Wales Premier.

In the post-apocalyptic scenario where the aforementioned man garners political success, things get pretty bad.

In the abstract, it might seem like this wouldn’t impact students in a significant way – it’s not state governments that fund universities, and it’s not state governments that fund Centrelink. However, the overwhelming majority of new COVID cases in NSW are among people aged 20-29. This is, at large, a result of our Premier’s strategy of letting the virus rip. It is of course true that this strategy is having its most devastating impact on at-risk communities, such as older people, people with disabilities and First Nations people. However, there is also a significant impact on students and young people that shouldn’t be overlooked.

To state the obvious, online learning is abysmal. While it does open doors for many people who are disabled, immuno-compromised or living overseas, it is not delivered in a holistic way, with recycled lecture recordings and minimal student support producing a substandard education. Simultaneously, online learning closes many doors for students who are unable to learn in such a setting, including those with learning difficulties who need in-person support and those in unsafe home environments. For as long as the Premier provides

Growing Strong no concrete plans for viral management, online learning will likely remain a reality. There’s a common understanding among students that our university experience has been largely lost due to COVID. The Government’s strategy of hands-off viral management suggests freedom and an ability to live our youth, but continues to provide the opposite – de facto lockdowns and a summer inside. Before coming to uni, it’s likely you envisioned a lifestyle strongly centred around campus. A period of your life which would function on a healthy balance of leisure and intellectual stimulation, each one reliant on the other. These are the images we’re sold of university, and where we expect the real learning to happen.

Dom Perrottet despises a sceleisure at uni. He wants you work done, and go home. In for that since he was at uni, for himself campaigning for Unionism (VSU). VSU shifted a compulsory-fee paying model is largely credited as the death of hard to prove - the rapid decline of its introduction in 2006 is incredibly guessed that when you defund student ies and venues they run go under.

It’s true that a young, dickhead engiPerrottet, who was passionately camVSU could never have envisioned Omicron. But there’s no doubt have jumped at the opportuniuniversities in the dark and force soulless methods of learnthere’s no doubt that he is that opportunity now. nario in which you enjoy to show up, get your fact, he’s been pushing where he built a name Voluntary Student student unions from to a voluntary one, and campus life, which isn’t university culture since clear. Who would have unions, the clubs, societ-

neer version of Dom paigning for the spread of he wouldn’t ty to leave them into ing. And using