- Teenage schoolgirl protesters' presence 'inappropriate' at university funding cuts demonstration, says Robert Doyle
- By WES HOSKING, ELLEN WHINNETT, BRENDAN LUCAS, BRENDAN CASEY
- 22/05/2014 Make a Comment (3)
- Contributed by: SpongeBob ( 17 articles in 2014 )
Police carry away a teenage protester
A SCHOOLGIRL carried away by police during yesterday’s rowdy city protest will be asked to explain her absence from school.
Camberwell High School student Tallulah, 15, was among those forcibly removed from a group of about 20 who refused repeated requests to leave the road outside State Parliament during the protest against education cuts.
The school today released a statement saying they did not know she would be attending the protest:
“Students are entitled to develop their own opinions of the world. However, our school policy is that students are required to be at school during school hours and are not allowed to leave during the day without permission.
“The school will be following up with the student and parents as to why we were not notified of the student leaving the school during the school day.”
Lord Mayor Robert Doyle this morning slammed the actions of a teenage schoolgirl who was carried away by police during the protest, saying “it was wrong for her to be there”.
“I never like it when I see children protesting in that way, I think it’s inappropriate,” he said on 3AW radio this morning.
More than a dozen people were arrested when the protest against the Federal Government’s Budget changes to higher education turned nasty.
“I think it’s wrong for her (the girl on the front page of today’s Herald Sun) to put herself in that situation, I think it’s most regrettable that police have to intervene in that way. I mean who likes seeing a schoolgirl being dragged away by police officers?”
Cr Doyle said that although the teen had a right to protest, the girl’s effort to change Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s education policy would have been better received in written form.
“If that young woman had sat down and from her honest perspective written directly to the PM to say ‘here’s what I think about your Budget, here’s why I don’t like it’, I would be much more inclined attention to pay attention to that to see her being dragged away from a protest,” he said.
Cr Doyle also expressed his hatred towards the protests affect on the city’s traffic.
Yesterday, thousands of angry demonstrators choked city streets, blocking traffic and forcing the suspension of tram services for several hours.
“I’ve always said when you start impinging on other people going about their business then you’ve got to ask some questions.
“They have the right to protest but it’s not the same sort of protest as what you’d expect from the socialist alliance or the greens, and I just hate it when those protests gridlock the city.”
Many Victorians also viewed the student protests outside Parliament House as “pointless” and “shameful”.
“These protesters are not protesting cuts to students, they are simply whipping up activism against the Liberal Party,” reader, Jason, said.
“We didn’t see a single student protest when Gillard’s Labor Government cut university funding in their Gonski reforms. So, so much for looking out for students interests. I get sick of the pure unadulterated Labor/Greens activism that pretends to be a separate cause while posing under the guise of “concern” for students or the environment or whatever other excuse these anti Liberals dream up.”
“What exactly do protests accomplish? Absolutely nothing from my observations. Why would the Government take any notice anyway? Maybe you should learn to do things the hard way. Your parents probably had to,” Glen said.
Fellow students also took issue with the small minority of protesters who give a bad name for the rest of them.
“I work full-time and study full-time, and pay my HECS debt. These protesters make me sick and I’m ashamed to be put in the same category as these students,” Stefan said.
Police had to move in and remove a group of protesters - some teenage schoolgirls in uniform - from tram tracks outside State Parliament.
The group had defied several police warnings to leave the Spring Street sit-in before officers acted.
Fellow protesters had also urged them to leave.
Victoria Police’s Inspector Paul Binyon expressed his disappointment at the clash, saying protesters hadn’t kept to an agreement about how they would behave.
“I was surprised at the age of some of them,’’ said Insp Binyon.
“One demonstrator’s parents actually turned up and took their child home.”
And federal Education Minister Christopher Pyne also weighed in, questioning the sincerity of protesters.
Teen protester Tallulah said she didn’t shy away from the cause.
"The budget cuts are wrong," she said.
"I want to go to university and I don’t want to pay through the nose for it. If these fees get too high, I may not be able to go to university, which I want to do for my future and for my family’s future."
Another girl, 16, dressed in the uniform of Brighton’s Star of the Sea College, was also among those police took away.
She had earlier told the Herald Sun she wasn’t afraid of being arrested.
The teenagers were among dozens at the rally, many carrying schoolbags and dressed in uniform.
One said there were as many as 30 students from her Footscray school at the protest.
"By the time we go to university, how are we going to pay for it?" she said.
Williamstown High School student Simona, 16, turned up with several school-friends.
"I think that whatever university a student decides to turn to should be purely based on their entrance (score), should be purely reliant on their score, as opposed to how much money they have," she said.
"Education is a right. It’s not a privilege, it’s a right."
Her friend Alice, 17, said: "I am here today because currently we are under the reign of an oppressive, ignorant, idiotic government."
Under the Abbott Government’s higher education overhaul, universities will be able to decide how much to charge for degrees and students will have to begin repaying their government tertiary education debts sooner.
Money given to universities for each course will also be cut.
La Trobe University student union president Rose Steele, who helped organise the National Union of Students event, defended the right of high school students to protest.
“I think it’s really important that secondary students are here, because secondary students are going to bear the absolute brunt of the deregulated system,’’ Miss Steele said.
“They are going to be the ones who will be paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees.
“We will be coming out again and again.”
The Melbourne rally, which was one of several nationwide, began at the State Library about 2pm with a symbolic burning of the Federal Budget, to the cheers of onlookers.
Some protesters carried banners reading “F--- fee hikes”. Others read “Pyne, don’t be a grub”.
But Mr Pyne said demonstrators should acknowledge the taxpayers who subsidised their tertiary degrees.
He said: "They (the protesters) should be buying a big bunch of flowers and a box of Roses chocolates, and finding a household near where they live where there’s nobody there with a university degree, and knocking on the front door, giving them the flowers and the chocolates, and saying, ‘Thank you for paying for 60 per cent of my university degree, so I can earn 75 per cent more than you over my lifetime’," Mr Pyne said of the protesters.
“I take all their protests with a pinch of salt,” he said.
Members of the National Tertiary Education and Maritime unions were among the protesters.
Greens deputy leader Adam Bandt and federal Opposition education spokesman Kate Ellis addressed the crowd.
The protest had initially been well-behaved, but things turned ugly when students rushed a wall of police outside State Parliament to try to break through the line.
There were also clashes in Canberra, and in Sydney where about 1000 people descended on the Town Hall.
One man there was arrested when a flare was lit.
He was bundled to the ground by about six police officers as he picked it up off the road and held it aloft.
Victoria Police confirmed that 13 people had been arrested at the Melbourne rally but did not release details.
All were released pending summons for obstructing a roadway or footpath.
Camberwell High School student Tallulah, 15, was among those forcibly removed from a group of about 20 who refused repeated requests to leave the road outside State Parliament during the protest against education cuts.
The school today released a statement saying they did not know she would be attending the protest:
“Students are entitled to develop their own opinions of the world. However, our school policy is that students are required to be at school during school hours and are not allowed to leave during the day without permission.
“The school will be following up with the student and parents as to why we were not notified of the student leaving the school during the school day.”
Lord Mayor Robert Doyle this morning slammed the actions of a teenage schoolgirl who was carried away by police during the protest, saying “it was wrong for her to be there”.
“I never like it when I see children protesting in that way, I think it’s inappropriate,” he said on 3AW radio this morning.
More than a dozen people were arrested when the protest against the Federal Government’s Budget changes to higher education turned nasty.
“I think it’s wrong for her (the girl on the front page of today’s Herald Sun) to put herself in that situation, I think it’s most regrettable that police have to intervene in that way. I mean who likes seeing a schoolgirl being dragged away by police officers?”
Cr Doyle said that although the teen had a right to protest, the girl’s effort to change Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s education policy would have been better received in written form.
“If that young woman had sat down and from her honest perspective written directly to the PM to say ‘here’s what I think about your Budget, here’s why I don’t like it’, I would be much more inclined attention to pay attention to that to see her being dragged away from a protest,” he said.
Cr Doyle also expressed his hatred towards the protests affect on the city’s traffic.
Yesterday, thousands of angry demonstrators choked city streets, blocking traffic and forcing the suspension of tram services for several hours.
“I’ve always said when you start impinging on other people going about their business then you’ve got to ask some questions.
“They have the right to protest but it’s not the same sort of protest as what you’d expect from the socialist alliance or the greens, and I just hate it when those protests gridlock the city.”
Many Victorians also viewed the student protests outside Parliament House as “pointless” and “shameful”.
“These protesters are not protesting cuts to students, they are simply whipping up activism against the Liberal Party,” reader, Jason, said.
“We didn’t see a single student protest when Gillard’s Labor Government cut university funding in their Gonski reforms. So, so much for looking out for students interests. I get sick of the pure unadulterated Labor/Greens activism that pretends to be a separate cause while posing under the guise of “concern” for students or the environment or whatever other excuse these anti Liberals dream up.”
“What exactly do protests accomplish? Absolutely nothing from my observations. Why would the Government take any notice anyway? Maybe you should learn to do things the hard way. Your parents probably had to,” Glen said.
Fellow students also took issue with the small minority of protesters who give a bad name for the rest of them.
“I work full-time and study full-time, and pay my HECS debt. These protesters make me sick and I’m ashamed to be put in the same category as these students,” Stefan said.
Police had to move in and remove a group of protesters - some teenage schoolgirls in uniform - from tram tracks outside State Parliament.
The group had defied several police warnings to leave the Spring Street sit-in before officers acted.
Fellow protesters had also urged them to leave.
Victoria Police’s Inspector Paul Binyon expressed his disappointment at the clash, saying protesters hadn’t kept to an agreement about how they would behave.
“I was surprised at the age of some of them,’’ said Insp Binyon.
“One demonstrator’s parents actually turned up and took their child home.”
And federal Education Minister Christopher Pyne also weighed in, questioning the sincerity of protesters.
Teen protester Tallulah said she didn’t shy away from the cause.
"The budget cuts are wrong," she said.
"I want to go to university and I don’t want to pay through the nose for it. If these fees get too high, I may not be able to go to university, which I want to do for my future and for my family’s future."
Another girl, 16, dressed in the uniform of Brighton’s Star of the Sea College, was also among those police took away.
She had earlier told the Herald Sun she wasn’t afraid of being arrested.
The teenagers were among dozens at the rally, many carrying schoolbags and dressed in uniform.
One said there were as many as 30 students from her Footscray school at the protest.
"By the time we go to university, how are we going to pay for it?" she said.
Williamstown High School student Simona, 16, turned up with several school-friends.
"I think that whatever university a student decides to turn to should be purely based on their entrance (score), should be purely reliant on their score, as opposed to how much money they have," she said.
"Education is a right. It’s not a privilege, it’s a right."
Her friend Alice, 17, said: "I am here today because currently we are under the reign of an oppressive, ignorant, idiotic government."
Under the Abbott Government’s higher education overhaul, universities will be able to decide how much to charge for degrees and students will have to begin repaying their government tertiary education debts sooner.
Money given to universities for each course will also be cut.
La Trobe University student union president Rose Steele, who helped organise the National Union of Students event, defended the right of high school students to protest.
“I think it’s really important that secondary students are here, because secondary students are going to bear the absolute brunt of the deregulated system,’’ Miss Steele said.
“They are going to be the ones who will be paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees.
“We will be coming out again and again.”
The Melbourne rally, which was one of several nationwide, began at the State Library about 2pm with a symbolic burning of the Federal Budget, to the cheers of onlookers.
Some protesters carried banners reading “F--- fee hikes”. Others read “Pyne, don’t be a grub”.
But Mr Pyne said demonstrators should acknowledge the taxpayers who subsidised their tertiary degrees.
He said: "They (the protesters) should be buying a big bunch of flowers and a box of Roses chocolates, and finding a household near where they live where there’s nobody there with a university degree, and knocking on the front door, giving them the flowers and the chocolates, and saying, ‘Thank you for paying for 60 per cent of my university degree, so I can earn 75 per cent more than you over my lifetime’," Mr Pyne said of the protesters.
“I take all their protests with a pinch of salt,” he said.
Members of the National Tertiary Education and Maritime unions were among the protesters.
Greens deputy leader Adam Bandt and federal Opposition education spokesman Kate Ellis addressed the crowd.
The protest had initially been well-behaved, but things turned ugly when students rushed a wall of police outside State Parliament to try to break through the line.
There were also clashes in Canberra, and in Sydney where about 1000 people descended on the Town Hall.
One man there was arrested when a flare was lit.
He was bundled to the ground by about six police officers as he picked it up off the road and held it aloft.
Victoria Police confirmed that 13 people had been arrested at the Melbourne rally but did not release details.
All were released pending summons for obstructing a roadway or footpath.
Source: https://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/teenage-schoolgirl-protesters-presence-inappropriate-at-university-funding-cuts-demonstration-says-robert-doyle/story-fni0fit3-1226925278792
let me say to the people of this our great land, if education fees go up, just don't go to uni & don't pay any money...simple. after all, there only 2 primary reasons to goto uni, 1)get degree/quals to get a job and 2)to learn. With 1) if fees are too high & you become a HECS & Multiple Tax slave, you must ask yourself why bother, its not the path. So go get creative, find something you love & then turn it into a money venture if it serves others. As for 2) pay tens of thousands to be handfed regurgitated stuff from Unis when you do most of the work anyway and Unis get the credit. Blahh! Most stuff is on the net & around. Just like opportunity open your mind & it will appear. So to our kids & young at heart, fear not, protesting is ok & has merit at times, however don't be lured down a path of dependency, as that is what education, jobs & govts are all about. Remember, they need your energy and participation to survive not vice versa. See how quick Uni fees hit rock bottom when no one decides to attend. The big Investors in the Unis & Industries will have govt step in real fast & whallah, affordable education once again. Btw. standards in Unis dropped from about 1992 so degrees aren't worth the paper the're written on I'm afraid to say, which is another argument to boycott Unis altogether. When our young make this paradigm shift you will be miles ahead. Have faith in your divine creator, creative spirit & self power & you will be just fine always. god bless
Lord Doyle is that wot they call this wanker now. I could think of far more appropriate names as could many...
Let me say firstly that this grown up girl deserves a medal for putting her heart out there saying and doing wot she believes is right like many of us good folk.
Wot wanker doyle needs to understand is he is WRONG he says "it was wrong for her to be there".
Of course she wouldn't have been there if she had felt safe in her environment and secure about her future. With all the media hype and demonstrations around the place with our loony politicians bringing the walls down, increases in education fees being just one crazy loony tune, of course people will be effected and will react just like this girl did.
What's important to understand wanker doyle is if you did your job properly as with all your crony loony political and business mates (state and fed), as well as all Australians boycotting big business and taking to the streets, this girl wouldn't have to hit the streets if she felt like she was being properly looked after.
It must be getting clear to more and more people as our governments and public offices are being subverted into corporations and business managers no longer responsible to the people, that this model of dictatorship has to go!
Politicians are being controlled not be the people they should be serving but to the puppet masters above.
But say in the interim to help get the power back to the people, let us the people draw up a new mandate where all politicians and departments are transparent and accountable to the people direct through information available on the web or direct inqiry. Politicians could be elected for a term of 1 year or removed at any time with enough votes. Our whole voting nonsense of creating the illusion the voters have any real say is cods waddle.
Ultimately, the birth of how we handle legislators in this country needs to come under heavy and immediate scrutiny.
Clearly, the state and country have not been run properly for some time and it's time for change.
This is what this 15 year old was standing up for - something better.
And yes what prompted 3 police officers to have to carry her away in such a demeaning way? When do we get to hear the truthful side form the police?
Or was this 15 year old perhaps looking for the attention from absent parents? In lengthy yet superficial stories [as all mainstream stories are] we never get to hear the real truth.
And as for writing a letter to change Abbott's views, Doyle are you seriously delusional, naive or just a good puppet for your masters, as most of who write to our ministers these days barely get a reply let alone influence any change.
You doyle of all people must know the ineffectivenes of writing letters to MP's or perhaps the trimmings of one too many social functions, heady cocktails and bright lights of over glorified media conferences have elevated you to a place where you have transcended you so heavenly, it must be like trying to control Earthly events from the moon?
NEWSFLASH doyle and all deadbeat political sales people and legislators, legal and media reps, young people 15 and younger are waking to the rubbish they are being fed and they don't like it. The test and real question is, how long will it take before we see a radical dismantling of Australia's power structure by our young, returning our industries, services and authority back to the common people?
We may forgive you lord doyle for being dumb or even dumber, or even lacking of courage and integrity but your still another overpriced inefficient tax burden on us decent Australians, plus you are simply just another dead beat political wanker in and out of politics!
As for the words of MP Pyne, whilst they blow one's mind, they are typical of the wrong people in the job who lack the honour of accepting responsibility and intelligence to work through the countless creative solutions on offer to advance our communities and infrastructure.
How do we get the right people into managing such public structure is where the minds of the people should first fuse.
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