01 January 2006

Speech by George Papanastasiou

Public Forum in defence of Dr. Robert Austin

Around the world today, educators, researchers and students are frequent targets of state-sponsored violence and repression. Comparatively, we can say Australia has been a haven of free academic expression. In the arts, the sciences, in most faculties, independent thinking has been encouraged. We’ve had some problems, yes, but overall, the trend has been libertarian.

More recently however, the politics of fear and ignorance, and hostility to all dissent, has embedded reaction into legislation, triggering overt and brute expressions of sentiments previously dormant and undealt-with in Australia’s psyche. We may be experiencing a watershed moment in our history. The potential consequences shouldn’t be underestimated.

We may also be entering an unprecedented period of official opposition, egged on by attack dogs of the right, to freedom of expression in our universities. The goal is singular and simple – the preservation of educators who’ll only teach students to fight students. I for one could never teach with a boot in my face. Now, it seems Dr Austin has taken a stand - and from what I comprehend of the circumstances he can count on my practical and moral solidarity.

This case confirms for me some long-standing fears. Under the guidance of this federal government, the net is being cast ever further and in every direction because dissenting voices are now buzzing loudly in the ears of an inner cabal of MPs - the same group who think reinforced anti-sedition laws, for instance, could actually silence opposition (if history is anything to go by, the effect will be the reverse). As a result, it’s not inconceivable that in the future we could end-up with a situation of mass civil unrest against state abuses of power. The naive and dangerous view that this can't happen in Australia because we live in some kind of reasoned and ever-civil wonderland is a complete nonsense.

So it’s now that academics and students from around Australia must unite to forge diverse allegiances with unions, community groups, workers, progressive political movements and the community in general – To dissent. I am urging disaffection with the crown and the government of John Howard (Nothing like the physical violence committed by our government and its allies against the people of Iraq, but the stern disobedience for progress that’s been the primer of emancipation throughout history).

This country, via its workers, students and academics – via its unions and community organisations – can shut down. This country, made up of and defined solely by its inhabitants, can shut down and constipate the budding instruments of repression – whatever they may be, wherever they may come from. Oscar Wilde put it simply; ‘Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.’

We’ve seen this more recently in Latin America, where mass mobilisations and strikes, many spontaneous, have rescued entire societies from dead-ends. I shudder to think where Venezuela would be now if Pedro Carmona, the head of that country’s biggest Business Organisation, wasn’t disgorged by the people before his self-appointed presidency solidified into a pistol grip for neo-liberal interests to the North. For those of us with a rudimentary understanding of the history of human struggle on that continent – the consequences could have been unspeakable. The evidence is in the mass graves of El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Chile, Honduras, Haiti – the list goes on.

The critical role played by institutions of higher education in the promotion of human rights and the development and preservation of civil society must be defended. The critical role of our educational institutions in advancing, ever further, the frontiers of human thinking must be preserved. We must dissent. They must be independent, they must be free, in more ways than one.

Thank-you.

George Papanastasiou
Victoria University, Melbourne
Defend our Universities public forum
RMIT, 30 November 2005

posted by Defend Our Universities committee @ 10:00 am

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home