Riot police have clashed with students in Sydney protesting against the education minister Simon Birmingham’s commitment to university deregulation, with reports of excessive force.
Police officers ejected about 30 University of Sydney students from the Fisher library late on Wednesday afternoon when Birmingham was on campus to adjudicate a debating competition.
The group of students had been staging a protest against Birmingham’s comments on fee deregulation.
The University of Sydney student paper Honi Soit reported that after the group had been there for about 15 minutes, chanting and giving speeches, as many as 20 officers formed a barricade around them to eject them.
Some students were reportedly carried up stairs and pushed out the front doors.
Georgia Mantle, students’ representative council (SRC) general secretary and Indigenous officer, told Honi that police “put me in a wristlock and pulled my hair and lifted me up by the ankles”.
“We were peacefully standing outside the venue when police came and violently pushed everyone out of the building,” SRC welfare officer April Holcombe told Honi Soit.
a @Sydney_Uni student lies on the floor in a police crush during #birmoprotest pic.twitter.com/wc3nsRKksz
— Naaman Zhou (@naamanzhou) April 6, 2016
Liam Carrigan, SRC education officer and organiser of the protest, said none of the protesters responded with violence. “People were nearly trampled. Students were heavily traumatised by the police action.”
“They pushed us up two sets of stairs ... and at least two students were knocked to the ground,” student Cameron Caccamo said.
police push students outside of fisher library during #birmoprotest pic.twitter.com/M8TSplo6nu
— Naaman Zhou (@naamanzhou) April 6, 2016
Police closed the library to students after the protest, and the security door at the main entrance was severely damaged in the altercation.
NSW police confirmed officers attended the campus at about 5.45pm on Wednesday. A spokeswoman said there were no arrests made, but “a small number of protesters were moved on after allegedly breaching the peace”.
Honi Soit editor Naaman Zhou said the police were on campus before the event started, but he did not know who called them. He understood that no protesters were intending to lodge complaints against the police.
Neither the protest nor Birmingham’s presence had been widely publicised before the event – the John Howard Debating Cup, organised by the University of Sydney Liberal club.
Adjudicating the @Sydney_Uni Liberal Club's annual John Howard Debating Cup tonight - well done all involved pic.twitter.com/rSMCttfV9B
— Simon Birmingham (@Birmo) April 6, 2016
“The library was absolutely full – it was a normal [Wednesday] night with students trying to study and work on assignments,” said Zhou.
“It was lucky that nobody was seriously injured.”
A similar clash occurred two years ago, when then-education minister Christopher Pyne was on campus to judge the same competition.
The protest was in response to Birmingham’s consideration of controversial reforms to higher education funding that were unveiled by Pyne in the 2014 budget.
“It is despicable that Birmingham thinks he can step on to campus after the announcement that the government’s higher education policy remains to be deregulating fees, a move that will lock lower SES students out of education and destroy accessible education in Australia,” Carrigan told Honi Soit.
“It is important that the student movement remains militant in opposing these politicians on campus.”
Birmingham has said that, should the package be legislated, it would not take effect until 2017 at the earliest. On Wednesday he said in a press release he was continuing to consult widely on higher education reform.
