If these services are outsourced, the Sutherland Shire community will lose out. These quality early education places will be lost, and families will suffer dramatic increases to fees and their cost of living. The hard-working early childhood educators will also lose their secure Council jobs and conditions. These Council-run services also set the standard against greedy for-profit childcare centres, what will happen without them? The General Manager and Councillors have refused to come clean and let Shire residents know what they are doing. What is Council secretly planning? The USU says these council services must not be lost to the community. As signatories we say: DON'T SELL OFF OUR PUBLIC CHILDCARE CENTRES!

On February 15, the Australian Catholic University issued the ‘Professional Services Draft Change Management Plan'which announced the loss of 110 equivalent full-time (EFT) professional staff positions - including 90 EFT positions being made redundant. We are opposed to these job cuts and believe that they are unnecessary. As well as the impacts on staff affected directly, we believe that these cuts will negatively impact the quality of teaching, research, and services. We demand that management demonstrate that all alternative savings measures have been canvassed; and explored all voluntary measures to ensure involuntary redundancy is a last resort.

On 1 June 2023, thousands of young workers’ HECS, HELP and VET student debts will increase by up to $4,000 as we face the biggest hike in decades. This is unfair. Young workers have the highest rates of student debt and the lowest incomes. We need as much money as possible to counter the cost-of-living crisis, buy a home or start a family. We don't have a deep pool of wealth or investment properties to draw on and we’re already losing a huge chunk of our income in student loan repayments. With the budget around the corner, now is the time to put pressure on Treasurer Jim Chalmers to make things fairer for young workers. Long-term, if we want young workers to be able to pay off student debts fairly, we need to index them to wage growth, not inflation. This is a conversation we should be having. But right now, Treasurer Jim Chalmers can stop the squeeze by freezing student debt repayments until the cost of living crisis is over.

“I have a neurodiverse child with multiple diagnoses. He’s been on a waiting list since before Kindy. We’ve only just been able to start seeing a specialist – but not in Tasmania. We’re seeing a private specialist interstate, via Zoom. We desperately need more Allied Health Professionals to support kids who are doing it tough.” – Thirza, Parent, Secretary (CPSU Tasmania) Allied Health professionals in schools are essential to give kids with learning and developmental disabilities the best start in life. Getting access to quality care early in life gives kids the best chance to adjust, succeed and flourish. An estimated 1 in 20 Australian children struggles with an anxiety disorder¹; 15-20% of Australians has a language-based learning disability². Early years are our first and best chance to give kids dignity and support to succeed. Tasmania also has the third highest rate of children and young people in Out-of-Home Care. Only a fraction of those we miss will ever seek help later in life. They go on struggling, in silence. Getting access to a Social Worker, Speechie or Psychologist early on can make all the difference in the world. “1 in 8 Australian primary school students has a communication disorder of some kind. We have 31 speech pathologists to service every public primary school and support school in the state. That makes our ratio 116 to 1, at best. We’re not talking about a little bit of understaffing - we’re talking about chronic, long-term vacancies.” - Sarah, Advanced Skills Speech & Language Pathologist, Tasmania Please sign our petition to call on Premier Rockliff to ensure Allied Health Professionals in schools, child safety and youth justice aren’t left behind. ¹ https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/children-youth/australias-children/contents/health/children-with-mental-illness ² https://dyslexiaassociation.org.au/frequently-asked-questions-2/

The University has claimed that this will help reduce SR workloads but no SRs were consulted on the decision. No students were consulted on the decision! Students won't get locked out less frequently if they are charged more, they will just be more financially strained each time there is a lockout. Students will be incentivised by this change to take risky steps like 'carding' doors, or sleeping in common rooms or others' rooms. The University has not provided any evidence they have investigated these risks to student safety. Many disabled students have also raised concerns that the charge will disproportionally impact them. Forgetfulness is a symptom of many disabilities. ANU already has one of the lowest proportions of low-SES students in the country. Combined with the skyrocketing cost of living on campus, this change makes ANU accomodation increasingly hostile to low-SES students.

Online options were ‘too hard’ before 2020, and then they came within a week, and then they were taken away as quickly as they were given. Many members of our community depend on these options being available such as those who are immuno-compromised and cannot risk exposure to disease, especially when universities do not have open windows, air purifiers or a mask or vaccine mandate in the classroom. Universal Design (‘UD’) — specifically, Universal Design for Learning (‘UDL’) — is a research-backed pedagogy and curriculum framework which enables equitable access to education for all students, including students with disabilities and other students from diverse, minoritised backgrounds. For disabled students, implementing UDL would ostensibly ensure that they can ‘engage with the curriculum without having to seek adjustments’ (see ‘Recommendations for equitable student support during disruptions to the higher education sector: Lessons from COVID-19,’ Mercer-Mapstone et al 2022,). Hybrid, flexible education — also known as ‘hyflex’ education, as noted in Recommendation 2.1 of the ALSA-AMSA-NUS research report — entails offering educational delivery options for both in-person attendance and Work From Home (‘WFH’). Moreover, hyflex education can facilitate educational participation for not only disabled people but also women escaping domestic family violence (‘DFV’) or sexual assault, First Nations students in regional & rural Australia, international students, and other demographics for whom in-person attendance may not be the most safe & accessible. People from diverse backgrounds have value. Contrary to what many believe, disabled people can (and do) contribute to society and to building a better world. Imagine all the setbacks if Dr Steven Hawking couldn’t come to class because he couldn’t get his wheelchair in the door! Additionally, the tertiary education regulator, Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (‘TEQSA’), has announced that they will now enforce the Education Services for Overseas Students Act 2000 (Cth) (‘ESOS’). Under ESOS in s 8.19, TEQSA is mandating that no more than a third of the education delivered to overseas students can be online or by distance. This decision from TEQSA means that if international students want to access regional, globally ranked education, they must return to Australia whilst there are COVID-19 outbreaks overseas, a rental shortage of affordable, student housing and a cost-of-living crisis. This forces numerous international students into a tricky conflict between their future and their present happiness. TEQSA doesn’t take individual complaints so the regulator cannot protect international students. That is why the government must step up. Likewise, online learning can be better for university staff. University staff with disabilities also face many of the struggles that disabled students do. Likewise, staff with caring roles for children or other dependents benefit from increased access to them by providing education online. Some universities do not have child-care options after 5pm, meaning that staff cannot afford to work a 9-5 with children because they have to rush to collect them. The higher education system relies on these staff and their incredible work to upskill the next generation.

The public services we all rely on - schools, hospitals, health care services, courts, child protection, fire and rescue, community services and more - have now faced staffing shortages and under-resourcing for many years, leaving Tasmanians missing out. Record vacancies, and an inability to attract and retain workers threatens to deepen the crisis in our public sector. The workers that carried us through COVID and support us when we need it most are also suffering from the skyrocketing cost of living that is hurting all workers. At the same time, many of Tasmania's public sector workers including firefighters and child safety staff are some of the lowest paid in the country. But they're being insulted by a Premier who fails to recognise that with a fair pay rise. Stand with us to demand a fair go for Tasmania.

Students have expressed their concerns about the lack of COVID-19 mandatory isolation and would like to see UNSW, one of the leading institutions that prioritised COVID-19 research take an equitable approach on this matter. Vast amounts of research have also demonstrated that when healthy able-bodied students contract more severe variants of COVID-19, they are likely to develop underlying disabilities, develop a risk of acquiring long COVID and experience lifelong changes to their immune, respiratory, and other biological systems.

Students should support Curtin staff fighting for better pay and conditions because: 1. Workers deserve a decent wage that goes up with inflation, at the very least.✊ 2. Because they are also fighting to improve the education quality they can provide for us too!🎓 Our staff are overworked, understaffed and increasingly facing unstable employment with casualisation on the rise. We know that staff teaching conditions impact student learning conditions. But we also think it's completely unfair for the staff who make our university run to be struggling with a cost of living crisis while university executives are making $300,000+ per year and the university is in surplus.

Financial strain, which jumps 600% during placement periods (Smith et al., 2018), is one of the leading drivers of preservice teacher drop outs. Not because these teachers are poor at the job, nor that they do not enjoy the work or the high workload, but purely because they cannot financially sustain themselves for weeks without pay. During a teacher shortage, this is a broken system. Furthermore, there should not be an education system that only allows for those who are financially viable to succeed, especially in a sector that so desperately needs new staff. Let's fix this now! Support the AEU Preservice Teacher Association members in our fight for preservice teacher payment by signing below. Join our Facebook page to assist in the campaign here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/635367530941019

Murdoch staff have been hit hard during the COVID-19 crisis: enduring staffing cuts, taking on more work, keeping the lights on for students and the broader community while management are seemingly making decisions that don't improve staff conditions or well-being. A university is a place of ideas. Murdoch's 'tagline' is "A place for free thinking" but sadly free thinking comes at a cost and it is a cost borne disproportionately by staff. With an already lean Bargaining Agreement and no real cost of living relief in sight, it's time to support Murdoch staff in their entrenched right to bargain for a more robust Bargaining Agreement. You need to send a message to management – this isn’t good enough, we can’t afford to keep going backwards, we are struggling with the lack of support, and we demand that they begin bargaining NOW. Click the link to sign the petition - send the message to management that we're ready to bargain NOW!

Our universities are failing when it comes to building inclusive and supporting learning environments for transgender, gender diverse and non-binary students. A recent survey of queer students in Australia conducted by the NUS Queer/LGBTQIA+ Department and RUSU Queer Department identified that every single respondent regularly experienced some form of deadnaming at university. The results from the survey revealed that: 83% of students said there was a persistent deadnaming issue at their university 93% were deadnamed on student facing platforms 20% were deadnamed by staff 43% were deadnamed on university accounts 13% were deadnamed on their student ID With the constant misgendering and deadnaming that occurs on student facing platforms and within classrooms, it is time for this issue to be addressed. We are calling on universities to end deadnaming and change their ways to ensure that the wellbeing of transgender, gender diverse and non-binary students is a priority. Universities have a duty of care towards their students, a responsibility to provide a safe learning environment that minimises opportunities for psychosocial harm. They need to acknowledge that until action is taken to end deadnaming in Australian universities, trans, non-binary and gender diverse students will continue to be at severe risk of bullying, harassment, physical violence and psychosocial harm. It is time for universities to protect vulnerable students and allow them to bring their whole selves to their studies.