Mehreen Faruqi (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Uni students have been showing up for Palestine from the very beginning. They have always been at the forefront of movements for social justice or for climate justice. While their universities shamefully silence them, censure them, smear them, punish them, vilify them and even spy on them, they have refused to back down and they have continued to show up. I'm so proud and grateful to every student who has refused to accept the lies and gaslighting and who has refused to sit back and watch the slaughter, starvation and genocide of Palestinians.

Over the past two weeks nearly 5,000 students across the country voted in a national student referendum on Palestine; 97 per cent of students voted to censure the Australian government for its complicity in Israel's genocide in Gaza and for universities to end their complicity in genocide by ceasing all partnerships with weapons companies. The thousands of students who showed up at 19 campuses across the country have shown the courage and the moral fibre that is so lacking in the Albanese Labor government. I thank them for their courage, their strength and their moral integrity in standing for justice in the face of all that has been thrown at them and all the pressures young people are under, from crushing student debt to the climate, cost-of-living and housing crises.

The message could not be clearer: uni students will not accept their government, their education institutions, their research and their resources being used to support a rogue genocidal state. These students give me hope that Palestine will be free from the river to the sea.