Hundreds of students gathered in Brisbane this week for the National Union of Students Education Conference to discuss war, inequality, oppression and the Albanese Labor government’s performance.

Students and young workers are facing an acute cost-of-living crisis. Yet the federal government is spending half a trillion dollars on nuclear-powered submarines and next to nothing on housing or to increase welfare. The key debate of the conference was about how students should respond: should we accept that war spending is more important than the wellbeing of ordinary people?

Student Unity, the right-wing Labor faction, defended the AUKUS military alliance and the government’s policy. But attendees from National Labor Students (the left-wing Labor faction) and Socialist Alternative argued that students and workers should not pay for the costs of war. Indeed, no one should; AUKUS is an aggressive move that encourages retaliation from China and takes us one step closer to war. 

Instead of spending billions on warfare, the money should be used to build more public housing, raise the rate of welfare payments and provide free education. The conference passed a motion calling for an end to the US alliance and a university boycott of the military. 

On a panel discussion about the housing crisis, featuring Greens MP Max Chandler-Mather, University of Sydney Education Officer Yasmine Johnson slammed Labor for demolishing public housing and rejecting the Greens’ call for a rent freeze. She pointed out that the government spends $80 billion on tax concessions for investors while failing to expand public housing. Cherish Kuehlmann, education officer at UNSW, spoke about the Get A Room campaign, which has been mobilising students to protest against those profiting from the housing crisis.

The conference also debated how to fight oppression and the far right. Socialists criticised Labor for implementing racist policies, particularly relating to immigration and refugees, and making concessions to the far right. In a plenary on the Voice to Parliament, socialists attacked both the racist No campaign led by federal Liberal leader Peter Dutton, and the shocking incarceration rates of Indigenous children in states governed by Labor.

NUS LGBTI Officer Grace Hill drew important lessons from the successful campaign against transphobe Kelly-Jay Keen’s Australian speaking tour earlier this year. NUS called a series of protests against Keen, which in Melbourne exposed her connection to fascists. Standing up to the far right, rather than ignoring it, meant that Keen and her supporters were humiliated, and prompted Victorian unions to call one of the biggest trans rights rallies in Australian history.

During the conference, students rallied in Brisbane’s CBD to demand Albanese break the AUKUS alliance and invest in cost-of-living relief rather than the military. NUS has now called a National Day of Action for 9 August, when students will rally across the country under the banner “Welfare not Warfare”.